Elastos Strikes a New Partnership with Origin to Establish Agribusiness Related Platforms Based on Elastos’ Smart Web technology
BEIJING, Feb. 15, 2018 — Origin Agritech Ltd. (NASDAQ: SEED) (“the Company” or “Origin”), an agricultural biotechnology trait and corn seed provider, and Elastos Foundation announced their plan to develop a global strategic partnership for mutually beneficial joint activities fostering smart economic solutions to establish platforms to serve global agribusiness transactions, data services, and rural e-commerce activities.
Origin has been developing a system for seed tracking and e-commerce technologies in order to provide the best seed technologies to Chinese farmers. With several years’ trial experience and assistant from Elastos Foundation during the development of Origin’s e-commerce platform, both Origin and Elastos believe formal cooperation in developing a comprehensive platform based on Elastos’ Smart Web technologies would provide a great service to global agribusiness transactions, data services, and rural e-commerce activities.
The development of such platform based on Elastos’ Smart Web powered by blockchain technologies is expected to solve seed piracy problems and protect agricultural seed intellectual properties. Elastos’ blockchain can utilize digital ID system so that seed suppliers and farmers can easily track a seed’s original source. In addition, the operating system of Elastos has a great advantage to process large transaction volumes to meet the need of surging e-commerce activities.
“I always have had a great respect for Rong and his team since we both started our separated but unique technology businesses in Zhong-Guan-Cun, and I’m very excited that our cooperation over the last several years have led to a new level of cooperation with much clearer and higher objectives.”
— said Dr. Gengchen Han, CEO and chairman of Origin. He continued,
“we believe that the new platform would allow us to provide much more advanced services to the global agribusiness and rural e-commerce services in China.”
Rong Chen, cofounder and chairman of Elastos Foundation, said
“I’m delighted to see that our service to Origin has been well recognized; we believe together we can develop a unique, a much more comprehensive technology platform with our decentralized applications (Dapps) powered by blockchain technologies. We warmly welcome Origin to become a key member in our Elastos community,”
Both Origin and Elastos agreed to initiate the cooperation immediately. In addition, both companies agreed that Rong Chen will join Origin’s board and Gengchen Han will serve Elastos as an advisor. Both companies also agreed to mutually invest into each other.
About Origin Agritech
Origin Agritech, founded in 1997 and headquartered in Zhong-Guan-Cun (ZGC) Life Science Park in Beijing, is China’s leading agricultural biotechnology company, specializing in crop seed breeding and genetic improvement. Leading the development of crop seed biotechnologies, Origin Agritech’s phytase corn was the first transgenic corn to receive the Bio-Safety Certificate from China’s Ministry of Agriculture. Over the years, Origin has established a robust biotechnology seed pipeline including products with glyphosate tolerance and pest resistance (Bt) traits. Origin operates breeding stations nationwide located in key crop-planting regions. Product lines are vertically integrated for corn. Origin is also one of the first ‘breeding, seed production and expansion’ seed companies, receiving Honorary Titles including ‘National High-Tech Enterprise,’ ‘China Seed Backbone Enterprise,’ ‘China Planting Credit Star Enterprise,’ ‘China’s Agricultural Industrialization Leading Enterprise,’ and ‘Beijing Seed Industry Top 10 Enterprise’. It has received the scientific qualities encompassing Key Laboratory of Ministry of Agriculture, Biotechnology and Corn Genetics and Breeding, Beijing Academy of Sciences Expert Workstation, Crop Molecular Breeding Beijing Engineering Laboratory and Beijing Enterprise Technology Center. During the past years, Origin has solely or collaboratively undertaken nearly 20 national and municipal agricultural science and technology projects in China.
About Elastos
Elastos Project was initially conceived by Rong Chen in 2000, as he sought to develop the world’s first internet operating system. Elastos Foundation was founded in 2016 by Rong Chen and Sunny Feng Han, aiming to create a new Internet system powered by blockchain technologies. Elastos turns an open-source software platform into decentralized applications (Dapps) that runs on a peer-to-peer network without centralized control. Users can access these Dapps via their mobile phones, without changing their operating system. The current Internet provides a web of information as users would receive data and information by clicking a URL. The new Elastos Dapps is creating a web of apps where a user gets codes when clicking a URL. Elastos utilizes blockchain technologies to issue IDs for digital content, making it possible to know who owns which digital assets. The Elastos Web will be a special economic zone where Elastos tokens (ELA) function as the base currency.
