Investor FAQ

Common questions from investors about Skyocean’s model, risk management, and value proposition.

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About Skyocean

What is Skyocean?

Skyocean is verifiable trade finance infrastructure that acts as principal. It was born out of its founder’s more than 15 years in physical cross-border trade, and the group has a presence across multiple countries. We take positions in emerging market corridors that conventional trade finance declines. We buy the commodity, hold legal title until we are paid, and carry the operational risk ourselves. Because title stays with us, a buyer default is a resale rather than a write-off.

Every trade is recorded on verifiable data infrastructure built on the OriginTrail decentralised knowledge graph (DKG). Documents, checks and attestations are published as Knowledge Assets carrying a cryptographic hash, so a counterparty or an auditor can re-run the same verification and reach the same result.

What is Skyocean’s mission?

Our mission is twofold:

  1. Finance the trade the conventional system declines, taking principal positions in corridors that banks and traditional providers will not serve
  2. Provide fair entry to cross-border trade for smaller merchants in developing and emerging markets

The Problem We Solve

What problem does Skyocean address?

The export trading and commodities industry faces several systemic issues:

  • Corporate dominance: The industry is concentrated among large corporations, making it difficult for smaller participants to compete
  • High barriers to entry: Traditional trade finance requires $100K+ minimums and industry connections
  • Obsolete banking system: Biased and outdated systems prevent small merchants from competing
  • Lack of trust and accessibility: Limited transparency makes global trade inaccessible to most

Risk Mitigation

How do you mitigate non-payment risk in emerging markets?

We employ multiple layers of protection:

Risk Control Description
Self-consigned commodities Skyocean retains title to goods until payment is received
Pre-payment requirements Required for hard-to-resell or specialty commodities
First entry-level merchants We work with new merchants on smaller initial transactions
NGO-vetted SMEs Partner merchants are sourced and vetted through trusted NGO networks
Verifiable audit record Each step of a trade is recorded as a Knowledge Asset with a cryptographic hash, so document sets are checked deterministically rather than taken on trust
Commodity selection Focus on high-demand, globally tradeable goods (grains, sugar, pulses, edible oils, dairy, meats)

Why self-consignment?

By keeping commodities self-consigned until payment, Skyocean maintains ownership and control. If a buyer defaults, we retain the goods and can redirect them to another buyer. The default becomes a resale rather than a write-off, which removes the most common loss event in emerging market trade.

If the financier does not take title, what does it hold?

Title stays with the Skyocean entity that signs the Trade Finance Agreement, which is the borrower and is the group company in the financier’s own jurisdiction: Skyocean USA for a US financier, Skyocean Lithuania for an EU financier, under that jurisdiction’s law.

The consignee named on the bill of lading is the party that takes delivery, clears the cargo and sells it at the port of discharge, which takes an importer of record with an import licence and local buyers. On a Skyocean trade that party is the destination entity, acting for the Skyocean borrower under the intercompany agency agreement.

The financier holds a charge over the goods and receivables that follows the goods into their sale proceeds; the assignment of receivables and resale proceeds, given by both the Skyocean borrower and the destination entity; the collection account the buyer pays into, charged to the financier so that the financier controls the inflow and the sweep to repayment; a direct suretyship from the destination entity; cargo insurance assigned to the financier as loss payee; and transport documents held to its order where it requires that.

Who owns the cargo and who holds it?

The Skyocean borrower buys the cargo, owns it and the receivable. The destination entity, Skyocean Sudan or Skyocean Ghana, is consignee and importer of record: it holds the original bills of lading, clears the cargo, releases it against payment and resells it if the buyer defaults, as agent for the Skyocean borrower under an intercompany agency agreement.

That agreement goes through notarisation, consular legalisation for the destination country and registration there, once per pair of entities and before the first cargo moves in that corridor, financed or not, and each cargo is attached to it by an anchored record that names that cargo. The per facility legal opinion covers, for the destination jurisdiction, the ownership of goods the destination entity holds as agent for the Skyocean borrower on the basis of that agreement.

The destination entity contracts with the port, the carrier and the buyer in its own name. The Skyocean borrower is named as principal in the agency agreement and in the group’s KYB file, and is disclosed to regulators, banks and financiers.

Where is the cargo held between arrival and sale?

On a standard release the destination entity clears the cargo against the original bills of lading and releases it to the buyer against payment.

The destination entity can instead hold a cargo in a bonded warehouse at the port of discharge, under customs control, where import duty falls due only when the goods are cleared. From bond the cargo is cleared by the buyer on payment, cleared by a replacement buyer after a resale under retained title, sold in bond to a buyer who clears it, or re-exported. A replacement buyer or a re-export buyer goes through the same screening as the original buyer, a re-export is recorded as a new trade with its own export declaration from the port of discharge, the proceeds of every exit are paid into the same controlled account, and each exit is visible to the financier in the verification record.

What does the verification record add to the security?

Whether the agency agreement and the charge are enforceable is a matter of legalisation, registration and the per facility legal opinion. Whether the facts they rest on can be shown is a matter of the record: which containers, held by which entity for which principal, charged to which financier, since when.

No second agreement is negotiated per shipment. Attaching a cargo to the agency agreement produces a record that names the trade, names the containers and seals, points at the agency agreement and carries who attached it and when; its hash is published to the public knowledge graph before departure, which fixes the date the record existed. The terminal’s gate report and the customs declaration for the same containers and seals are matched against that record, and settlement is matched from the banks’ payment messages.

