WOF Labs: DeShip, Supplain and World of Freight

We knew the problem from working in logistics. Each company had its own systems, while orders, delivery updates and documents had to pass between many partners. Adding a carrier or technology provider often meant building another integration. We wanted companies to exchange that information more easily while keeping the tools they already used.

DeShip started with cross-border online stores. We planned to automate order fulfilment, shipment tracking and digital documents. Customs, payments, trade finance and insurance were among the wider ideas. As we worked through these needs, we developed DeShip into Supplain and concentrated on the infrastructure that different products could use. Most of these capabilities remained plans.

The Supplain protocol was meant to let companies keep control of their data and decide who could read it. A single integration would ideally make it easier to connect with further partners. We also wanted a way to check whether a shared document had changed, with the private document staying in its owner's storage.

World of Freight gave us a way to fund this work through NFTs and invite a wider community to participate. I was excited by the people who joined us. Still, owning a freight-vehicle NFT gave someone very different reasons to participate from a company considering supply-chain infrastructure. I needed to keep both groups' expectations in mind.

As CEO, I worked on the business direction, positioning, community and industry relationships. Artur led technology, Keirin worked on product, Aleksander on business development and Andre Veskimeister on industry relations. Our engineers and designers built the technical and creative parts, with contributions from the community.

By November 2021, we had launched the WOF utility token, Freight Punks and the Garage. Owners could rename their vehicles and change backgrounds, paint jobs and slogans. The racing game followed before the end of the year, and we later built a skill-based racing mini-game. These gave World of Freight its own products and a reason for people to stay involved beyond Supplain.

For Supplain, we researched existing systems, published a white paper and began protocol development. Our proof-of-concept plan followed one product from an order received by a distributor through manufacture and delivery. The test covered five types of participant and four problems: connectivity, document sharing, access permissions and integrity checks. We left broader ordering and invoicing processes outside the first test.

We designed digital twins, records of products that would hold references and hashes for related documents. The hashes would allow checks for changes to a document. Private files would stay off-chain, with an application or gateway checking access rights before releasing them. We had initial infrastructure based on Substrate with decentralised identifiers, but it still needed adapting and testing for supply chains.

Alongside development, we hosted community conversations and created content. NFT Tallinn brought that work into an in-person event in April 2022. The event attracted its own team and community, and later became the separate BananaConf venture.

By November 2021, we had more than 600 NFT owners, including truck drivers, logistics professionals, executives, developers and investors. Some joined our core team. Through NFT sales, we brought in almost $1 million for the early work. That gave us a substantial start, although we still needed further funding to build Supplain.

We contacted over 500 industry insiders and held more than 100 calls during development. In 2022, I also conducted 29 industry interviews. Those figures cover different activities in our research and business development and should not be added together. We learned a lot and heard encouraging feedback, but had yet to turn it into a paying Supplain implementation.

The strategic freight-racing game and skill-based mini-game were working products. Owners could also customise their vehicles in the Garage. I am proud of what we built with the community, and we gained practical experience of game assets on a blockchain and the ongoing work needed to support the people using them.

The first NFT Tallinn brought together 450 attendees, 50 speakers and 18 sponsors across three stages in one day. It was the beginning of an event that could develop independently. For Supplain, we reached research, a white paper, architecture and initial development. We never launched the supply-chain network we had set out to build.

The funding environment changed in 2022, but I made our position harder by letting us take on too much ourselves. We launched World of Freight to support Supplain, then started building games and organising an event with the same small team. The protocol kept losing people and time to the things we had created around it.

I should have delegated more deliberately, outsourced some work or taken on fewer commitments. Asking people to help was only part of it. Each project needed someone able to run it, a budget and enough people to do the work without depending on me for every decision. The event's later separation gave it that chance.

When we refocused on Supplain, our business-development conversations improved and the technical work progressed. By then, the remaining cash could not cover the time we needed. We did not close the investment round in 2022, and by November our team had fallen from 15 to four. I waited too long to reduce the scope.

The late changes in direction used up more of our remaining capacity. We tried a simpler supply-chain offering and infrastructure for other web3 games, hoping to attract investment. Both still required funding we did not have, and the changes took people away from our existing game and event. I now look much harder at whether a proposed pivot changes the conditions that held the previous plan back.

The attempted merger with another game studio was a similar mistake. Our marketing and their development skills complemented each other, but both sides were short of money. A few months of working together could not give us enough time to fund and deliver the plan. I should have checked the combined team's finances as carefully as its skills.

I am more careful now about keeping the first test small. With Supplain, the product-lifecycle plan finally gave us a concrete workflow to examine: which documents move, who needs access, and which systems stay in place? I would work through those questions earlier and agree on the result that would justify further development.

I also check whether the people and money for that test are actually available. At WOF Labs, I kept making plans that depended on the next investment round. I would now set a budget from the funding we have and decide in advance when to reduce the scope or stop.

I still value communities and events. People from World of Freight became contributors and friends, and NFT Tallinn found a future of its own. I would give those activities their own owners and budgets much earlier, so that their success did not leave the product team with commitments it could not support.

Before joining forces with another team, I want to understand how long we can work together and what we can finish in that time. Our game-studio collaboration showed me how easy it is to see complementary skills and overlook the lack of money on both sides. I would put the delivery plan and financing on the table before committing.