Technology

Five layers, from party identity to programmable settlement.

Volum is not a monolith. Every capability lives in one of five clearly delimited layers, each with its own trust boundary, storage discipline, and standards conformance.

L1
Identity
Party keys, roles, permissions. Issuer, holder, and verifier separation under W3C Verifiable Credentials 2.0.
W3C VC 2.0
L2
Object identity
Every shipment, lot, batch, and finished unit is a first-class object with a stable, resolvable identifier.
GS1 EPCIS 2.0
L3
Event ledger
Every custody, transformation, and observation event is written as a signed record. Hashes on chain, confidential documents encrypted off chain.
Permissioned chain
L4
Credential layer
Certificates of Origin, DPP payloads, deforestation attestations, all issued and revoked as Verifiable Credentials.
JSON-LD, VC 2.0
L5
Automation
Smart contracts route payment, release, and escalation on verified events, metered in VLM under fiat-abstracted UX.
EVM, ERC-20, ERC-721
Patent

Protected under US 11,522,690 B2.

The underlying architecture is protected by US Patent 11,522,690 B2, granted 6 December 2022. The patent is held by Bengala Technologies LLC and licensed exclusively to Volum.

Patent number: US 11,522,690 B2
Filed: 7 June 2019
Granted: 6 December 2022
Holder: Bengala Technologies LLC
Licensed to: Volum LLC (Wyoming, USA)
Scope of the disclosure

What the patent covers.

Blockchain database maintained by network nodes. Tokens held in that database. Smart contracts that transfer tokens on deal completion. ERC-20 and ERC-721 formats. Hybrid public and consortium chain architecture. Data spanning payments, rewards, purchase orders, compliance, taxation, shipment management, Letters of Origin, customs documents, inventory, parcel tracking, IoT, analytics, and end-product traceability.

Standards alignment

Two standards do the interop work.

GS1 EPCIS 2.0

Event model of record.

Custody, aggregation, transformation, observation. EPCIS 2.0 is the standard event model the retail, healthcare, and food-service industries already use.

W3C VC 2.0

Credential model of record.

Verifiable Credentials 2.0 became a W3C Recommendation in May 2025. It is the tamper-evident issuer, holder, verifier model a certificate actually needs.