Idealist visions vs established businesses
Until now, very few ICOs were launched by companies with an existing product, let alone a decent market share in their business. But recently, it seems companies with existing, successful operations start turning to token sale to collect funds. Kik, the messaging platform with the Kin ICO, or esports betting site Unikrn with UnikoinGold are among the few ICOs with noticeable user base.
Finally, the B2B sector also notices the opportunities of the blockchain community with the TE-FOOD token sale to start in December. TE-FOOD is the world’s largest farm-to-table fresh food traceability system, currently implemented in Vietnam. It is used by more than 6,000 companies, tracks 10,000 pigs, 200,000 chickens, and 2,500,000 eggs each day, 7 days a week, from farms to retail, serving a region of 30 million people with food history insights. Making the food origin information transparent to the customers is an important attribute of TE-FOOD’s multi-channel approach: It integrates all participants of the food industry by providing tools and information for the supply chain participants, the authorities, and the consumers as well.
Real world applications are the next step for blockchain
Embedding blockchain in real world business applications like traceability is definitely the next step in the penetration of decentralized technologies, but it’s a tough one. Despite the plenty of base protocols and fintech projects, blockchain is still the territory of progressive IT guys and fintech enthusiasts. Beyond them, a few people have a clue what blockchain is. That’s why such a project requires careful planning, and a lot of customer education. To let people accept blockchain, you have to package it into familiar processes, while offering education about its possibilies, and correcting the misbeliefs.
To develop software for a bitcoin exchange, or a new wallet is a pure virtual project. But food traceability is done in the real world, in farms, slaughterhouses, and wholesale markets. Technology is not enough here. A successful project needs a proper implementation methodology: Helping the government to create efficient regulation and enforcement structure, convincing supply chain participants to cooperate, training tens of thousands of supply chain workers, proper communication to gain support of NGOs, and working together with large conglomerates to connect their existing identification schemes are as much important tasks as coding smart contracts properly.
The promise of an unchangeable ledger
While embedding blockchain into supply chain operations is just one of many necessary ingredients of successful traceability system delivery, the uncorruptible, unalterable ledger possibilities, the unified tokenization, and the smart contracts can provide huge opportunities for traceability systems. Building a transparent system can bring back consumer trust, which was definitely lost in the last decades. According to Datamonitor, 82% agreed that “claims made by food and drink products often exaggerated or unproven”. Meanwhile, scandals of mislabeling (e.g. labeling non-organic foods as organic), contamination (e.g. 2017 Fipronil eggs contamination), and counterfeiting (e.g. the 2013 European horse meat incident) lead to declined consumer trust. With a blockchain based traceability system like TE-FOOD, countries can mitigate the damages done by such frauds.
Since TE-FOOD, as a traceability system with all related functions is ready, we just need to implement the blockchain ledger. So our token sale is different from others, as we plan to use most of the funds to grow and expand our markets internationally. Implementing a farm-to-table traceability system is a 6–12 months project with a lot of consulting, organization, and training. And while it has its difficulties, the social impacts are so tangible and overwhelming, that it turns all implementation difficulties to an interesting journey.
In the world of globalized supplier networks, and the plenty of ingredients of processed foods, the idea of a global network of transparent and accessible food information seemed science fiction for a long time. With the use of blockchain based transaction ledgers, this idea might be within reach.
TE-FOOD is going to implement blockchain, and tokenize its operation. Token sale starts on the 8th of january, 2018.
ICO site: https://ico.tefoodint.com
Website: https://www.tefoodint.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tefoodintl/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TE_FOOD
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/11284449/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt4dONFbQCo1qC14mF0Z9_g
Bitcointalk thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2176849.0
Telegram channel: https://t.me/te_food
