OriginTrail Quarterly Report — Q4 2020 | Towards the Knowledge Economy
The last quarterly report of 2020 covers the most significant events that happened and sheds light on the progress achieved by the OriginTrail Ecosystem. 2020 was a defining year for the adoption of the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph (a.k.a. #Google4SupplyChains). We witnessed the onboarding of global companies, increasing support from initiatives supported by the European Union (e.g., the Next Generation Internet and the Food Safety Market), and growing activity on the OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN).
The year 2020 was crowned with the Liftoff event, which attracted more than 500 live spectators who got to take a look at some of the most beyond-state-of-the-art solutions using OriginTrail and GS1 standards developed together with the British Standards Institution (BSI), Oracle, and the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB). The paradigm-shifting next stage in the development of OriginTrail was introduced with multi-chain direction and knowledge economy tools positioned at the core of achieving efficiency gains and catalyzing the exchange of trusted knowledge through the network effect. We have indicated that we are seeking multiplication effects by working together with the most reputable builders in the industry, like Polkadot’s Parity Technologies.
OriginTrail’s mission to radically improve trust and transparency in supply chains by enabling trusted knowledge exchange is followed by a growing number of diverse communities, and we look forward to seeing the adoption of the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph accelerate in 2021. Together.
Protocol adoption: Business development news
The last quarter of 2020 culminated in the expansion of projects of both institutional and commercial importance. Business development efforts yielded results that will significantly accelerate the adoption of the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph.
The Next Generation Internet
We live in a world full of data. An increasing amount of data is collected each day from the environment around us. In food supply chains, data is collected at multiple points and can provide in-depth insight into production, answering questions like “What were the production conditions?” and “What were the temperature, humidity, and sunlight levels?”.
Data gives the farmers — who are at the beginning of supply chains — the opportunity to stand out, highlight their good practices — like organic farming, for example — and get fairly compensated for their efforts. However, giving farmers the ability to monetize the value of their data and showcase the quality of their work has been challenging in the past. With that in mind, Food Data Market (FDM) was created.
FDM is a decentralized marketplace that incentivizes data sharing with the goal of contributing to sustainable supply chains. We are excited that Trace Labs, together with our partners Kakaxi Inc., is taking the next step for FDM with the support of the EU Commission’s NGI Atlantic initiative.
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871582.
The first project partner is an Ireland-based distillery — Monasterevin. The founders of this company have repurposed an old mill into a new distillery that will carry the same name as the town it resides in — Monasterevin. Quality, sustainability, and transparency are key Monasterevin values and will help to form the cornerstone of their brand positioning and customer promise. Today’s consumers are increasingly cautious and skeptical about the sourcing of products and their ingredients and that is why Monasterevin is seeking new ways to support their claims with trust and integrity through certification, science, and technology.
As NGI Atlantic sees to the deployment of a data marketplace in operational environments, the benefits of sharing data will become even more apparent, driving future benefits for all organizations, big and small alike.
DEMO: Trace Labs driving radical transparency and trust in agri-food supply chains with OriginTrail and Oracle Blockchain Platform
Milk payment is a complex process and the price of milk paid to a farmer depends on multiple factors. The quality of milk, the quantity of a shipment, farm size, and negotiated margins all play a part in every single delivery that farmers make. Additionally, these deliveries are taken in and processed by different organizations, like farmers, agricultural cooperatives, dairies, and dairy laboratories. All of this means that the current way of handling payments towards the farmers still involves significant manual effort to verify all inputs and ensure the right process is respected.
The OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG), together with the smart contract capabilities of Oracle Hyperledger Fabric, promises to improve this process end-to-end and provides a trusted compensation solution. The development of the solution was carried out as a part of the largest EU project focusing on digitizing the agrifood sector, the SmartAgriHubs (SAH project). As part of the Flagship Innovation Experiment #28 (FIE) “Decentralized Trust in Agri-Food Supply Chains,” the solution showcases how blockchain-based technologies can improve efficiency, safety, and trust in food supply chains without interrupting the existing business process. The aim of the SAH project is to unleash the innovation potential for the digital transformation of the European agri-food sector.
