Ben Yorke takes a look back at some of the most impactful moments of the passing year. Leave anything out? Let us know on Twitter.

Number Ten: VIP-191 Upgrade

In mid-July, VeChain upgraded their mainnet to include one of the industry’s most simplistic forms of fee delegation – a way for users to upload data or make transactions on the blockchain without paying any gas fees. Enterprises and dApps can “sponsor” their users, allowing the VeChainThor Blockchain to be the most user-friendly platform in town. Developers can hide all this technical stuff in the backend, allowing users a crypto-free experience. Want to know how potent this VIP-191 stuff is? Around 95% of all transactions on the mainnet are now “paid for” using VIP-191. It makes VeChain even more desirable for new projects and businesses looking to get into blockchain.

Number Nine: OceanEx Launches Jur

August 28th – OceanEx inaugurated their IEO platform with the release of the JUR token – reaching the target in less than half an hour, with 5 times the subscription cap being sold in the four-hour window. OceanEx proved it had an active user base, receiving $10 million USD worth of subscription funds. Jur is one of the most unique projects in the entire industry, taking aim at a massive legal tech industry on the rise. By being able to offer businesses and individuals decentralized dispute resolution at practically no cost, the platform’s potential is impressive. Their decision to join the VeChain ecosystem was a major feather in the cap of all-involved parties, and builds an important legal vertical that fits seamlessly with VeChain’s corporate environment.

Number Eight: Haier Ecological Alliance

In mid-March, the largest electronics company you never heard of decided to sign an MoU working with DNV GL and VeChain to bring blockchain to their massive industrial IoT ecosystem. Boasting 10% of the global appliance marketshare, and named as the third most valuable brand in China, the Haier Ecological Alliance is not to be taken lightly. While this might take some time before we hear more details, this one has some serious potential and shows the strength of VeChain’s brand value in China.

Number Seven: The Foundation Buyback get Stolen

Not all defining moments are positive, and this one seemed like it was sure to derail some of the momentum VeChain had built up over the year. After some sloppy private key management, $6.6m USD in VET and VTHO was sent from the foundation wallet. VeChainStats.com was quick to alert the team, who set up a dynamic blacklist to thwart the thief before the majority of the funds could be sold. Exchanges stepped in to enforce the blacklist, and after a vote offered to every node holder in the ecosystem, the community democratically decided to permanently uphold the blacklist. So what’s the silver lining? Well, besides .84% of the total supply being effectively burned, VeChain’s community vote was one of the first of its kind. It sends an important message regarding loss control and node participation to potential clients, as VeChain was able to respond and contain the situation in a transparent and timely manner. And while CFO Jay Zhang was forced to step down afterwards, it could act as a wake up call to improve internal management practices and upgrade personnel capable of taking VeChain to the next level.

Number Six: San Marino Innovation Token

Late July brought VeChain closer than ever to government integration, as they signed an MoU with DNV GL and the Republic of San Marino. This carbon credit, dubbed SMIT, will be offered to every citizen of the small country in Central Europe in exchange for eco-friendly activities such as taking public transport and electricity conservation. They can then be redeemed in public stores or for public services, in an attempt to become the first carbon neutral country in the world. Even better, there have been numerous suggestions that this model is being rolled out in San Marino as a demonstration for other countries, as VeChain and world governments take aim at meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Number Five: Macron & Xi Jinping Dine on French Beef

China International Import Expo (CIIE) was the scene of a big VeChain announcement for the second year in a row, with DNV GL, ASI Group, and VeChain teaming up to create Foodgates, a food traceability platform linking France and China. French president Emmanuel Macron and China’s Xi Jinping attended an event where beef certified by DNV GL and verified by VeChain was served, further proving how seriously political leaders are taking the next generation of food safety measures. Foodgates can link French producers to the valuable but oft-counterfeited Chinese market, accelerating trade and building trust between consumers and brands. What’s more, this style of platform can be replicated everywhere, as seen with Norway in a Box specializing in Nordic seafood and other high-quality Scandinavian products. It’s only a matter of time before other European countries, and the rest of the world for that matter, follow suit.

