EXA39
— Send data to a third party —
EDI Without Eavesdropping
EDI invoices and ASNs flow plaintext through every node in the trading chain — Polymonial seals each segment so intermediaries see only their slice.
The problem to solve
EDI X12 (810 invoice / 856 advance ship notice) and EDIFACT have routed B2B trade for forty years. The protocol assumes every node in the chain — supplier, freight forwarder, customs broker, port, retailer — is trustworthy with the full document. Pricing, quantities, ETAs, party identities all sit plaintext through hops that don't need them and could competitively misuse them. Every retailer's category manager has accidentally seen a competitor's pricing through an EDI relay.
The solution it enables
Polymonial reads the EDI segment definitions and wraps each segment in its own schema. The carrier sees only routing data; the retailer sees only price + quantity; the customs broker sees only the parts they need to clear at port. The same EDI envelope, the same VAN, the same trading-partner agreements — but selective disclosure inside each segment, enforced cryptographically rather than by NDA.
What it looks like
A consumer-electronics manufacturer ships from Vietnam to a UK retailer via a 5-hop EDI chain: factory → 3PL → freight forwarder → customs broker → retailer. The EDI 856 carries unit price, supplier identity, container details, ETA. Each hop today reads everything; the freight forwarder has seen enough to compete with the manufacturer on direct deals. After Polymonial: the freight forwarder unseals only routing fields; customs unseals only commodity classifications; the retailer unseals only quantity + agreed price. Same EDI, less leakage; the manufacturer's wholesale cost stays sealed from competitive intermediaries.
“EDI built for 1979 trust models. Polymonial gives you 2026 trust granularity inside the same envelope — without rewriting a single trading-partner agreement.”