Trace Labs — the core OriginTrail team launched a demo of an automated dairy payments solution, harnessing the power of OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN), as a trusted oracle for milk data, and Oracle Blockchain Platform (OBP) Hyperledger Fabric smart contracts, as a secure store for contractual terms and payment calculations. Trace Labs’ Network Operating System (nOS) combines these components to deliver an efficient and trusted solution for the dairy industry.
DEMO: OriginTrail powers a decentralized data repository run on GS1 global standards presented for the first time
Having a decentralized repository for data exchange among different companies within the transportation sector has long been a dream of many industry experts. Last November, Branimir Rakić, the CTO of Trace Labs, presented the first decentralized data repository enabled by the OriginTrail Decentralized Network and GS1 global standards. Using OriginTrail, Trace Labs is working with the railway sector on a high-system-interoperability tool with verifiable data integrity.
Currently, companies face low system and semantic data interoperability with no unified naming and slow integration of data standards. Consequently, the integrity of supply chains is dependent on the central provider of data. In his demo, Branimir showcased a solution bringing:
1. High system interoperability, with standardised API and query languages between vendors utilizing decentralized architecture (not requiring data integration and processing to be done by a single vendor) and standardized identities created by each participant;
2. High data interoperability by applying data standards (GS1 & W3C) and using ontologies and semantic technologies for knowledge-based querying, a.k.a. #Google4SupplyChains; and
3. 100% data security using blockchain verifiable integrity of data using trusted identity and cryptographic signatures.
Trusted COVID-19 Essential Supplies Repository data collection campaign completed successfully
The COVID-19 crisis has revealed weak points in the procurement of medical equipment. As the number of suppliers went up quickly, many that had no track record in the sector were attempting to profit at the expense of public budgets and national healthcare systems. No reliable system that would allow buyers of medical supplies to verify supplier profiles is available to date. Many manual verifications are needed, rendering the purchase processes highly prone to errors.
To tackle these issues, Trace Alliance is leveraging the OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN) to build a decentralized Trusted COVID-19 Essential Supplies Repository (TCESR) for global information about essential supplies for COVID-19 emergencies. With this single-source-of-truth repository built on the ODN, governments, businesses, and individuals will be able to seamlessly access relevant information about a particular product essential to fighting COVID-19 outbreaks.
Open data was collected through a crowdsourcing campaign and is being made available on the network to be accessed by any interested stakeholder. The Trusted COVID-19 Essential Supplies Repository data collection campaign was successfully completed in December and yielded a total of 124MB of valuable data, nearly 17,000 unique GTINs, and 320,391 total graph size by contributed datasets, showing that OriginTrail can be used to incentivize transformation of data into crucial knowledge.
Congratulations to all the community contributors on your successful contributions to the Trusted COVID-19 Essential Supplies Repository (tCESR)!
Cluster of Canadian firms joins Trace Alliance to advance EU-Canada collaboration on supply chain integrity
Technology providers are quickly recognizing that OriginTrail’s open-source protocol offers significant potential for advancing the rapid adoption of scalable and interoperable supply chain solutions while applying GS1 standards. We are delighted to welcome Canada-based InCube, Convergence.Tech, and NutriScope to Trace Alliance.
This partnership’s main objective is to advance collaboration and trade between the European Union (EU) and Canadian companies and to strengthen supply chain transparency, enhance trust, and ensure data integrity.
The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which is a free-trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, was put in place on October 30, 2016. CETA removed trade barriers and eliminated 98% of preexisting tariffs. With this agreement in place, the international trade in food and agricultural products has increased significantly. The need to provide enhanced product traceability, enable rapid recalls of unsafe goods, verify countries of origin, combat mislabelling, and eliminate fraudulent products has become ever more apparent.
