Tx-Rails — Mining & Minerals Pricing Sheet
The auditable underlay for Mining — explorers, miners, processors, smelters, hauliers, port authorities, royalty authorities, ESG raters, insurers, downstream OEMs running supply-chain due diligence. Cryptographic continuous audit + pit-to-port chain-of-custody + multi-party attestation, sitting underneath your existing fleet-management, OPC-UA process-historians, geotechnical-monitoring, dispatch, weighbridge, and assay-laboratory systems. We don’t replace any of them — we bind to them via a published integration mode and produce tamper-evident, jurisdiction-independent records of everything they emit. See mining-minerals.md for the 30 federations covering pre-mining + mining operations + downstream + governance.
What you get
Three integrated capabilities, one platform:
- Continuous cryptographic audit infrastructure
Every drill log, every assay result, every haul-truck cycle, every geotechnical reading, every weighbridge ticket, every export shipment committed to a Byzantine-fault-tolerant ledger and Merkle-anchored to the Hedera public DLT. Continuous evidence stream replaces the periodic-disclosure model that struggles under tailings-dam failure post-mortems, grade-inflation accusations, conflict-mineral due-diligence requests, royalty-authority audits, and ESG-rater queries.
Aligned with: JORC Code 2012; NI 43-101; SAMREC; PERC; OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains; LME Responsible Sourcing requirements; ICMM principles; GISTM (Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management); ICMM Critical Mineral Reporting; EU CRMA / Critical Raw Materials Act; US DFARS conflict-mineral rules; JORC continuous-disclosure rules under ASX Listing Rule 5. - Multi-counterparty supply-chain attestation with smart-contract-equivalents
Smelter-payable settlement, automated royalty-stream activation, real-time tailings-sensor attestation, ESG/Scope-3 emissions evidence by default, downstream-buyer due-diligence packs. Unlimited data capacity (database-backed, not on-chain). Your existing FMS / process-historian / dispatch / weighbridge systems feed events via change-data-capture or atomic dual-write; the underlay produces verifiable settlement and provenance without anyone changing their existing operational workflow. - Regulator, securities & ESG-rater-grade evidence pipeline
Live data access for state-level mining regulators (DRDMS / DMIRS / DPI Mining etc.), royalty authorities, securities regulators (ASIC / SEC / TSXV under JORC / NI 43-101 / SAMREC); ESG-rater (MSCI, Sustainalytics, ISS) acceptable data; downstream-customer (EV OEM, refinery, smelter) supply-chain due-diligence packs.
What we sell — and what we don’t
What we don’t sell at any price: full transaction-front-end replacement. We don’t build your fleet-management system, your dispatch console, your laboratory LIMS, your tailings-monitoring SCADA, your ERP, your shareholder portal. Your operational screens stay put. If you need a new screen, your engineering team builds it against our published SDK with our reference connectors.
What we do sell falls into two groups:
A. Operator utilities (bundled — Items 2 + 4 in the pricing table)
- Evidence-retrieval portal — your compliance team pulls cryptographic proofs in response to regulator, royalty-authority, securities-regulator, ESG-rater, or downstream-buyer questions. Generates evidence packs in formats acceptable to ASX continuous-disclosure compliance, JORC / NI 43-101 audit, OECD Due Diligence verification, GISTM tailings-conformance assessment, and OEM supply-chain due-diligence panels.
- Compliance-officer dashboard — live view of tailings-monitoring conformance, JORC reporting-package readiness, royalty-payable accruals, OECD due-diligence status, native-title / consent compliance status, GISTM Engineer-of-Record signoff currency.
- Trust-management UI — operator-side controls for your enterprise PKI: certificate issuance for site managers / CP-QP geologists / explosives officers / EoRs, revocation, partner-org onboarding (assay labs, smelters, hauliers, port authorities), kill-switch.
B. Counterparty / downstream-buyer attestation UI (optional — Item 5 in the pricing table)
Thin signature surface for external counterparties — assay labs (sample chain-of-custody acknowledgements), smelters (concentrate-receipt assays + payable signoffs), hauliers + port authorities (custody-transfer attestation), downstream OEMs (responsible-sourcing attestation), Indigenous communities (consent-condition compliance signoffs), royalty authorities (production-attestation signoffs). This is explicitly in scope for us to develop, distinct from the “no FMS replacement” line above.
