Verified commodity connections
Commodities move from company to company. Nelum is the chain of custody that travels with them — and the trust layer that decides who is allowed to be in it.
- Commodities
- 07
- Roles modelled
- 05
- Unverified accounts
- 00
Counterparty
Verified company · NG
Representative credential
Identity checked · NEL-REF-8842
Scan it at the gate in Lagos. No account needed.
Terms, frozen at acceptance
immutableBasis
LBMA PM −4.20%
Min purity
82.0%
Quantity
42.5 kg
Consignment file
Every version kept. Every removal stamped.
01 — The stakes
A fifth of the world’s gold is mined by hand.
Commodities are tangible assets. Moving them to where they are needed takes time, patience, and an organised paperwork trail.
Connect with the right suppliers, and keep the trail somewhere it belongs — rather than in a mixture of email and WhatsApp that no data-protection regime was designed to accommodate and no auditor can read two years later.
- ~20%
- of global gold supply comes from artisanal and small-scale mining.
- ~45 million
- people work in artisanal mining worldwide, supporting many times that number in services around them.
World Gold Council estimate
World Bank (Delve) estimate
One list decides whether a refiner’s gold is accepted at all: the LBMA Good Delivery List. Staying on it is a question of market access, not conscience — and it is answered with evidence about where the metal came from.
02 — The chain
Five hands. Four documents. One question.
Follow a parcel from pit to refinery gate. At every hand-off the metal keeps its value and the evidence loses some. Nelum attaches the evidence to the parcel instead of the mailbox.
- Node 01
Pit & cooperative
- Origin declaration
- Weigh-in record
Recorded per parcel, as structured data.
- Node 02
Laboratory
- Pre-shipment assay
- Sample photographs
Engaged on the order. Sees the job, never the price.
- Node 03
Export & clearance
- Export licence
- Tax receipt
- Packing list
Requested with a reason. Answered in place.
- Node 04
Carrier
- Air waybill
- Passport & ticket
- Insurance certificate
Hand-carried or freight. Two document sets, applied correctly.
- Node 05
Refinery intake
- Outturn assay
- Both confirmations
The file an auditor asks for, already assembled.
One record, per consignment, from node 01 to node 05
Without it
Three files called assay.pdf, two of them drafts, in the inbox of a trader who left in March. The parts that are missing look identical to the parts that never existed.
With it
One label, three versions, in order, each stamped with who filed it and when. Both parties read the same history. So does the auditor, two years later.
03 — The record
Corrections welcome. Rewrites impossible.
People upload the wrong file. That is not the problem worth solving. The problem is a chain of custody that can be edited afterwards without anyone knowing.
- Versions accumulate
- v2 arrives and v1 stays exactly where it was, with its uploader and its timestamp.
- Removals keep their mark
- A withdrawn file leaves its row, struck through and dated. The fact it existed keeps its place in the sequence.
- Edits keep their earlier text
- Correct a message and the previous wording stays readable to both sides.
- Derived, so it cannot drift
- The trail is assembled from the documents themselves. Nothing writes to it, so nothing can omit from it.
Order · activity trail
Doré · 42.5 kg · Lagos → Dubai
- 12 MarOrder opened · terms frozen at LBMA less 4.20%
- 14 MarPre-shipment assay certificate filed
- 15 MarPre-shipment assay certificate re-filed · v1 still readablev2
- 15 MarMessage edited by seller · earlier text keptedited
- 18 MarDraft air waybill withdrawn by sellerstamped
- 29 MarBuyer requested export licence · reason attachedopen
- 02 AprBoth parties confirmed fulfilment · 14 documents on fileclosed
Illustration of the trail’s structure
04 — Who is on the board
Five roles. One verified board.
Nobody arrives here as a stranger. Everyone arrives the same way: business verification first.
Miners & cooperatives
Verification is the equaliser. Two people or two hundred, the same check and the same board.
Get verified free→Sellers & exporters
Prove it once. Your status and your credential travel into every conversation after that.