Trace Alliance launches a working group on Food & Agriculture Technology with Grigoris Chatzikostas at the helm
In December, Trace Alliance announced the formation of a Food & Agriculture Technology working group focusing on digitalization and trusted data exchanges in the food and agriculture industry. The working group is chaired by Grigoris Chatzikostas — founder & CEO of Rainno, VP for Business Development at FoodScale Hub, and a central figure of a multitude of European-wide projects for the digital transformation of the agrifood sector and the establishment of a vibrant network of Digital Innovation Hubs.
“It is now more clear than ever that we need to urgently rebuild our food system on a more fair and sustainable basis. Thanks to the data revolution, there are so many powerful tools at our disposal, but technology alone is not enough. We have to connect the dots, mobilize innovators, and intensify co-operation to achieve what is possible, without leaving anyone behind. This is exactly what our ambition on the Trace Alliance working group on Food & Agriculture Technology is and we want you on board!” Grigoris Chatzikostas, CEO of Rainno, VP for Business Development at FoodScale Hub
Trace Labs team presented the first OpenPKG prototype
OpenPKG is an application that enables website visitors to discover which of their personal data organizations have. The app also enables users to request both access to that data and its deletion. OpenPKG runs on a decentralized knowledge graph for improved governance, portability, and privacy of personal data. An open-source infrastructural foundation is being created and used to design a system that organizations can use to automate their GDPR compliance and have a transparent way of handling personal data.
With its decentralized data provenance system, OpenPKG is introducing an efficient approach to tackling data transparency and portability challenges, while also advancing governance and control over personal data by users. The system introduces a middle ground between data subjects, data controllers, and data processors, which enables the transparency required for managing personal data.
The OpenPKG prototype gained traction within the Data Portability and Services Incubator (DAPSI), which was launched in November 2019 to empower top internet innovators to develop human-centric technology solutions addressing the challenge of personal data portability on the internet as foreseen under the GDPR. The DAPSI initiative is supported under the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative. At the end of the year, Trace Labs presented the first OpenPKG prototype, which marks the first concrete step towards using the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph for data portability.
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871498.
Protocol development: Technology
The last quarter of 2020 saw the release of highly significant documentation. For the first time, Starfleet details were unveiled in a Request for Comments (RFC) issued by the Starfleet Task Force operating within the scope of the Decentralization and Tokenomics Working Group in Trace Alliance. The document explains the rationale and the solution implementation steps required to achieve a multi-blockchain ODN for increased adoption potential and a more efficient ODN market. The solution introduces several new and supporting ecosystem components, including the Starfleet Blockchain and Starfleet Transporter Bridge. It also explains their interaction, development direction, governance structure, and future exploitation potential.
To achieve an even more efficient market behind the functioning of OriginTrail Decentralized Network, the Automated Price Adjustment RFC was published in OT-RFC-06. It introduces new tools in the OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN) codebase for the decentralized service marketplace. They are aimed at improving market conditions so as to encourage more data publication offers by the Data Creator (DC) nodes and improve the profitability of Data Holder (DH) nodes. It discusses an optional, configurable Automatic Adjustment Plugin (AAP) node plugin component that will automatically estimate the optimal λ on the network based on the node user configuration.
Another important milestone that ensures a more seamless path towards introducing Starfleet was achieved by Trace Labs when it was selected for Polkadot’s Substrate Builders Program. Trace Labs has joined the Chains track, which aims to provide additional strategic, technical, and media support by the Parity team for the OriginTrail blockchain-related initiatives.
Towards the end of the quarter, a crucial unveiling for the future of the OriginTrail technology stack happened at the Liftoff event when the team showcased how the stack will further develop in the next stages of OriginTrail, especially the Knowledge Economy phase. In addition to realizing the vision of a multichain OriginTrail in the consensus layer of the technology stack, we have seen an addition of a new layer called the Service Layer, where we will find new components supporting knowledge marketplaces, knowledge tenders, gateway services, liquidity services, and data to knowledge services. You can always re-watch the Liftoff presentation to get up to speed with all the novelties.