What it does:
– DID / certificate-based authentication
– Per-tenant queue of pending attestations (assay-result acknowledgements, custody-transfer signoffs, royalty-attestation signoffs, GISTM EoR signoffs, consent-condition signoffs)
– Sign + submit with cryptographic proof landing in the BFT mesh
– Multi-tenant via entnum — each counterparty sees only their own queue
What it explicitly is NOT:
– A LIMS, FMS, or tailings-monitoring SCADA replacement
– A securities-disclosure workflow tool
– An accounting / royalty-calculation engine
When you’d buy this: your existing counterparty interactions happen via email + spreadsheet, or your supply-chain-due-diligence-portal stack can’t carry M-of-N cryptographic co-signature for OEM-driven responsible-sourcing requirements (EV battery supply chains, defence supply chains).
Pricing — five line items, four budget homes (Item 5 optional)
| # | Item | Type | Indicative price (AUD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One-off integration & onboarding — integration-mode selection, wiring against your FMS / OPC-UA process-historian / geotechnical-monitoring / dispatch / weighbridge / LIMS systems, certificate-authority setup, UAT, launch | One-off CapEx — capitalisable over 3–5 years | A$160,000 – A$340,000 |
| 2 | One-off operator-UI configuration — evidence-retrieval portal skinned to your brand; regulator-export templates (ASX continuous-disclosure packs, JORC / NI 43-101 evidence packs, GISTM conformance reports, OECD due-diligence evidence, state royalty-authority returns); compliance-officer dashboard customised; SSO with your IdP | One-off CapEx — capitalisable over 3–5 years | A$70,000 – A$150,000 |
| 3 | Annual support & maintenance (security patches, OS/library upgrades, 24×7 help desk for safety-critical operations, 99.9% uptime SLA for tailings-monitoring-adjacent deployments, integration-mode adjustments, operator-UI updates for new regulator templates) | OpEx — renewable annually | A$110,000 / year |
| 4 | Tx-Rails platform access — BFT infrastructure, audit attestation, Hedera anchoring, dual-DC redundancy, regulator pipeline. Includes the three operator utilities. Tiered by pyramid count — see range governance below. | OpEx — annual platform subscription, pyramid-tiered | A$130,000 – A$2,800,000 / year |
| 5 | Counterparty / downstream-buyer attestation UI (optional) — thin signature surface for assay labs, smelters, hauliers, port authorities, downstream OEMs, Indigenous-community representatives, royalty authorities. NOT a LIMS / FMS / royalty-calc-engine replacement. | One-off CapEx — capitalisable over 3–5 years | A$90,000 – A$230,000 |
| Year 1 total (Tier-3 example: 2–3 pyramids, Items 1+2 mid-points, Item 5 excluded) | A$760,000 | ||
| Year 1 total with Item 5 mid-point | A$920,000 | ||
| Year 2+ ongoing (Tier-3 example) | A$430,000 / year |
Item 4 — pyramid-tier pricing:
| Tier | Customer profile | Pyramid count | Annual platform fee (Item 4) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 4 | Junior explorer, single-asset producer, single assay laboratory, single port authority — Shape 3 single pyramid or pilot | 1 | A$130,000 |
| Tier 3 | Mid-cap miner with 1–3 operating sites, regional processor, multi-site assay-lab network — 2–3 pyramids (Shape 2 small cluster) | 2–3 | A$320,000 |
| Tier 2 | Multi-asset miner with operating mines + processing + logistics, Tier-2 commodity producer with own smelter — Shape 2 grouped (4–7 pyramids covering exploration + operations + downstream) | 4–7 | A$850,000 |
| Tier 1 | Tier-1 integrated producer (iron-ore major, copper-gold-nickel major, lithium-rare-earths integrated chain) — Shape 1 sovereign or Shape 2 full | 8+ | A$2,200,000+ |
Item 1 — what governs the range:
– A$160k floor — hash-only attestation (Mode A): your existing systems commit as normal; we receive only content hashes. Lowest integration cost, fastest pilot path.
– A$340k ceiling — atomic dual-write (Mode B): your dispatch / weighbridge / assay-LIMS and Tx-Rails commit in the same transaction. Highest integrity guarantee.
