VeChain, Tsinghua University, & DNV GL propose new Belt and Road Blockchain Application Technology Alliance

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December 19th – The Third “Belt and Road” Cooperation Forum took place at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai. The forum was co-organized by Tusstar, a large incubator in China with links to Tsinghua University, an institution consistently ranked as China’s top University. The forum’s theme was “New era, new ecology, new development.”

During the forum, three major platforms were announced: A Yangtze Delta AI Industry Alliance, A “Belt and Road” Blockchain Industry Alliance, and a Tusstar Industrial Empowerment Center.

For VeChain enthusiasts, the “Belt and Road” Blockchain Industry Alliance will have the most relevance. Tsinghua University’s Belt and Road Strategy Research Institute, China Industrial Internet Research Institute, Tusstar Blockchain Group, China Silk Road Group, VeChain Technology, and DNV GL jointly proposed and co-founded the “Belt and Road Blockchain Application Technology Alliance”, which aims to bring together research and cooperation for innovative new landing applications of the blockchain in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The “Belt and Road” is a global development policy designed to improve infrastructure and link China with more than 100 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania through trade.  Investment from China alone in the project is estimated to be between $1 trillion and $8 trillion. The bulk of it is going into shipping and overland trade routes, including roads, airports, railways, deep-water ports, as well as social projects like hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure. For a public blockchain that has dozens of use cases related to supply chain, this is a match made in heaven.

Besides just being an effort to accelerate trade, China puts exceptional pressure on the plan to increase their Geo-political weight and counter the US influence. President Xi Jinping has made this the focal point of his economic policy, and has pushed the BRI deep into society, including in primary school curriculums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KFBHBMatXk
The emphasis the government places on this development plan is enormous.

This announcement follows a recent flurry of calls for enterprise blockchain research and adoption, led by Chinese President Xi Jinping. According to the article appearing on state-run media portal Chinanews.com, VeChain Tech was the only blockchain partner of the industry alliance, showing the progress VeChain has made at building connections with influential organizations within China. And while this is still at the proposal stage, DNV GL and VeChain have managed to combine two of the president’s favorite things: enterprise blockchain solutions with the BRI. A very promising start, and definitely following a strategy that has been well-coordinated.

Tsinghua University’s role in this shouldn’t be underestimated, as they are widely regarded as the premium Chinese educational institution, attracting the best Chinese students each year. In 2019, US News and World Report Best Global University Ranking ranked Tsinghua at 2nd in Asia and 36th globally. Previously the Tsinghua University Sino-American Research Department had worked with VeChain’s ecosystem, making this the second time the prestigious institution has supported VeChain. They play an important role in shaping society, and count current president Xi Jinping, former president Hu Jintao, and many others among their famous alumni.

Additional Sources: https://medium.com/vechain-foundation/vechain-is-co-founder-of-the-belt-and-road-initiative-blockchain-alliance-briba-6bc70a0f6980?

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Weekly Report Nov. 16 – 22

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Following the big week in Singapore that included a steering committee meeting, meetups, and a host of other public events, VeChain was quick to get back to business in China.

Nov. 16: Presentation to DNV GL

VeChain’s CBO Qian Chengcheng attended a blockchain technology for business applications, that was attended by a number of local groups including the Bureau of Commerce, Zhejiang China Commodities City Group, the Yiwu Electrical and Electronics Association, and an overseas student association. With so much positivity around blockchain in China, events that focus on education and business governance will play a major role in opening up potential partnerships.

dnv gl,DNVdnv gl,

11-17: COO Kevin Feng speaks at a Global Entrepreneurship Blockchain Event (Shanghai)

Kevin Feng took part in a presentation on the potential of blockchain, and informed the audience about the key for enterprise usage: mainly that blockchain must create value by reducing costs or increasing efficiency.

He noted that “Since the beginning, VeChain has always paid attention to business adoption related to the real economy, such as supply chain, food safety, medical care, etc. This path of development is correct, but rarely seen in the blockchain industry.”

Nov. 20 – Accenture Delegation Visits VeChain

Consulting giant Accenture sent a delegation to VeChain’s Shanghai office, including their international team and core customer reps. Their main goal was to learn more about the current state of blockchain technology and understand how it can help to innovate in the business world. This was a great opportunity to show off many of VeChain’s solutions, such as ToolChain, and explore the possibility of future cooperation.