Not long after Liftoff, the team also released another key resource in form of the OT-RFC 08, which serves as a technical implementation guide for adapting the ot-node to communicate with multiple blockchains during runtime.
Financials
Following the pattern established in the previous quarters, spending achieved the set targets. The organization 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 below. Next to the target share, you can find the share of costs based on the actual funds spent in a particular segment up to the date of the report.
The size of the future development fund remains unchanged, as announced in the last quarterly report. The total size of the treasury, including the future development fund, stood at 27,179.07 ETH on December 31st.
Key ODN adoption metrics
Constantly increasing the scope of ODN use within the enterprise sector (check out some studies describing the use of the OriginTrail protocol here) supports the further growth of the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG). Trace Labs — OriginTrail core development team — is pioneering the adoption of decentralized and permissioned systems in mainstream enterprise markets and has been successfully honing the ability to integrate the ODN in complex legacy IT landscapes. The interaction of the ODN with real-world IT infrastructure is crucial to validating its development premises and improving its architecture based on key ODN adoption metrics.
New jobs on the ODN
New jobs on the ODN is the number of new datasets published in a month on the OriginTrail Mainnet for which node holders are getting compensated. Datasets are published by organizations using the network for various purposes. Jobs incentivize node holders in the network to stake TRAC as this qualifies them for compensation in exchange for linked data storage, availability, and verification services.
Throughout the quarter, we have seen an upswing in the number of jobs after the pressure of high gas fees was lowered, indicating a strong demand for data publishing at cost-efficient price points. In November, the network reached record levels for the year with more than 500 initiated jobs.
Total TRAC staked
Each node joining the ODN mainnet is required to stake an initial amount of TRAC as a safety measure (currently at 3,000 TRAC). Furthermore, data holders are required to stake the same amount of TRAC as their compensation to serve as collateral, ensuring they maintain the data availability and presentation in its original form (e.g., for a job with a 100 TRAC compensation, the node holder is required to stake 100 TRAC, which get locked in the smart contract until the end of the job’s duration).
In line with growth of new jobs, we have seen the staked amount increase in the last three months of 2020, reaching a peak in November (when most jobs were published as well). For the first time, the network also comfortably passed the 10 million TRAC staked mark.
Total data size
The total size of data stored on nodes participating in the ODN is also an important metric that shows the utilization of the network for business data.
With the uptake of jobs, we saw a significant increase in total data on the ODN, seeing a strong growth curve towards the end of the year. The last three months doubled the entire total data size on the network, surpassing 400,000 MBs.
Total graph size (TGS)
Total graph size (TGS) is meant to tie all of the other metrics together. TGS is a measurement that combines the total number of graph vertices (also known as graph cardinality or the order of the graph) and the total number of graph edges (known in graph theory as graph size) of a decentralized graph. The vertices represent all the different objects that have been added to the graph (such as identifiers and specific information for supply chain events, products, attestations, locations, and certificates) while the edges represent the connections between these objects.
In the last three months, we have seen a steady increase of TGS which landed in the vicinity of 8,000,000 at the end of the year, laying the foundation for even more aggressive growth in 2021.
Marketing & communications
As a result of the ongoing global pandemic, all of our marketing and communications efforts have continued to be focused in the online sphere. Thankfully, however, we’ve been able to continue to push forward with our important milestones as well as grow our overall presence and business operations with the help of our important partners and ever-supportive community.
In early November 2020, our exclusive partner, BSI, published an article on their website outlining the unique value-adding proposition that OriginTrail provides, including a recent working example with Monasterevin Distillery. The example showcased an end-to-end customer trust solution that uses both BSI and OriginTrail technology to improve transparency, traceability, and overall supply chain processes in a trustless and effective manner. To learn more, visit https://www.bsigroup.com/en-GB/Innovation/blockchain/.
