OriginTrail Quarterly Report — Q1 2019
Inclusiveness, neutrality, usability: These are the three foundational pillars of the OriginTrail ecosystem outlined in the OriginTrail Vision Paper, published in March 2019. The first quarter of this year brought numerous other updates and positive developments — including new partnerships, large-scale events, code releases, and adoptions.
Protocol Adoption: Business Development News
The main milestone for protocol adoption in Q1 was the repositioning of OriginTrail’s core technology builder as Trace Labs, which came alongside an announcement of new services — including the Network Operating System (nOS), education, and solution design services — developed to encourage the global adoption of the protocol.
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Partnership with BSI
In January, OriginTrail partnered with the British Standards Institution (BSI) to deliver blockchain-enabled solutions that will enhance BSI’s global assessment, certification, and supply chain services to confirm the provenance of goods or the integrity of digital records or services.
Cooperation with GS1
Throughout the quarter, we continued to work with GS1 — the world’s leading business standards organization. The work culminated in an invitation to GS1’s most important annual event, the GS1 Global Forum 2019. Founder Žiga Drev took the stage at the blockchain panel discussion, along with representatives from McKinsey & Company, Carrefour, and AmerisourceBergen. Žiga highlighted how GS1 standards were instrumental to OriginTrail’s product since the beginning and how common standards are important for the interoperability layer that OriginTrail is building. The panel discussion was moderated by Bob Carpenter, CEO of GS1 USA.
Technology Partnership with Oracle
Our partnership with Oracle continued to make headlines and also saw the first tangible value to Oracle’s users around the globe. The Network Operating System (nOS), powered by OriginTrail, was listed in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
SmartAgriHubs Kick-off Event
The OriginTrail team spent the first week of March in Prague, Czech Republic, at the SmartAgriHubs kick-off event. SmartAgriHubs is a huge Europe-wide project, funded with EUR 20 million by the European Union, connecting more than 160 partners to work on the digital transformation of the continent’s agricultural and food sector. This conference was the first opportunity for the project partners to come together in one place, meet in person, set the next milestones for the project, and find more opportunities for collaboration.
Business Partnership with OneAgrix
Trace Labs and OneAgrix have announced a partnership that will utilise blockchain-enabled solutions for halal food transparency. OneAgrix, a B2B online marketplace for the sourcing of halal food ingredients and products, will use Trace Labs’ data exchange solutions to tackle the trust deficit in the halal goods marketplace, enabling food safety and transparency. This brings tangible benefits to businesses and consumers in the USD 2.5 trillion global halal market.
Provenance Application for Premium Poultry
Perutnina Ptuj, the largest poultry producer in Southeastern Europe, has launched a new nOS-based provenance app powered by the OriginTrail protocol. Consumers can now verify data about Perutnina Ptuj products on the blockchain.
Open Call for Supply Chain Projects
An important part of fostering adoption is OriginTrail’s own open call for innovative supply chain projects looking to get help and resources for using the OriginTrail Decentralized Network. In January 2019, the OriginTrail community voted for the 10 winning projects through the smart contract.
The winning teams are now working with the OriginTrail dev team and plan to deploy their projects by June 2019.
Protocol Development: Technology
The OriginTrail Decentralized Network, in the form of the OriginTrail Vostok Mainnet, has been up and running since December 2018. In Q1 2019, the core development team continued improving the protocol and building the next stages of the network as outlined in the roadmap.
Major Protocol Releases
- Node update v2.0.50 added additional support for node connectivity with Ethereum, enhanced the replication solution mining algorithm (designed to improve the bidding mechanism on the mainnet), and launched numerous other minor improvements.
- Node update v.3 marked the beginning of the OriginTrail Freedom stage. It is currently deployed on the OriginTrail testnet.
nOS — Network Operating System
Network Operating System was released in Q1 as a hub for open industry data exchange, combining the benefits of the blockchain, global standards, and enterprise-grade software. nOS was developed by Trace Labs and provides a single interface for connecting, rather than replacing, existing legacy IT systems with different blockchain ecosystems and the OriginTrail protocol.
Core features of nOS include network deployment, ERP integrations, consensus check, and supply chain mapping. The first two featured applications are for provenance and track-and-trace.
