Anyone with Experience in applying to Marine Ports Authority of Singapore?

[drllau]

They've just issued a call for proposals and I can adapt an solution for their problem (Using Blockchain to Improve Transparency of Bunker Supply Chain) but as I'm in London doing legal docs for a seed round, I can't readily drag myself away ... with the MPA deadline of 10th August for submissions.  So I'm basically reaching out to anyone who has either sought funding from MINT, or closely related govt entities to give me some guidance on how much paperwork (and therefore effort) is going to be required to draft the proposal. Professionally speaking, I'm a little unsure why blockchain is even mentioned since the problem is identifying adulturated fuel sources and its comparatively easy to monitor but using a distributed ledger or not won't matter to the fly-by-nighters.

PS I know the govt is gungho about innovation and technology, and very clever in reinventing SG society but the notion of procuring creativity by fiat seems stark contrast to the accidental entrepreneurship I observe personally. Just because something uses blockchain doesn't mean it is new (software is fungible to a large extent, cryptoeconomics just shifts the security risks to different parties).

[drllau]

One of the interesting facts about blockchains is their decentralised nature which makes it hard for traditional top-down institutions to impose their rules and regulations. This was clearly seen when I was reviewing the EU Monitoring, Reporting & Verification requirements (basically a summary of ship emissions) where they wanted

1. Amount and emission factor for each type of fuel consumed in total
   
2. Total CO2 emitted and additionally differentiated to aggregated CO2 emitted
   
   • Voyages to and from EU ports
   • Voyages between EU ports
   • At berth
3. Total transport work
   
   • Time at sea and in port
   • Cargo carried
4. Average energy efficiency

All somewhat reasonable on surface ... but then they would publish all data publicly. So how do shippers feel about telling all their business competitors just what cargos they carried where and when? Any decent machine learning algorithm would just screen-scrap the data and correlate with other public info (ship GPS etc) and determine journey profitability or competitive fuel sources. Not exactly Big Brother but certainly Little Sister territory (tell-tale titter). Now whilst greenies and environmentalists might applaud such action, saying carbon accounting and emissions transparency should be public record, I'm more concerned about how it was decided such reporting should be public which is a political process.

I've said elsewhere in respect of government of what's the point of having a clear window (transparency) when you still can't get your hands on the steering wheel (legislative input). This can be seen in legislative capture in US, the Brussel mandarinate in EU and the messy situation in so many developing countries where the Big Chief mentality still exists (aka gift culture to your faction from involuntary public largess). Which brings me back to the point of blockchain in that the governance model is more akin to Federation, where each individual node contributes its weight (or vote) to the network as a whole and its up to the participants to decide who gets to join, the various incentives (eg token conversion rates) and under what conditions someone is kicked out (or at worst, agree to hard fork).

So whilst the Maritime and Port Authority has total jurisdiction over its assigned area of responsibility, it needs to cooperate with other ports, and above it is the International Maritime Organisation. The reason this is significant is that both IMO and the aircraft regulatory body were excused from the Paris agreement on condition that they come up with their own carbon abatement policies, which as a body of self-interested businesses, is akin to herding chicken-littles. Whilst not quite Y2K scare-mongering, the issue of paying inflated marine gasoil prices instead of the existing cheap high sulphur fuel oil has concentrated the minds wonderfully (as Samuel Johnson might have observed). So every shipping firm is trying to figure out how to transition to the new fuel mandates with the least amount of financial pain whilst maximum squawking for tax relief. Which as you can logically conclude, does not make for easy consensus.

So back to the blockchain in that I was trying to figure out what mechanism would fit well with the Asian style of doing business ... all international business stereotypes aside, there are distinct ways of doing business in Asia, partly cultural (relationship building) and partly structural (lack of strong independent legal institutions). I was modelling the federated blockchain on a ASEAN consensus building model with multiple port authorities when it occurred to me that consensus building is actually hard ... when you have one holdout it is effectively giving every member a veto which (as shown in UN) can kick problems down the road indefinitely instead of addressing them resolutely. This quote from a participant at EastAsiaForum

Consensus is still necessary to maintain ASEAN’s unity, but it need not always be absolute. In any situation, consensus means that all members of the group can come to an agreement, so long as it satisfies the needs or interests of one party and does not harm those of other members. For a consensus to be absolute, however, all parties must share the same concerns and be willing to sacrifice part or all of their interests for the common cause. Many strands of international relations theory, borne out by much practical experience, would argue that absolute consensus rarely occurs when national interests are a critical factor. Instead, many now look toward to an approach based on compromise, or a non-absolute consensus. In this situation, consensus does not mean that everyone has to accept a decision; consensus should be understood as having everyone’s ideas heard equally and stated in the final document in an objective and unbiased manner.