It was great to see one of our long-term and trusted partners, Oracle, share an update regarding a custom integrated solution we have been building and deploying together. Using the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph in conjunction with the Oracle Hyperledger Fabric, we have been working hard to revolutionise the dairy payment industry by providing improved accountability, transparency, and ease of use. Notably, this was all conducted as part of SmartArgiHubs (SAH), the largest EU project focussed on digitizing and improving the agrifood sector.
Liftoff and other events showcasing OriginTrail usability & adoption
From the event perspective, our co-founder and managing director at Trace Labs, Tomaž Levak, was privileged to present our new Food Data Marketplace (FDM) project at the NGI summit. The FDM is an important initiative that looks at providing new economic models for sustainable food supply chains powered by data, a privacy by design approach, and methodology aimed at enabling and supporting farmers and cooperatives in regaining control of their data.
OriginTrail also received further exposure during Vista Milk’s (a world-leading Research Centre co-funded by the EU Regional Development Fund, Science Foundation Ireland, and The Dept of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Ireland), blockchain masterclass. As part of the masterclass, Joost M. Volker (Blockchain lead at Oracle) showcased the custom solution that Oracle and OriginTrail are currently using to add increased value to the dairy industry.
Towards the end of November, we unveiled our OriginTrail-based decentralized GS1 EPCIS repository prototype. Importantly, this prototype is being continually developed in line with the EPCIS 2.0 specifications we are co-developing as part of a GS1 working group.
Soon after the unveiling, Jurij Skornik, General Manager of Trace Labs, presented our laboratory data marketplace as part of Block.Is’s demo day.
During the MyDataOnline 2020 conference, hosted by NGI Data Portability and Services Incubator, Trace Labs was invited to talk about how OriginTrail can be used for portability and DSAR, which are necessary for the protection of personal data.
There’s a lot that’s been happening, is actively happening, and is planned for the future in the wider OriginTrail ecosystem, so to put everything into perspective, we purpose-built a comprehensive overview of events that helped shape everything.
Our biggest event of the year was, of course, our Liftoff event. It was our most comprehensive event of the quarter and was focussed heavily on our vision for the future. The event was attended by a number of our key partners and we hosted talks with Dominik Halbeisen from Swiss Federal Railways, Phillip Archer, Director of Web Solutions at GS1, BSI’s Innovation Director Dan Purtell, founder and managing principal at Shantalla and former Chairman at the Trace Alliance, John Keogh, Oracle EMEA Partner Network’s Principal Business Consultant, Jens Lusebrink, and Dan Forbes, Developer Relations Consultant from Parity Technologies. It was an extensive event that spanned some hours and covered the exciting future that we are all actively collaborating on.
Data is only going to get more important in an increasingly digitized and interconnected world and it’s critical that it’s all speaking the same language, is safe, trustless, easily accessible, and infinitely scalable.
Value-adding community contributions and creations
One of the strengths of OriginTrail has always been its community. We are truly privileged to have one of the most technically-minded and helpful communities out there. As the last quarter showed, they are also incredibly creative. Here are some of the highlights including NFT’s, videos, unique artwork, and more.
Trace token
The Trace token (TRAC) is available on Uniswap, Bittrex Global, Nash, KuCoin, IDEX, HitBTC, and ETHoutlet. Token holders that follow their portfolio through Blockfolio and Delta can stay up to date on major updates directly through the apps’ features.
The final quarter was definitely a strong finish to the year. We saw technology development, adoption results, and ODN metrics and key vision foundations delivered at the Liftoff event alongside an announcement of the OriginTrail Knowledge Economy phase. This kicked off the Starfleet boarding process, an activity that will strongly define the coming few months in the OriginTrail ecosystem and show a path to unlocking the scalability potential that can serve the upcoming demand for the ODN.
Making Supply Chains Work. Together.