Number Four: ToolChain Launches

We’ve all heard about VeChain’s enterprise solutions, but why can’t small businesses use it as well? With the summer time launch of ToolChain 1.0, suddenly businesses of all size could create SKUs, order IoT or QR tags, and design attractive layouts to display their immutable product data. We soon saw shoe designers like Singapore’s SBTG and Australia’s Chase Shiel get in on the action, telling the story of their creations while proving authenticity and empowering a secondhand market. ToolChain is also a stroke of brilliance in the Chinese market, where companies can pay in fiat to use the blockchain, removing any direct interactions with cryptocurrencies, a sensitive regulatory issue. At the end of December, China’s Ministry of Public Security approved the use of ToolChain, giving VeChain yet another endorsement by China’s top leadership.

Number Three: DNV GL’s Big Announcement

Testing, Inspection, and Certification is a massive industry, and this is an area where DNV GL really shines. So it was no surprise when Renato Grottola of DNV GL announced at the Wanxiang Summit in Shanghai that they would be moving all their client’s certificates on to the VeChainThor blockchain. They announced they would have over 900K client wallets by Q1 of 2020, as they built an entire portal of client services based around the blockchain. Early this year, they worked with Deloitte to migrate all their previous certificates from Ethereum, giving the mainnet a real test ride in the process. Averaging speeds of around 20 transactions per second, VeChain’s dynamic throughput swelled impressively to handle the extra traffic without a hiccup.

Number Two: VeChain Summit 2019

April brought the first ever VeChain Developer Summit to downtown San Francisco, giving the world a real glimpse at the rapidly growing ecosystem. Keynote speakers from Deloitte, DNV GL, Microsoft, Stanford University, and BMW wowed audiences with a look at some of the solutions being built, while developers and investors got to interact face-to-face with the team and key partners. We got a quick look at VerifyCar, BMW’s NDA-protected project, while VeChain’s CTO Gu Jianliang showed off some of VeChain’s own hardware solutions for the first time. Any doubts about the legitimacy of VeChain’s partners were put to rest at this iconic event – giving VeChain a hard act to follow in 2020.

Number One – Walmart China

While fancy MoU’s and signing ceremonies are great for headlines, seeing Walmart China’s Food Traceability Platform light up the mainnet in late June was an important step for the entire public blockchain industry. With plans to expand to over 100 product lines, Walmart China is incentivizing their vast network of independent suppliers to provide Walmart’s customers with more accountability and product data. This caught the attention of the national media in China, gaining recognition and winning awards in the process. Working with PwC to develop this platform, Walmart China’s decision to select VeChain should tell you all you need to know about the future of the project – and bodes well for future mainnet volume.

Tying up loose ends

Creating a “Top Ten List” is never easy, and there were some obvious oversights in this list. I left out the updated whitepaper and BRIBA alliance (Belt & Road Initiative) because I felt it was too early to gauge the impact. There were so many other moments and announcements that stood out as well, so if you feel like I butchered this list, send me an email or let me know on Twitter!

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For investors, traders, or anyone taking an active interest in VeChain: it’s always good to keep an eye on the price while going about your business online. Rather than having a dedicated browser window open, now Chrome, Brave, or Firefox users can install the VeChain Price Checker plugin.

The plugin puts a VeChain logo in the top right corner of your browser, with a badge that shows the real-time price in BTC (satoshi value). Clicking on the badge displays other major cryptocurrency prices in a number of different denominations.

Make no mistake – this is a very simple plugin. Clean and unobtrusive, there are no bells and whistles, just an idea the developer had when he got tired of opening up exchange windows all the time. This is something the developer (AByteAhead) is becoming well-known for – his VeChain Tokens dApp is another unflashy but time-saving tool for the VeChain community.

The badge even changes colors depending on the current trend: red for a bad day, blue for a stable or bullish day. For those of you who hate the idea of having a badge on their browser toolbar, the feature can also be disabled, leaving the “V” logo to be clicked on whenever you need an update. And it’s fast – the price (an average of Binance and OceanEx) updates automatically each minute on the badge, and manually every time you click the plugin.

