OriginTrail Monthly Report: April 2019
In April, the OriginTrail project and our entire ecosystem maintained positive momentum after the Trace Labs rebranding and the OriginTrail Vision Paper were unveiled. Here are the key milestones from April on our path towards global adoption.
New Leadership Structure
At the beginning of the month, we unveiled the new leadership structure for Trace Labs, the core technology builder of OriginTrail. The leadership team got a strong addition in Jurij Škornik who was previously a senior consultant at the DHL Deutsche Post Group, one of the world’s largest logistics providers, and has excellent insight into global supply chains.
Vladimir Lelićanin, who was with the team before, has joined the C-suite and taken charge of product development as a Chief Product Officer (CPO). In this position, his mission is devoted to raising the industry standards of blockchain technology usability, with the development of the Network Operating System (nOS) center stage.
>> More About the Trace Labs Leadership
Houston User Interface
The Houston v0.9.0 app is your remote control for easier and user-friendly management of OriginTrail nodes. The first versions of Houston worked with the OriginTrail nodes on the testnet, but, with the launch of the OriginTrail Vostok Mainnet, the main focus of the core development team was on the protocol itself. From April on, Houston is again compatible with the latest version of nodes running on the OriginTrail Vostok Mainnet.
The Houston app has been open-sourced and developers are free and encouraged to contribute.
Tech: Testnet & Mainnet Updates
Apart from releasing a new version and open-sourcing the Houston app, the core development team released major node update (the latest version being v.2.0.52) of the OriginTrail Vostok Mainnet. This update brought many protocol tweaks, support for the latest Houston app, and an improved auto-updating mechanism.
The Freedom release is currently up and running on the testnet as v.3.0.6 with the litigation mechanism enabled. We fixed and adjusted the mechanism so that the network can run smoothly and fairly. The litigation mechanism needs to be extensively tested and proven to go live on the mainnet, so the team and community efforts to validate the system will be ongoing on the testnet in the following period. The Freedom release is also compatible with the same version of the Houston application.
We encourage the developer community to join in and help with the transition to Freedom on the mainnet by running a testnet node and providing improvement proposals and feedback via our development communication channels on GitHub and Discord.
Apart from releases, the team has been focused on research and development at the prototype level for a number of features like the SQL database agnosticism, security, data layer optimization, and others. Regarding the SQL database agnosticism, an OriginTrail prototype is now ready to transition from the embedded SQLite to another engine like PostgreSQL, MySQL, and others. This is the part of the research and development effort, which may be included as a product in the following releases.
World Economic Forum’s White Paper
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is more than a popular event in Davos where world leaders meet once a year to discuss the latest global trends and make headlines. The organization works year-round on new initiatives to foster the global economy.
OriginTrail was invited to contribute to a series of white papers that cover important and specific considerations for deploying blockchain solutions throughout international trade and supply chain systems. The main outcome of the project will be a concise, easy-to-use framework, guiding decision-makers towards interoperability, integrity, and inclusiveness with blockchain deployment in supply chains
In the first white paper, which focused on the inclusive deployment of blockchain technology for supply chains and was published in April, the OriginTrail protocol was highlighted as a use case for product provenance and traceability.
The Open Call Project Update
In April, we reviewed technical implementation papers prepared by the winning teams and started preparing for the onboarding of the projects to the OriginTrail Decentralized Network.
Given the outstanding quality of some projects and the response of the OriginTrail community to the Open Call, we decided to host not just one but two teams for the in-person workshop at our dev office! This will enable an even more hands-on approach for successfully deploying the winning projects. The team that took 2nd place in the community vote and was invited to the in-person workshop is Kakaxi.
In May, we are planning the onboarding of the projects to the testnet, with the help of webinars and other resources. The goal is to have the projects up and running on the OriginTrail Decentralized Network’s mainnet by the end of June 2019.
Communications & Events Highlights
In April, OriginTrail team members attended high-profile events around the globe, like those organized by the United Nations and Walmart’s Food Safety Collaboration Center. We saw continued interest from the media and research institutions.
- We returned to Beijing to present at the International Forum on Food Safety and Health. OriginTrail was the winner of the Walmart Food Safety Collaboration Center’s 2017 Innovation Pipeline and Co-founder Žiga Drev presented the team’s progress. He also unveiled another exciting project at that time.
- MIHAS 2019 was the 16th Malaysian International Halal Showcase, one of the world’s largest events. Co-founder Žiga Drev was invited to take part in an expert panel session moderated by Rushdi Siddiqui, one of the top 50 Leaders of the Islamic Economy.
- The SmartAgriHubs project continued with a regional event, a two-day meeting of the Digital Innovation Hubs in Novi Sad, Serbia. Branimir and Jurij attended.
- Trace Alliance Chairman John Keogh took the stage at the Food Industry Asia’s Food for the Future Summit in Singapore. In a panel, he was joined by the executives from Mars, BSI, Mondelez, and others.
- UNECE Day of Cities 2019 at the United Nations’ palace in Geneva brought together mayors and urban managers. The discussions included harnessing the potential of the blockchain for smart cities.
- Explorium in Hong Kong hosted a workshop, with the Trace Labs leadership team, focused on using blockchain to design sustainable supply chains.
- Following the presentation at the Food Safety and Health forum in Beijing, OriginTrail was featured in China Daily, one of the leading Chinese newspapers!
- FreightWaves emphasized OriginTrail’s particular expertise in the design of blockchain protocols for the food supply chain, including visibility and optimized recalls.
- OriginTrail was highlighted as one of the key blockchain players for global agriculture and food supply chain markets.