The purchase contract and the agency agreement establish ownership. The record establishes identity and date: that the containers attached to the agency agreement are the containers the terminal and customs recorded, and that the record naming them existed before the cargo moved. The timestamp is set by the public knowledge graph, and the gate report, the customs declaration and the payment messages are issued by the terminal operator, by customs and by the banks.

How Trades Are Financed

What are the capital tracks?

Skyocean’s current business is institutional: trade executed as principal, asset-backed trade finance, and wholesale arrangements with licensed firms. Capital reaches the trade book through four tracks:

  1. Pre-seed equity, a single pool of working capital deployed into the revolving trade book
  2. Trade finance, sized on the cost basis of the goods and never on the sale price
  3. A wholesale yield engine for licensed managers
  4. Yield provider partnerships with licensed securities firms

Tracks 3 and 4 are wholesale only. They are available to licensed intermediaries only, with no retail distribution and no public solicitation.

What makes Skyocean self-sustainable?

Skyocean is backed by real trades executed as principal. Revenue comes from actual commodity transactions, the purchase and sale of tangible products, so trade margin funds operations rather than any form of speculation.

How is equity capital used, and what does that mean for runway?

Equity is a single pool of working capital deployed into a revolving trade book. Trade margin funds operations. The principal itself is not consumed: it returns at the end of each cycle and is redeployed into the next one, so runway is a function of trade performance rather than a countdown against a fixed burn.

Investors should price the other side of that coupling as well. If the trade book stalls, cycles slow, or margin compresses, runway shortens with it.

How will the current raise be used?

  • Corridor expansion and trade volume
  • Merchant onboarding and support
  • Marketing and partnerships
  • Legal and regulatory compliance
  • Platform development

Retail Participation (Planned, Phase 2)

Is retail participation open?

No. Trade finance has historically been closed to individuals: minimums of $100,000 or more, industry connections, and no route in for smaller participants. The planned Phase 2 retail participation layer is an intention to address that. It is not a current offering, no mechanics or timing are defined, and nothing here is an invitation to participate. Institutional trade finance and wholesale arrangements with licensed firms are the current channels.

Verifiable Data Infrastructure

Why record trades on a decentralised knowledge graph?

  • Deterministic verification: every document and check carries a cryptographic hash, so the same verification re-run by a third party returns the same result
  • Independent attestation: counterparties, inspectors and partners can cryptographically sign statements about a trade, and those attestations sit alongside the trade record
  • Traceability: each step is published in the public knowledge graph as a Knowledge Asset rather than held only in a private system
  • Audit record: a timestamped record that can be reviewed after the fact without relying on the trader’s own bookkeeping
  • Simplified reporting: verification artefacts can be handed to a counterparty or an auditor directly

Can any of this be checked independently?

Yes. Skyocean publishes a reference audit, SIM-003, covering a EUR 3.2 million corridor. It runs 131 checks across 15 axes, of which 130 passed with 1 disclosed discrepancy, for a verification strength of 0.95. The corridor record comprises 44 Knowledge Assets and 20 attestations from 8 independent attestors.

Status and Stage

What is the current status?

  • Stage: pre-seed. The platform is production grade rather than a prototype or an MVP, with roughly 120 validated capabilities across 10 domains, and it has been run end to end and published in full as the SIM-003 reference audit. The first production trade under real counterparty names follows once Skyocean Lithuania completes registration
  • Operating history: the group has traded as principal since 2010 and Skyocean Ghana has been registered and certified to commence business since 2020, so commercial trades have been executed and settled and the company is not pre-revenue. That history was conventional and did not run on this system; it is the origin of the design rather than an operating record for it. Individual trades are not published, because counterparty identity, pricing and margins are commercially confidential
  • Funding phase: pre-seed. Nothing on this site is an offer; to discuss financing or investing, talk to us
  • Active trade corridors: Sudan, under a three year MOU with the Investment Encouragement Commission of the Republic of Sudan signed 2 April 2026, and Ghana, an operational SME pilot. Origins: Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay) and Europe / EU-periphery (Poland, Bulgaria, Turkey)
  • Corporate: Skyocean Paraguay S.A. incorporated 2022. Accepted into the Lithuanian Startup Visa programme
  • SME partners: sourced through trusted local networks and NGO partners
  • Platform: live at edge.skyocean.io

Has the technology been independently assessed?

Skyocean’s valuation is discussed directly with investors, and a written defence is available under NDA. The intellectual property is inventoried in a schedule whose summary copy is shared with investors.

How will merchants be onboarded?

We use existing vendor networks and incentivize adoption through:

  • Trade discounts (buy and sell agreements)
  • Onboarding training and support
  • Targeted marketing programs

Regulatory and Compliance

Is Skyocean compliant with regulations?

Yes. We are committed to full regulatory compliance:

  • Principal, not a lender: we buy and sell physical commodities as principal
  • Wholesale only where applicable: the wholesale yield engine and the yield provider partnerships are open to licensed intermediaries only, with no retail distribution and no public solicitation
  • Regulatory scrutiny: subject to and fulfilling applicable requirements
  • Independent audits: periodic financial audits for transparency
  • KYC/AML: integration where applicable

Is anything being offered on this site?

No. Nothing in this documentation is an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or other instrument. The wholesale tracks are arrangements with licensed intermediaries and are not publicly solicited.

Team and Experience

What is the team’s background?

  • Trade experience: 15+ years in physical cross-border trade, with international presence
  • Engineering: developers building and maintaining the verifiable data infrastructure, in partnership with leading institutions
  • Advisory: industry experts providing strategic guidance

Getting Started

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This information is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Skyocean intends to operate in full compliance with applicable regulations.

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