OriginTrail Monthly Report #5: May 2018

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OriginTrail

8 min readJun 5, 2018

For OriginTrail, May was an amazing month, packed with important updates. We were thrilled to announce a new partnership with EVRYTHNG, the leading IoT Smart Products Platform. There were also multiple development updates. We launched the first implementation of the privacy layer based on zero knowledge proof in supply chains and the token demand model, and we had a website launch. It was also a crucial month for the Trace Alliance collaborative hub kick-off, and our team actively participated in 13 events. Since there are so many developments to report, let’s jump right into the reporting.

Trace Alliance’s Protocol Adoption Updates

EVRYTHNG Partnership

In May, we were proud to announce our partnership with EVRYTHNG, a platform that collects, manages and applies real-time data from smart products and smart packaging to drive Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. This partnership combines IoT technology, with OriginTrail’s blockchain-based solution, to deliver verifiable supply chain traceability and product authenticity for consumer product brands. You can learn more about the partnership in our blog post, learn details about the integration in EVRYTHNG’s blog post by Dominique Guinard, EVRYTHNG CTO & Co-founder, and see a video demo of how it works here. A huge shout out to our community who participated in the #tracebarry campaign to announce this partnership so eagerly and intelligently.

Matilda Ho Discusses Food Safety at an Exclusive Event

One of the most influential Chinese serial entrepreneurs, Matilda Ho, visited OriginTrail’s headquarters in Ljubljana. She is the founder and managing director of the next-generation online store Yimishiji from Shanghai, as well as the founder and CEO of Bits x Bites, a Shanghai-based Chinese accelerator and venture capital fund focused on food technology. Yimishiji is the very first company that deployed the alpha decentralized version of the OriginTrail technology and is successfully using it to match records with its suppliers. You are welcome to read an event report and check out the photos. We were also very honored that a Member of European Parliament, Mr Franc Bogovic, supported the event by saying a warm welcome to our guest via live stream from Brussels.

John G. Keogh Becomes Chairman of OriginTrail’s Trace Alliance

John G. Keogh, internationally recognized strategist and advisor on using standards and technology in supply chains, was inaugurated as the first chairman of the Trace Alliance. The Trace Alliance is a collaborative hub for solving supply chain challenges using blockchain technology. It was initiated by OriginTrail, a blockchain company developing the first purpose-built decentralized protocol for supply chains. John brings over 30 years of industry experience and will lead the Trace Alliance with the aim of facilitating the adoption of the OriginTrail protocol. During his visit in Ljubljana, we made important steps towards strengthening cooperation with GS1 Slovenia, which also participated in the event. Learn more by reading an event report and looking at a photo album on Facebook.

Protocol Development Updates: 2 releases ✅, Token Demand Model and New Team Members

Our protocol engineers have been doing groundbreaking work over the past month. Following two strong technology releases perfecting the zero-knowledge privacy layer, graph logic and bidding mechanism, we ended the month with the release of the token demand model.

Zond Release v0.7a: May 07th

With protocol performance and usage insights taken into consideration, Zond introduced a fully standardized and documented OriginTrail graph structure, and compatibility with the Neo4j database, to allow further flexibility in the data layer for implementation (the possibility of choosing more than one database). This release also introduced the first version of the zero-knowledge privacy sublayer in the protocol. There were two Easter eggs inside this release:

v01 of the OriginTrail Node Dashboard (UI prototype)
The in-depth, zero-knowledge privacy layer (find out more about it in our explanation doc).

Surveyor Release v0.8a: May 21st

Surveyor was the first release to utilize the consensus check — a validation mechanism for interactions between supply chain parties used in OriginTrail protocol — based on the privacy sublayer of the OT protocol. It also introduced improvements to the bidding mechanism and token utilization.

Token Demand Model: May 31st

As a decentralised peer-to-peer network, OriginTrail uses an ERC20 token, Trace ($TRAC), to manage relations between users and nodes that make up the network. The main aim of the network is not to impose technical limitations that would require arbitrary decisions of the technical architects, but rather to have market forces achieve equilibrium within the network and be self-adjusting, ensuring the required longevity. The model presumes dynamics that occur due to demand created by its protocol-level utility for which Trace was created (Trace is a utility token, read more about it here). Key assumptions put forward in the token demand model will be subject to rigorous testing in the period following the testnet launch and prior to the mainnet deployment. The model presented below is the first version created by the OriginTrail team which will pass several third-party reviews over the upcoming months and will be subject to improvements/amendments based on those reviews in the future.