Nov. 22 – VeChain and DNV GL Present at the AWS Retail & Consumer Products Industry Conference

VeChain CBO Qian Chengcheng and DNV GL’s Director of Digital Transformation Yu Jie headed down to Guangzhou to participate in the Amazon Web Services Retail & Consumer Products Industry Conference. They discussed how blockchain can be used in digital certification services, such as My Story.

Looking ahead, next week is already shaping up to be an important one for the VeChain ecosystem as CEO Sunny Lu and DNV GL’s Renato Grottola will be speaking in Milan at Distributed Minds. Grottola is managing a number of key VeChain-related projects, including the San Marino Low Carbon Ecosystem, making him an intriguing speaker for update-hungry community members. Also speaking at the event will be Jur CEO Alessandro Palombo and head of San Marino Innovation, Sergio Mottola.

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Swell is back at Innersect 2019 – December 6-8

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Streetwear and fashion continues to be an excellent use case for VeChain’s NFC tags as they expand beyond just verification and traceability by helping to share the story of the product, brand, or creator. Last year, Swell placed more than 30,000 blockchain-backed NFC tags on products at Innersect 2018, which thrust the IoT and blockchain solution into the spotlight at China’s main streetwear, culture and fashion festival in Shanghai.

 

https://twitter.com/BenYorke/status/1071624477723611136

This included the Terracotta Blush, a CLOT x Nike Air Jordan collaboration, which had a VeChain tag embedded in the heel. At last year’s event, more than 25,000 visitors filed into the Shanghai New International Expo Center to take part in the interactive festival featuring art, music, sports, and video games in addition to limited edition fashion items.

 

Swell is a BaaS platform based on VeChain’s ToolChain, specifically targeting streetwear brands and consumers. They created the SNKr Ecosystem, with a consumer BaaS platform for brands, a mobile app for consumers, and the SNK token to connect and incentivize the ecosystem.

This year, Swell’s mobile app Mine will play an important role in the event. Visitors will be able to download the app to scan products, viewing photos, videos, and product information. Mine‘s key feature is the ability to claim ownership of products on the blockchain, which should serve as a gateway between regular streetwear fans and the blockchain community. This feature will also be the basis of future trading platforms, as Mine will let users trade products that they own both physically and digitally, giving a higher trust level to shoppers on the platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVchbDzBNqU
Official Innersect 2019 Teaser Video

The 2019 Innersect theme is “Explore the Infinity” and should fit well with Swell’s message to “explore” the different brands on display. Bringing brands and consumers closer together continues to be a main reason behind blockchain adoption in the streetwear industry, especially in China where the thirst for more knowledge is an obstacle between foreign designers and China’s free-spending youth.

Innersect is a creation of Clot founder Edison Chen. Chen, a former actor from Hong Kong, has a massive mainstream following in China, thanks to his brash designs and lavish lifestyle. He was blacklisted from acting in China years ago after a home-video scandal of him with other Chinese celebrities was leaked from his personal laptop. Rather than slow down, the scandal threw Chen further into the spotlight and allowed him to launch one of the world’s most successful streetwear brands.

 

 

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Shanghai Government Bureau sends new warning about ICOs, Exchanges, and Cryptocurrency

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November 15th – A local financial supervisory bureau and the Shanghai Headquarters of the People’s Bank of China jointly issued a notice regarding the risks of cryptocurrency and exchanges in China.

China recently announced their intent to develop and adopt blockchain solutions, as well as plans to launch DCEP, a proposed national digital currency. With many people learning about cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technology for the first time, it comes as no surprise that officials will be on high alert for potential scams and illegal activity.

The new warning noted that blockchain technology can be used for speculation and illegal financial activities. They focused on three specific activities:

  1. Organizing cryptocurrency transactions (Exchanges and OTC)
  2. Using blockchain application scenarios to issue virtual currency, or raise funds
  3. Providing publicity or assisting overseas virtual currency projects

This noticed included instructions to immediately withdraw from organizations violating these rules, and to report the offending internet company to the responsible authority. And if anyone was doubting whether there’d be a response, the following day Twitter-clone Weibo responded by blocking the accounts of Binance and Tron.

