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By Janus
Global freight forwarding is a $200B industry that moves the physical goods of world trade. The 297,000 forwarders worldwide coordinate bookings, customs, carrier payments, and customer invoicing on every shipment. Fundamentally, they are financial institutions masquerading as logistics operators, and their operations rely on financial infrastructure dating back to the 1990s. Cross-border settlement runs through correspondent banking that charges 2-4% in FX and takes 3-5 days to clear. Forwarders pre-finance shipments out of pocket and wait 30-90 days to get paid. And banks can't help, because they lack the data to underwrite freight risk at the shipment level, which is why we have $2.5T trade finance gap.
The root cause connecting all three problems is data, not capital. Freight generates rich, real-time operational documents: booking confirmations, bills of lading, rate sheets, carrier confirmations, customs declaration forms, invoices, proof of delivery. These documents contain everything needed to verify a payment obligation or underwrite a loan. But it lives in unstructured PDFs, emails, and disconnected TMS systems. No one has turned it into machine-readable financial data at scale.
Janus is the financial operating system for freight, built to turn shipment data into financial data:
Freight Intelligence: AI extracts and structures freight documents in real time, saving forwarders time. This is live in production today with 2 paying customers and ~$50K ARR.
Freight Payment: stablecoin-powered payments giving same-day USD settlement at a fraction of correspondent-banking cost.
Freight Finance: working capital facilities underwritten by shipment data.
What makes this different is the order of operations. The market has tried to bolt finance or payments onto freight from the outside, asking forwarders to change their workflow to access capital. We solve the most hated operational problem first (documents), earn deep workflow integration and real-time data access, and only then layer in payments and credit. The document is the distribution channel; the data is the moat; finance is the monetization. The docs → payments → credit. Credit is where the real value lies, but you can't underwrite it without the data from the earlier layers and payments that facilitate the flow of funds.
$110.4K
Live revenue: ~$50K ARR from our AI freight-document product, across 2 paying customers at $25–50K each, many more in the pipeline.
Signed network commitments: LOI now moving to MOU with a frieght network (200+ member companies across 49 countries) to route membership dues through the Janus payments platform
Enterprise pilots: Active pilot with MENA-based logistics operators (one of the largest in the region)
Inbound data monetization demand: Directly approached by Citadel about a six-figure deal for access to our shipment-level dataset, unsolicited validation of the data asset underpinning our credit product.
Credit pipeline forming: In active discussions with NYC-based credit partner (invoice factoring facility) to stand up the working-capital facility.
Ecosystem validation: Inbound partnership interest from PwC for a Stellar-based electronic bill-of-lading project; Solana Superteam grant; received a $200K Hamburg fintech grant
Deliverable: A working fiat to stablecoin routing MVP on Stellar testnet, executing against non-custodial accounts via DFNS, that discovers fiat on-ramp and off-ramp paths for a corridor, aggregates quotes across providers (SEP-38 where supported), selects the best end-to-end route, and executes it (fiat in, stablecoin conversion via native path payment, fiat out) through Bridge and Etherfuse for MXN and BRL rails (best rates in those corridors). Best-execution routing is handled in-house via native Stellar path payments.
How completion is measured: Recorded end-to-end demo routing a full fiat to stablecoin to fiat corridor on testnet, from a DFNS non-custodial account, through the Bridge and Etherfuse rails, dynamically selecting the best fiat rail by live quote, with public testnet transaction hashes verifiable on a block explorer.
Task | Owner | Hours x rate | Cost
DFNS wallet integration: account creation, key management, signing, wallet connection/auth (list est: 1 to 5 days) | Blockchain dev | 40 hrs x $150 | $6,000
Bridge fiat on/off-ramp settlement (list est: 1 to 5 days) | Blockchain dev | 32 hrs x $150 | $4,800
Etherfuse LatAm ramp for MXN and BRL, best rates (list est: 1 to 2 weeks) | Blockchain dev | 40 hrs x $150 | $6,000
Corridor-selection and best-execution routing orchestration (native path payments; absorbs the routing role) | Blockchain dev | 40 hrs x $150 | $6,000
Testnet wiring and end-to-end corridor demo with verifiable tx hashes | Blockchain dev | 16 hrs x $150 | $2,400
Routing and quote-comparison UI | UI/UX designer | 32 hrs x $108 | $3,456
Integration share: $16,800 of $28,656 = 59%.
Deliverable: The receivables-lending facility on Stellar testnet, built by integrating DeFindex (vault), Etherfuse (idle-balance Stablebonds yield), and Blend v2 (lending pool base, on the OpenZeppelin and Blend template), with Janus's receivables-specific logic on top: a liquidation engine, a demand-based interest-rate model, and the underwriting-data adapter that feeds off-chain freight and credit signals into on-chain positions (replacing the third-party Credit Coop rail we use today). Open-source repository published.