So while this might not be the sign of mass-adoption we were all waiting for, it is a nice little time-saving upgrade that VeChain token holders will certainly appreciate.

Links:
Chrome Webstore
Firefox Browser Add-on

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In light of a resolution provided by VeChain, Ben Yorke sat down with Fabian from VeChainStats.com, the community developer who played a key role in controlling damage during the theft.

Note: For those of you not aware, a little over a week ago, funds were stolen from the VeChain Foundation’s private buyback wallet. Fabian, who uses email notifications through the Wallü dApp he created, gets instantly alerted whenever a large transfer goes through. After recognizing something was amiss, he contacted the Foundation and with their approval created a dynamic blacklist which they shared with exchanges to prevent such a large amount of VET from being dumped on the open market. A few days later, the Foundation updated the VeChainThor mainnet to prevent block validators (Authority Masternodes) from processing transactions sent out by the wallets under control of the thief. This was a more permanent solution to simply working with exchanges, but in keeping with the decentralized nature of a public blockchain, a vote was needed to confirm the permanent implementation of the upgrade. All Economic and X-Node holders could vote to “Agree” to a permanent block list, or “Disagree”, freeing up the stolen wallets to operate as normal.

Between December 25th-30st, all node holders will be eligible to vote. For more information on the vote, refer here.

Update: Originally, VeChainStats.com made it possible to monitor the results of the voting. However, a large quantity of “Disagree” votes were sent from ineligible addresses (Only votes from node-holders will be counted). At the time of posting, eligible “Agree” votes were drastically leading eligible “Disagree” votes.

BY: Hey Fabian, busy week?

Fabian: It was a blast of a week, I need a few days to recover from the sleepless nights and marathon around this theft. Anyways, hello Ben, thank you for allowing me to answer some frequently asked questions around the VeChain theft in this interview. As we run into the Christmas holidays I’ll try to keep it short as possible – although that might be really hard :-).

BY: How are you feeling about everything?

Fabian: The VeChain Foundation did an incredible job of tackling this theft. Also, I was more than surprised that my rapidly developed blacklist and tracing system was quickly used and adopted by Exchanges and officially used.

BY: Let’s go for a quick recap of the theft. How much was taken, and how much was recovered?

Fabian: That is a tough question. Basically, we need to divide the funds of the heist into on-chain held funds (that got temporarily frozen) and funds that hit exchanges (got deposited). On-chain wallets can be permanently blocked from transactions – what will most likely be the first governance voting involving the VeChain community.

From the initial stolen 1.164.340.156 VET worth roughly 6.6 million USD (at the moment of the heist), the exact amount of 727.593.289 VET and 47.528.128* VTHO are currently frozen.

From my view, I can not claim nor calculate how much of the deposited funds have likely been seized/confiscated. That information is of course important for further investigations and redemptions are still an open and ongoing process. The community should have faith in the fact that exchanges were doing their very best to prevent illegal activities and usage of the stolen funds.

The CEO of KuCoin also stated on twitter that they actively were working together with VeChain. Kucoin saw the most significant incoming transfers in total amounts.

A funny side story:

There was a honeypot placed in the original buyback wallet that we marked “whitelisted” on purpose. To explain it quickly, the thief tried to re-use the original buyback wallet to avoid the blacklisting and tested first with small amounts (which we did not blacklist), meanwhile the VeChain Foundation developed a script/tool that was able to instantly transfer out received funds (They obviously still had the private keys for that compromised wallet). After the thief tried to transfer in a larger amount of VET, the script was triggered and the stolen VET was sent to a new secure wallet in the very next block (altogether, he moved 13 mln VET worth 70,460 USD into it, that we were able to recover). See: https://vechainstats.com/account/0x530053beb2e61e98770718e6c3e907dd7e7b478e/

BY: That’s a really cool story. Anyways, I see a lot of people asking… Are any innocent wallets at risk? How did you determine which wallets were blacklisted?