Integration with EVRYTHNG
In February, EVRYTHNG added support for replicating events from their IoT product platform for brands to the OriginTrail blockchain connector. This allows EVRYTHNG’s customers to share supply chain data to the OriginTrail Decentralized Network in a decentralized manner with just a few clicks.
Join the OriginTrail Tech and Development Community!
OriginTrail is an open-source protocol and the core development team is always happy to get feedback and proposals through GitHub. The official documentation is available at http://docs.origintrail.io/.
We are happy to see how the tech community on Discord — the go-to channel for discussing everything node-related — is developing into an engaged, knowledgeable, and helpful open-source community. At the end of Q1 2019, the Discord server had 1,342 members.
There are great examples of community-based resources, including the OT Hub and befranz.net. Everyone is encouraged to join, engage, spread the word, and contribute to growing the OriginTrail ecosystem!
Financials
As anticipated, all percentages of budget allocation are working their way towards their intended targets. There has been an increase in development costs, as well as a focus on security with the mainnet updates and the Freedom release on the testnet. It is expected that the same trend will continue. There have also been slightly bigger business development costs, as these activities are of vital importance for the longevity of the OriginTrail ecosystem.
The organisation remains in a good state financially, with enough funding to sustain further development efforts. The envisioned financial structure, according to the execution plan of the OriginTrail team, was presented at the TGE and can be seen in the values showing target share (at the end of 2020) below. Next to the target share, you can find the current share of costs based on the actual funds spent in a particular segment up to the date of the report. The assets’ value on March 31st was 11,590 ETH.
Marketing & Communication
All development and business adoption activities resulted in very favorable traction for the OriginTrail project in the world’s leading media, targeting the right audience. Coindesk, Newsweek, Cointelegraph, and Yahoo! Finance are only a few of the outlets in which OriginTrail was featured in the first quarter of 2019. Our #ConnectTheDots social media campaign, which led up to the announcement of Trace Labs and the new offering, highlighted key elements of the OriginTrail ecosystem, focused on inclusiveness, neutrality, and usability.
Here are some highlights from Q1:
- Tomaz and Ziga’s interview with BlockchainBrad was one of the most insightful talks with them yet!
- Coindesk reported about OriginTrail’s partnership with Oracle.
- Cointelegraph reported about OriginTrail’s partnership with BSI.
- Co-founder & CTO Branimir Rakić was invited to present at two Oracle events — the CEE Partner Executive Forum and the Oracle Technology Day.
- Branimir also delivered a presentation in Kuala Lumpur:
- OriginTrail participated in the GS1 Global Forum — Blockchain Panel Discussion:
- There was ongoing media interest about the benefits of the tamper-proof protocol:
- Tomaz wrote an expert view for the Global Food Safety Resource.
- OriginTrail was recognized in China’s leading independent graduate business school Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business’s publication.
Human Resources
OriginTrail’s core technology developer, Trace Labs, has three offices. The headquarters is in Hong Kong, while its product offices are in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Belgrade, Serbia.
- Number of team members on December 31: 22
- Number of team members on March 31: 21
*OriginTrail does not report advisors and contractors as team members.
Our talent pool is always open for blockchain technology in supply chains enthusiasts. Apply via our career page if you would like to co-create the decentralized future with us. We always review the talent pool first when we open a new position and have had immense success identifying great candidates.
Trace Token
Bittrex International added Trace token (TRAC) to its exchange in March 2019. TRAC is also available on KuCoin, IDEX and HitBTC. In the OriginTrail Vision Paper, we unveiled that Bittrex will be integrated in the nOS to handle obtaining TRAC for clients. Instead of having to deal with exchanges directly, companies will now be able to utilise the nOS service to obtain TRAC and use it immediately in the ODN without holding cryptocurrencies on their books. Similarly, solution providers are also able to use the same service for their applications and even make an integration with the exchanges directly.
The token saw a very positive price development in Q1, both in USD, ETH and BTC terms.
TRAC outperformed ETH and although the USD value, as with most digital assets, decreased in the past year, TRAC is up from the TGE price when valued in Ethereum. The value of TRAC grew in ETH and BTC terms, compared to the end of Q3.
Circulating supply has slightly increased. Token holders that follow their portfolio through Blockfolio and Delta apps can stay up to date on major updates directly through the apps’ features.