Pro-Blockchain, Anti-Cryptocurrency

So what are the ramifications? It would certainly be unwise for any project with a token to get too comfortable, but it’s likely that established projects like VeChain (which happens to be one of the only successfully registered public blockchain project in the country) will escape any fallout from this, considering their commitment to compliance and ties to top agencies and multinational enterprises.

https://twitter.com/BenYorke/status/1111936522310213633?

A Tale of Two Outlooks

There are two scenarios I see plausible. The first, and more pessimistic scenario, involves all local projects keeping a low profile for the time-being until the crackdown passes by and business resumes as usual. For a large and complex country like China, the focus is direct but can change quickly, making it easy for potential rule-breakers to slip through the cracks.

A second scenario would be a strong reaction from the authorities, in an attempt to clean up the industry before launching DCEP and virtual currency related-services. This suffocating effect would make it extremely difficult for future projects to get registered with the token + public blockchain model, essentially clearing the way for existing projects like VeChain to corner the market. Of course, VeChain still must compete with private chain-services from behemoths like Alibaba and Baidu, but at the moment, they hold a huge positional advantage as the earliest compliant public blockchain.

Cleaning up the Mess

This week, a “focus interview” from state-run media powerhouse CCTV exposed the state of blockchain in China. Wu Zhen, of the National Internet Emergency Center revealed their research discovered around 32,000 listed companies that included blockchain as one of their services. After investigating further, only about 10% of those actually use blockchain in actual business activity.

Without a doubt, the blockchain industry as a whole could benefit from a “cleaning up” process, but nowhere is that more obvious than in China, where scam coins, ponzi-schemes, and vaporware run rampant. If the fraudulent and incompetent players were cleaned up and banned from entering the market, VeChain could have a much easier task of educating enterprises and SMBs about the benefits of public blockchain applications.

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“China-rankings” continue to dupe Western audiences

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This article contains the opinions of the author.

I can always tell when Saidi Net releases their new rankings because my Twitter feed is filled with misinformation and misplaced perspectives. For many, they share the list because it fits their narrative. However, most people fail to realize a few key points:

#1 “China” doesn’t endorse the list

Despite China being a vast country with around 1/5th of the world’s population, western writers love simplifying it by simply calling it the “China rankings”. Saidi Net have always been very transparent about the list being separate from their government-sponsored activities. The title, Saidi Research Center’s 11th Global Public Blockchain Technology Evaluation Rankings, doesn’t say anything to suggest they are an ‘official’ mouthpiece for a government organization.

China’s government has a highly complex and bloated organization structure – with over 150,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Remnants of the communist structure has left many industries in a government- owned limbo – where many are unprofitable, but still being propped up by loans from state-owned banks. This is to prevent having a larger unemployment issue, but like ripping off a bandaid, will need to be done at some point. The privatization will come at some point, as it’s been a core issue at the heart of China’s economic reforms.

Until that eventually happens, there are countless organizations that could fit the criteria Saidi Net does – supported by the government, but largely free to conduct their own business operations. This makes western investors particularly vulnerable to China-based scams – that claim to be connected to state owned companies, when in fact the ‘state’ has little to do with the organization or the project.

For a website such as Coin Telegraph to not make the distinction between China and Saidi Net is both worrying and disappointing. It could just be a lack of understanding or research – but it could also be a classic case of exaggerating details that promote the author’s personal investments.

#2 The list is an opt-in service

Earlier this year I contacted the company (I made a write-up back then) behind the rankings, asking about why major blockchains like VeChain and Tron were not included. They told me that VeChain chose not to be included, and that Tron was to be included in their next ratings. Although the representative on the phone didn’t say it at the time, this strongly implies that there was a listing fee – which sharply throws into question the integrity of the rankings. Either way, having a global rating system that doesn’t include a number of key projects isn’t a very effective metric to be using.

#3 You are the target of the ratings

There’s a reason I almost never see this list get shared in my Chinese language groups – and that’s because the majority of people with experience in China would ignore a list like this. They could instantly recognize the corruptibility of a service like this –

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