Tracey, the seafood tracing app developed by TX on top of the Streamr stack, announced today several new DeFi integrations. Tracey helps small-scale fishers in emerging markets gain access to finance by sharing verified information on their seafood catch and trade data. The trade data is used by DeFi and CeFi lenders to ascertain creditworthiness and offer suitable microfinance based on the eligibility of the borrower.
By integrating with Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Tracey users will gain access to lenders within the BSC ecosystem. The EasyFi lending protocol joins as an additional lender. EasyFi will conduct creditworthiness analysis and offer microfinance through its own lending ecosystem. UnionBank, an already existing partner of the Tracey project, will continue offering CeFi lending solutions. In addition to enabling lending services, BSC will be used as the project’s blockchain solution.
The micro SME market has traditionally been excluded from institutional finance due to the difficulty assessing creditworthiness of individuals who often hold no bank accounts. The new De-Fi integrations will enable lenders to provide further liquidity for this highly untapped market.
Expanding to crypto lending in the Tracey project removes the geographical barriers to scaling the product, which exist with traditional banking institutes. Binance’s crypto exchange is the largest in the world by trading volume and has a user count of 12 million users globally. Through this collaboration, the Tracey solution will be able to facilitate lending in 180+ countries.
Binance will participate in several rounds of pilots, the first of which is taking place this month in the Philippines for the WWF-led Fisheries Improvement program. Post-pilot, the product has the potential to roll out to other small-scale operators in Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) sites as well as Aquaculture Improvement Projects (AIPs) around the world, and later, to support other micro SME markets.
“TX is engineering value from data to deliver solutions that help solve global challenges around poverty by improving the livelihoods and welfare of actors within the micro SME markets of emerging countries,” explains TX Managing Director Ben Sheppard
Susan Roxas, Fisheries and Finance Lead of the WWF Coral Triangle Program, says “We are excited by the innovative developments and the potential that this collaboration offers in solving challenges around first mile traceability of seafood. Industry members of the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) recognise the challenge in obtaining first mile data from small scale fishers. We believe that by providing key incentives, the appropriate technology is now making this possible”.
Going forward the Streamr Marketplace will be used to offer Tracey data streams. It presents a new way for fisherfolk to generate an additional source of income by crowdselling their catch data within a Data Union. Another opportunity could be the sharing of catch data for scientific purposes.
