OriginTrail Quarterly Report — Q4 2018

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OriginTrail

8 min readJan 31, 2019

So much happened in the last quarter of 2018! Last year was when the TRAC token came to life and, as promised, we finished the year with a bang.

This quarter was marked by an Oracle partnership, the start of an EU-wide agriculture project managed by the Wageningen University & Research (worth EUR 20 million), the mainnet launch, and, of course, a continuation of multiple successful activities that were set in the previous months. The OriginTrail protocol is already used to safeguard data integrity in global supply chains and it has strong foundations for further growth and strong adoption trends in the new year.

Protocol Adoption: Business Development News

In the final quarter of the year, our primary focus was on developing strategic partnerships that have the most potential to become a gateway for a variety of business users to start using the OriginTrail protocol for ensuring data integrity in their supply chains.

In that respect, the most important achievement of the quarter was the technology partnership with one of the world’s leading software giants, Oracle. We are working closely on an integration between the Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service and the OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN), which will enable trusted data sharing based on distributed ledger technologies. This partnership will allow companies that are already using Oracle products and services to easily use OriginTrail’s solutions.

Another important project that started in Q4 with immense adoption potential is SmartAgriHubs. In this EUR 20 million digital transformation project for the European agri-food sector, OriginTrail is taking part as the only blockchain solution for 108 organizations from 22 different European countries. The project is being managed by Wageningen University & Research. The project aims to involve 2 million European farms and introduce 80 new digital solutions onto the market.

The Trace Alliance, a non-profit association which connects businesses, the public sector, academics, and technology companies in the field of blockchain research, grew steadily in Q4. At the end of the year, it included more than 80 members from around the world working together and exchanging expertise about utilizing the blockchain for supply chain challenges.

Another project with the aim to help businesses with the adoption of the OriginTrail protocol was the Open Call for 10 high-potential projects. Our community chose the top 10 teams that will now get resources and mentorship to deploy their projects on the OriginTrail Decentralized Network. The voting took place via smart contract, deployed on the Ethereum mainnet. We were impressed to see a variety of teams with incredible OriginTrail protocol use cases for data integrity, trade finance, supply chain management, and more. Congratulations to the 10 winning teams!

In Q4, we also identified education as an important part of leading companies towards blockchain-enabled solutions. The industry needs to develop tools, practical training programs and services that will be a resource for future blockchain implementation project leads. In November, we organized the first edition of a new kind of workshop. It includes a practical module that guides businesses in developing a traceability use case with the blockchain. CMO Maja Voje presented the workshop in this LinkedIn blog.

Protocol Development: Technology

The most important milestone, achieved in Q4, was the successful launch of the OriginTrail Decentralized Network’s mainnet on December 7th, 2018. The mainnet is now bringing the benefits of the blockchain and decentralization to global supply chains, with new nodes successfully joining the network on a regular basis.

The first stage, currently live, is called the OriginTrail Vostok Mainnet. As outlined before the launch, the Vostok stage refers to the first contact the network will have with real market conditions where TRAC gets to be used for network utility. The Freedom stage is planned to follow in Q1 2019 with fully implemented litigation mechanisms. Onwards, the Gemini stage will introduce further data layer and privacy abilities, and will be focused on bridging different technology “worlds” where it is important to ease integration with other enterprise software. Finally, the Pioneer stage will kick in with further data tokenization abilities.

You can apply for running a node here. The official documentation is available at http://docs.origintrail.io/. We are happy to see how our tech community on Discord — the go-to channel to discuss everything node-related — is developing into an engaged, knowledgeable, and helpful open-source community. At the end of Q4, it had 1171 members.

OriginTrail is an open-source project and the development team is always happy to get feedback and proposals through GitHub.

From other tech updates, the partnership with Oracle means that we are integrating the OriginTrail protocol with Hyperledger Fabric, in addition to the Ethereum blockchain. Hyperledger Fabric is the basis of the Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service. This is another step towards our blockchain-agnostic vision, where OriginTrail helps connect different blockchain ecosystems. Our expertise on interoperability, or “bridging blockchains,” was also published in GS1’s position paper in Q4.

The development team has also continued close cooperation with our partners EVRYTHNG to deliver on the integration between their platform and OriginTrail nodes, which was successfully released in October.

Financials

As anticipated, skewed cost distribution due to TGE is diminishing further, resulting in all percentages of budget allocation working their way towards their intended targets. There has been an increase in development costs, as well as a focus on security due to the mainnet launch in December. It is expected to be the same way in Q1 as well. 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 the generally hurting crypto market. 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 below showing target share (at the end of 2020). 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 December 31st was 13,700 ETH.

Marketing & Communication

Marketing at OriginTrail is traditionally focused on two main audiences: B2B marketing and ongoing communication with our online community. With great project development throughout Q4, we had a lot of ongoing communication activities that resulted in an increasing marketing reach.

Here are some highlights from Q4:

Before the Oracle partnership announcement, we hosted a YouTuber with 200,000 followers, Ivan on Tech. Watch the video he shot. It includes an interview with the OriginTrail founders and the Oracle management:

Our founders and team members were invited to speak at a total of 16 industry events where they presented OriginTrail’s solution and hands-on experience to a professional audience — including Google’s DevFest, China International Import Expo (attended by the Chinese president), Digital Supply Chain Forum at SAP’s HQ, DLD Salon, Foro Global Agrolimentario (which had more than 40,000 visitors!) and GS1’s European Regional Forum (together with senior GS1 officials).
Furthermore, they were invited to share our expertise in webinars for BiTA members and for GMA.
OriginTrail’s founders presented the project in conversations with more crypto influencers: Nye The Crypto Guy and The Crypto Zombie,
We hosted a special surprise event at which we announced the OriginTrail Vostok mainnet.
Exciting project updates resulted in increased media coverage, especially regarding the Oracle partnership. We counted more than 100 media placements in total.

OriginTrail’s use cases are increasingly making their way into professional reports and literature, as a reference for using the blockchain in supply chains.
To engage the community, and to help spread the word to new Tracers, we organized an OriginTrail Holiday Giveaway in December. It was very successful since we got a lot of new community members to our channels!

Human Resources

OriginTrail has three offices. The headquarters is in Ljubljana, Slovenia (EU), the product team is based in Belgrade, Serbia, and we have a market development office in Hong Kong. The number of full-time employees did not change in Q4.

Number of team members on September 30: 22
Number of team members on December 31: 22

*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

The Trace token (TRAC) is traded on three exchanges — KuCoin, IDEX and HitBTC — with KuCoin seeing the highest volume of trading. Volume and price are following the bear market trends, largely influenced by the movement of Bitcoin and Ethereum. TRAC is still outperforming ETH and is up from the TGE price when valued in Ethereum. Although the fiat value, as with most crypto assets, decreased in Q4, the value of TRAC grew in ETH and BTC terms, compared to the end of the Q3.

Circulating supply has slightly been increased. Token holders that follow their portfolio through Blockfolio and Delta apps can follow major updates directly through the apps’ features.

The Year Ahead: Our Plans for 2019

We are well into 2019, and it was a great start! This month, we announced a very important partnership with the British Standards Institution.

We have more strong updates and projects in the pipeline. We are building on powerful foundations from last year.

From the technical roadmap, the Vostok Freedom Mainnet stage is planned for Q1 2019. It will bring fully implemented litigation mechanisms in real market conditions, opening up the network for all participants.

Thanks to our wonderful community for supporting OriginTrail, co-creating the protocol with us, engaging in tech discussions, and spreading awareness about the project.

Trace on!

OriginTrail Team

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