– Most operators land mid-range with change-data-capture observation (Mode C) at ~A$220–290k. Tailings-monitoring federations often run Mode A (read-only on the sensor stream); royalty-impacting federations often run Mode B for non-repudiation.
Item 5 — what governs the range:
– A$90k floor — single-flow attestation (e.g. just assay-result chain-of-custody), single counterparty role.
– A$230k ceiling — multi-flow hub (assay + custody-transfer + smelter-payable + responsible-sourcing + consent-condition + royalty-attestation), multiple role tiers, DID auth, deep brand alignment.
Payback and ROI
For a Tier-3 mid-cap miner with ~A$800M annual revenue, two operating sites, and ~A$150M in directly counterparty-touching flow (concentrate sales, royalty payments, haulage contracts, OEM supply-chain due-diligence administration).
| Annual benefit | Conservative | Realistic |
|---|---|---|
| Audit IT-controls displacement (external auditor + ESG-rater + continuous-disclosure compliance audit) | A$120,000 | A$350,000 |
| Smelter-payable reconciliation & dispute overhead reduction (concentrate assays, payable terms, deduction disputes) | A$300,000 | A$900,000 |
| Reduced leakage to royalty-payable errors, JORC continuous-disclosure-breach exposure, ASX query letters, false-claim civil penalties | A$200,000 | A$1,500,000 |
| Insurance-premium reduction tied to telemetry-backed risk evidence (tailings-dam, fleet, business-interruption) | A$200,000 | A$800,000 |
| Regulatory + community compliance evidence (GISTM conformance, native-title consent-condition, ESG-rater data submission, OECD due-diligence) | A$150,000 | A$500,000 |
| Supply-chain due-diligence cost reduction (downstream OEM responsible-sourcing audits — EV battery supply chains, defence supply chains — replacing manual ESG-rater questionnaire administration) | A$150,000 | A$600,000 |
| Total annual value delivered | A$1,120,000 | A$4,650,000 |
| Tx-Rails Year 2+ cost (Tier-3 example) | A$430,000 | A$430,000 |
| Net annual return | A$690,000 | A$4,220,000 |
| ROI multiple | 2.6× | 10.8× |
Pilot terms — non-binding, parallel-run, zero operational risk
- 3 months running Tx-Rails alongside your existing systems. No production switchover.
- Mode A (hash-only) integration with one chosen federation (typically
tx-rails-minerals-assay-labsortx-rails-minerals-tailings-mgmtfor explorers;tx-rails-minerals-export-shippingfor producers) for the pilot. - Walk-away clause: if at month 3 the metrics don’t meet agreed targets, the engagement ends.
- Regulator + community pre-validation: before signing, we’ll meet with relevant state mining regulator + at least one downstream-OEM due-diligence panel to confirm evidence-pack acceptability.
- Data ownership: cryptographic exports are open-format, re-readable indefinitely.
Why now
- GISTM (Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management) conformance is now mandatory for ICMM members and increasingly demanded by lenders + insurers post-Brumadinho.
- EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) + US Inflation Reduction Act sourcing rules require auditable provenance for battery-grade lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths.
- LME Responsible Sourcing schedule has tightened — listed metals require verified chain-of-custody evidence.
- ASX continuous-disclosure enforcement post-2020 reforms — JORC-package evidence chains are now subject to ASIC review.
- Indigenous-consent regimes tightening across AU + Canada + South America — provable consent-condition compliance is the difference between a workable social licence and a project shutdown.
- Insurance market hardening for tailings dams, haul-truck fleets, and business-interruption — telemetry-backed evidence increasingly demanded by underwriters post-major-loss events.
Next steps
- 30-minute discovery call with your CFO + Head of Sustainability + Head of Reserves + General Counsel.
- Letter of Intent — non-binding, signals pilot interest.
- Pilot kick-off within 8 weeks of LOI.
Contact: John Olsen · john@itotchaincloud.com.au · +61 490 114 879
Reference data sources: ICMM Performance Expectations; GISTM published standard + conformance methodology; JORC Code 2012 + ASIC guidance; LME Responsible Sourcing implementation reports; OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains; AusIMM CP / QP guidance; AICD Director Risk Reports (mining); MSCI / Sustainalytics ESG-rating methodology; ABS Mining Production data (Cat. 8412.0). Full citations available on request.
Tx-Rails — Built by IT/OT Chain & Cloud Australia (ITOTCCA). Sydney · London.