 

 So for a blockchain implementation of a public distributed ledger with shared writing (and editing ... think about the disputes on Wikipedia), what does forming consensus on the rules or modus operandi (way of working) really mean? How can a maritime cosmopolitan nation like Singapore try to agree on data access rights with Burma whom some suspect of cozying up to China and their One Road & Belt strategic thrust? 10 nations might be a doable working group but when extended to dozens or even hundreds of small ports, managing the standards and data integrity is no small headache. In the end, blockchain is not really a technological nirvana but a change management issue. When potential state secrets (eg offshore support vessels exploring sensitive O&G basins) are exposed or supply chains get disintermediated, , incumbants want to revert to the status quo, which then is followed by the standard ignore-laugh-fear-respect cycle.

Cryptoanarchists aside, a lot of business leaders have been plugging the distributed ledger concept on purely efficiency grounds, but what does it really mean to participate on a public blockchain? Data is only as good as the originator so putting in the right governance mechanisms and dispute resolution processes to give the right incentives to participate is going to be a necessary ingredient in any long-lasting blockchain implementation. Certainly the ASEAN consensus model might work well in the past, but when scaled to hundreds of nodes (more akin to modern markets) then what works in providing policy stability and consistency? Will we see more specialist technical groups emerge like IEEE or IETF who were instrumental in the internet protocols? Or should blockchains be left to vendors such as IBM or Bank of America where a small consortium determines governance (and participation rents ... oopps fees). Hence my conclusion that widespread adoption of distributed ledgers is actually a social challenge, not merely a technological solution.

[Hugh Mason]

On Sunday, 12 August 2018 21:26:58 UTC+8, drllau wrote:

One of the interesting facts about blockchains is their decentralised nature which makes it hard for traditional top-down institutions to impose their rules and regulations.

Interesting to see this development in the shipping space, apparently including PSA: IBM-Maersk Blockchain Platform Adds 92 Clients As Part Of Global Launch

Anyone interested in blockchain/logistics may want to reach out to The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation

[drllau]

there are basically 3 approaches to developing a multi-sided market (what blockchain evolves to).

1. Find Marquee clients - IBM and Masersk are both big names and will appeal to conservative elements (and let's face it, shipping with huge capital assets and risk of accidents is probably as conservative as you can get.
2.  Focus on the limiting factor and subsidise it .. this was the case with eBay in that they needed to bring on board buyers of unique items (beannie babies?) as there's always a surplus of sellers
3. Zig-zag between a two-sided market
   

The bill of lading problem (which IBM & Maeserk aims to address is an interesting case where you need to get both shippers and consignors on board. If it is dominated by vendors, you end up with the equivalent of SABRE, the reservation system developed by the airlines which is effectively an in-house consortium (think VISA, Mastercard). On the other hand the internet broke open the whole sale with reverse auctions, name your own price and a bunch of aggregators/search. On the other hand, distributed ledgers have rather distinctive traits arising from the OpenSource world, with its emphasis on zero trust, having code available (++eyes == bugs--) means less opportunities for cracking and rather response rate for deploying fixes. This is the difference between public blockchains such as Ehtereum vs permissioned, private side chains. It's a matter of sacrificing some control in return for faster adoption growth in the zig-zag approach.

From talking with people in London's FinTech scene, the issue with distributed ledger is more change-management rather than adoption of technology. The BoL has long historical roots and merely replicating its functionality via newer technologies tend to be marginal value creation. You have to combine both economic incentive plus utility for a new approach to really take off. Breakout technologies are rarely adopted by committee as it is hard for existing players to change their business model. But certainly logistics with multiple agents in the process could benefit from a generic mechanism to search for info and help traceability along the supply chain (foodmiles, counterfeiting, blood diamonds etc). A good opportunity for SG to reinforce its logistics transhipment geographical advantage

Lawrence

http://www.linkedin.com/in/drllau