Post what you hold→Buyers & refiners
Offers you can compare on one basis, with the intake evidence already attached.
Post your demand→Agents
A mandate that is dated, scoped and revocable. Finally worth showing someone.
Hold real authority→Service providers
Laboratories, vaults, carriers and insurers see the physical facts of the job and nothing commercial.
See the boundary→05 — Momentum
One corridor, built properly.
Nigeria into Dubai. A corridor needs its own document set, its own clearing practice and its own verified providers on both legs, and getting one right is worth more than claiming several.
Verification takes days. A corridor takes months. Start the one that is in your control.
Corridor status
- Nigeria → DubaiOpen
Open means the document set, the clearing practice and verified providers on both legs are all in place — not that we intend to get there.
06 — Depth
We started with the hardest metal on purpose.
Doré is semi-pure by definition, priced on assayed content, carried by hand as often as by freight, and quoted as a discount to a moving benchmark. Build for that and the rest of the board is straightforward.
Content is the whole question
The pre-shipment assay sits on the record before the parcel moves; the outturn assay is read against the tolerance in your contract.
Two shipping methods, two document sets
Hand-carried travels with a passport and a ticket. Freight travels with a packing list and an air waybill. The right set, requested on the order.
Discount compared with discount
Both sides state the basis explicitly, so nobody is comparing a deduction against a spot figure.
Origin travels per parcel
Structured data, never pooled across sources, because that is what the refiner at the end of the chain has to evidence.
Assay reconciliation
Within tolerance- Declared
- 84.20%
- Pre-shipment assay
- 83.90%
- Refinery outturn
- 83.74%
Contract tolerance ±0.50%. Both assays sit on the order, each with its own version and uploader, so the reconciliation is arithmetic rather than argument.
Hand-carry corridor · Lagos → Dubai
Air freight swaps two of these for a packing list and an air waybill. The corridor decides the set; the order records which one applied.
07 — Standards
We did not invent our own idea of verified.
Verification and the record are both built to published standards that somebody independent audits, on a schedule, with the power to fail them.
So when a badge on this platform says verified, you can go and read what that word was measured against.
Verification layer
Identity and business verification
KYB on the company, KYC on the people who can act for it, sanctions and PEP screening, and biometric liveness that has been tested against presentation attacks rather than assumed safe.
ETSI EN 319 411-2 and TS 119 461 are the standards eIDAS points to for remote identity proofing at a high level of assurance. iBeta Levels 1 and 2 test presentation-attack detection against ISO/IEC 30107. Over 14,000 document types are supported, which is why a cooperative in Zamfara and a refinery in Dubai clear the same check.
Data layer
Where the record lives
Row-level authorisation means a document is reachable by the parties to that order and by nobody else, enforced at the database rather than in an application check somebody can forget to write.
An ISO 27001 certificate lapses if the controls stop working, and the SOC 2 report is re-earned every year over an observation window rather than on one good day. That is the point of naming them: they expire, so somebody has to keep passing.
Said precisely, because it matters: these are the standards our verification and our record are built and audited against, named so that you can go and read what each one requires rather than take our word for it. Nelum remains a marketplace facilitation service — never a party to your transaction, never a holder of your funds.
08 — Pricing
We take nothing from your trade. Ever.
A company subscription and the seats that can act. No commission, no brokerage, no success fee. Being paid out of a deal we are not in would undo every other line on this page.
See what each tier includesFree on every tier, permanently
- Business verification and sanctions screening
- Identity-checked representatives, with a checkable credential
- The complete audit trail and document versioning
- Unlimited viewer seats, so nobody shares a login
What paid tiers add is commercial reach: more live listings, private intents, mandates and standing contracts. Never integrity.
Get verified. Then get compared on the terms.
Registration takes minutes and costs nothing. Verification is the same check for everyone, and it applies to the company on the other side of the table too.
Nelum operates a marketplace facilitation service. Not a party to any transaction. Never holds client funds.