Fabian: No! Absolutely not. We perfected the blacklist using on-going simulations I spent during the entire time (endless hours) designed to prevent misconduct of the blacklist. The biggest fight was to train the blacklisting processes and algorithms to prevent this harmful dusting vector from flagging innocent wallets. In the end, we accomplished our goal of only blacklisting accounts related to the thief. In addition, VeChainStats.com was giving the VeChain community live outputs about the status of the wallets. Hundreds of community members were actively monitoring and following how wallets got live tagged (and marked) in the provided account viewer.

To shed some more light into the dark: To be blacklisted several criteria needed to be hit, and additional filters correlating to certain time frames needed to be fulfilled.

The thief tested the deployed blacklisting process many times – he even tried sending transfers (like 50k VET) to the Binance cold wallet directly from a blacklisted account. Those tests failed – meaning no false-positive occurred. The community can check the last transfer to the Binance cold wallet: https://vechainstats.com/account/0xd0d9cd5aa98efcaeee2e065ddb8538fa977bc8eb/

Furthermore, it should be noticed that the official VeChain blocklist of currently 469 wallets are not decided or provisioned solely by VeChainStats. The VeChain Core Team used their own tools to determine polluted wallets and make an official blocklist. I’m certain that they cross-referenced and checked against the published blacklist by VeChainStats.

A rendering of the thousands of accounts created in the theft.

BY: That’s good to know. Were there any interesting statistics from the theft?

Fabian: Hmm.. let’s see. The thief archived a nice run and throughput in creating new wallets and moving (hopping) funds to avoid (unsuccessfully) the blacklisting process. Here’s some data:
VET transfers 2019-12-14
Total VET transfers:
284 related transactions
1.042.231.700 VET moved

VET transfers 2019-12-15
Total VET transfers:
108 related transactions
519.182.001 VET moved

VET transfers 2019-12-16
Total VET transfers:
5 related transactions
6.650.000 VET moved

VET transfers 2019-12-17
Total VET transfers:
10.496 related transactions
198.985.136 VET moved

VET transfers 2019-12-18
Total VET transfers:
9.799 related transactions
450.264.131 VET moved

Total created accounts (by VET transfers):
8.861 wallets

BY: Wow, sounds like he kept himself busy. What fallout do you think will there be? Can hacks be avoided in the future?

Fabian: The VeChain mainnet, official wallets and all related services have always been 100% secure. On the opposite and as sadly it sounds, hacks and thefts are common in the blockchain industry. We can call this almost a stigma that no blockchain (project) can avoid; at a certain point a hack, stolen funds, or some other mishap is bound to happen. I would say this is the problematic downside of decentralization – of course this is a really critical statement.

BY: There were several graphs you showed, is this something we are going to see more of in the future with VeChainStats?

Fabian: Well spotted. There is a bigger upgrade I’m making for VeChainStats to improve the user experience and data analytics possibilities. For a while now, I have been actively in touch with the ZoomCharts team. From my personal view, they offer one of the most professional chart engines to fit my needs. Please do not nail me on a release date for the big update, as I am no fan of “pre-announcements”.

BY: Can you give some insights about the DDoS attacks to VeChainStats?

Fabian: Sure! A surprisingly advanced DDoS attack started on the second day (2019-12-14) against the VeChainStats blacklist. Cloud instances (droplets) of several well-known cloud providers got used for those attacks. The unknown entity that started this DDoS attack was not attacking the main website of vechainstats, rather than “only” targeting the provided live blacklists of vechainstats.com. The DDoS attack stopped after a total of 41mln requests and +140gb unblocked/unfiltered traffic on 2019-12-18.

BY: Anything you want to say to the community?

Fabian: Thank you VeFam! It was an incredibly tough time and we will come out stronger. I wish everyone a beautiful holiday season.

BY: What are you going to do in the future? Do you have any plans to create a business or take your blacklisting system further?

Fabian: On a personal level I am always striving to expand my knowledge and I see with the expected adoption of blockchain applications a requirement for innovative approaches in using data analytics. At this stage, I do not want to disclose too many ideas, but I am driven to create more value and a data-driven business model in the long run.

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