Our web team has also successfully launched our brand new website, which presents OriginTrail in a much more approachable way, lists all the current live use cases and speaks better to businesses interested in applying the OriginTrail protocol. The website is homemade, and 100% designed and developed by the OriginTrail team. We will update it regularly, so make sure you come back to it and follow our social media.

Last but not least, two team members joined our product team in Belgrade:

Lela Đokić, Operations Manager: 5 years of experience in operations departments in both startups and corporations (Devana Technologies and GoDaddy). She was heavily involved in various projects for an association for encouraging entrepreneurship in Serbia. Travel addict and photography lover. BEST alum.
Vuk Đorić, Junior Software Engineer: With a background in electrical and computer engineering, Vuk was crunching big data in the telecommunications industry before joining our team. He’s also an EESTEC alum and algorithmic crypto-trading enthusiast.

Events in May: 13 Events in 7 Countries 🗺️

OriginTrail team members were present at the following events:

May 3rd: Event with Matilda Ho in Ljubljana
May 8th-10th: Seeds&Chips in Milan (Tomaž’s speech)
May 8th: Food Integrity Blockchained in Amsterdam (Nino)
May 8th: Meet & Greet in Amsterdam (Maja & Nino)
May 9th: Global Innovation Camp: Made in Puglia (Žiga)
May 11th: Decentralized Incubator Ljubljana Meetup by Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition by ConsenSys (Maja)
May 15th: World Bank Agtech in Moscow (John G. Keogh)
May 17th: BTC Logistics Partners Gathering (Tomaž)
May 23rd: AmCham’s Food, Agriculture & Beverage Conference, Shanghai (Branimir)
May 23rd: Blockchain Meetup Shanghai — Traceability in Food Supply Chains (Branimir)
May 24th: Event with John G. Keogh in Ljubljana
May 30th: Belfast Summit on Global Food Integrity — ASSET2018 (John G. Keogh)
May 31st: Meet & Greet in Hong Kong (Žiga & Tomaž)

OriginTrail does not list events that we simply attend in monthly reports. We only report from events that we either organize, or speak at as panelists, presenters, or expert guests. Enjoy this recording of a presentation held by our CEO and co-founder Tomaž Levak in Milan at Seeds&Chips, the leading food innovation summit in the world.

Tomaž presenting at Seeds&Chips

Wonder what is next? Learn more about the upcoming events in this blog post.

Community Updates and Developments

We are delighted to see our community growing every month. Our team puts a lot of work and love in making sure that our community members get all relevant information promptly and enjoy the experience of interacting with us via multiple channels.

We are delighted to have crypto influencers and blockchain experts who believe in OriginTrail as our community members. This is some of the content about our work produced in May by third parties:

Crypto Lark published this fantastic interview with our co-founders. We loved having a chance to interact with him and his audience. The interview had two hidden gems. Matilda Ho came by and said hi and also Barry the Bear made an appearance. See a summary and exact timings of statements in a summary we published on Reddit.
Forbes contributor, bestselling author, keynote speaker and KPI & big data expert Bernard Marr‏ featured us on Forbes as a selected real example of blockchain technology in practice.
Popular YouTuber Crypto Love recorded an interview with our advisor and Trace Alliance Chairman John G. Keogh.

Please note, this is not paid content. We support independent production. We gladly support content makers by providing them with information and swag giveaways.

At OriginTrail, we live, breath and code transparency. It is one of the core values of our company and it is imprinted deeply in our communication’s DNA. Every month, we develop new ways of speaking to our community in a more meaningful manner. Here are May’s highlights:

We value our advisors who are actively included in our project development. We published an interview with fintech advisor Anthony Lai. We highlighted this statement “I believe banks are also conducting their testing on their own private blockchains. But these efforts are fragmented at best, and we need a neutral party such as OriginTrail to come in to provide standardized protocols and make it easier for participants to adapt and work together.” Apart from John G. Keogh’s visit in HQ, we were also delighted to meet our Business Development Advisors Tomaž Štolfa in Ljubljana and Andrej Muževič in the Belgrade office.
Our tech team hosted two AMAs on Reddit, after our two technology releases in May, Zond and Surveyor.
CMO Maja Voje publishes short project updates on Reddit. Are you a Redditor? Follow OriginTrail’s subreddit to get nearly daily updates. Prefer Twitter? No problemo, Maja shares these short updates there too.

Our communication is not a monologue. We are happy to co-create culture, excitement for blockchain-powered supply chains and joy of life with our community. Here are the highlights from this month:

May was packed with updates, but we promise you June will not be boring either. We are only two tech releases away from the testnet launch on the June 29. Brace yourself and get ready for more exciting partnerships, event updates and Trace Alliance developments in the month to come — the testnet month.

Trace on!

Your Devoted OriginTrail Team