How completion is measured: DeFindex vault and Blend v2 pool live on testnet with deposits, withdrawals, and positions verifiable on-chain; a recorded demo of a vault balance funding a receivables lending position underwritten from real shipment data; liquidation triggered and settled on testnet; an idle balance earning yield via Etherfuse; public open-source repo with build and test instructions.
Task | Owner | Hours x rate | Cost
DeFindex vault integration (list est: 1 to 2 weeks) | Blockchain dev | 56 hrs x $150 | $8,400
Etherfuse Stablebonds yield integration (list est: 1 to 2 weeks) | Blockchain dev | 40 hrs x $150 | $6,000
Blend v2 lending-pool integration, receivables facility base on OZ and Blend template (list est: 1+ month) | Blockchain dev | 144 hrs x $150 | $21,600
Receivables liquidation engine: self-liquidating loan logic, health monitoring, ejection | Blockchain dev | 40 hrs x $150 | $6,000
Interest-rate model: demand-based rate engine and quantitative modeling | Blockchain dev | 24 hrs x $150 | $3,600
Underwriting-data adapter: freight shipment and credit signals to on-chain position parameters | Blockchain dev | 40 hrs x $150 | $6,000
Reflector price-oracle integration: collateral valuation and liquidation triggers | Blockchain dev | 16 hrs x $150 | $2,400
Integration tests and testnet deployment, including open-source repo prep | Blockchain dev | 40 hrs x $150 | $6,000
Vault, lending and position UI plus risk dashboard | UI/UX designer | 40 hrs x $108 | $4,320
Integration share: $36,000 of $64,320 = 56%.
Deliverable: The full stack deployed and live on Stellar mainnet, pilot-ready for waiting-list forwarders; best-execution routing live; monitoring and alerting (including liquidation alerts) active; public developer docs shipped; open-source release finalized.
How completion is measured (all independently verifiable on Stellar Explorer / stellar.expert):
All contracts and accounts deployed to mainnet with published addresses, each linked on stellar.expert
At least 100 real fiat to stablecoin routing transactions settled on mainnet, each verifiable on stellar.expert
At least 20 unique forwarder accounts transacting on mainnet
At least $50,000 cumulative settled payment volume on mainnet
At least 5 receivables-lending positions funded on-chain via the Blend v2 pool, verifiable on stellar.expert
At least 1 idle-balance position earning yield via Etherfuse on mainnet
Verification method: a public list or dashboard of stellar.expert transaction and contract links delivered to reviewers, plus professional user testing per the SCF Tranche 3 process
Task | Owner | Hours x rate | Cost
Mainnet config and go-live of all integrations (DFNS, Bridge, Etherfuse x2, DeFindex, Blend) | Blockchain dev | 48 hrs x $150 | $7,200
Mainnet deploy and contract hardening, freeze for Audit Bank | Blockchain dev | 24 hrs x $150 | $3,600
Monitoring and alerting stack: risk and liquidation alerts, on-chain and service health | Blockchain dev | 24 hrs x $150 | $3,600
Public developer docs | Blockchain dev | 16 hrs x $150 | $2,400
Integration share: $7,200 of $16,800 = 43%. Overall integration share across all tranches is 55%, above the 50% threshold. Out of funded scope: smart-contract audit runs through Audit Bank; mainnet frontend polish is in-kind.
We are currently in the contracting phase for our sorobon devs and have interviewed the following:
Adrien Vardon https://github.com/nada-r— completed the Cushion Stellar/Soroban grant (approved, milestones delivered), builds Soroban vaults, and specializes in lending mechanics, liquidation, and risk-monitoring (Solana: Camino/Drift; references Aave, Morpho).
Özgün Özerk — https://github.com/ozgunozerk — smart-contract engineer at OpenZeppelin (maintainer of the OZ Soroban library); deep Rust/cryptography output.
Nik S. rustninja (rust.dev) — https://github.com/rustninja — Rust blockchain engineer, rust-lang contributor, ex-OKX.
Janus has three co-founders, all working together full-time in Hamburg, Germany.
Newton Davis, CEO https://www.linkedin.com/in/newtondavis/: Strategy consultant, product manager, and venture capital investor. 4 years at Accenture and then 8 years as an investor at various venture firms where he invested in startups, conducted market research, advised, and developed venture concepts. Brings the strategy, investing, market-mapping, and company-building background to Janus.
Philipp Tessmann, COO https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipptessmann/?locale=en: Freight and commercial. Spent years working in operations at logistics companies, from large freight forwarders to startups in warehousing. Brings deep domain expertise in how freight forwarders actually operate, plus the industry relationships that give Janus a warm path into forwarders across Europe, Asia and LatAm corridors. Leads commercial and customer-facing work.
Tammo Depping, CTO, https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammo-depping-71275ab9/: Enterprise software and technical architecture expert with 20+ years of experience. Ran a development shop serving many logistics customers, where he built custom ERP software and was the first to use the HMM carrier shipping tracking API globally. Owns product architecture, development, and maintenance and is adept at managing customer relationships.
Together, the team pairs hands-on finance and freight-industry operating experience with enterprise-grade software engineering.
Newton Davis
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