Weekly Report Nov. 16 – 22

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

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

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

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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Understanding VeChain’s relationship with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS)

For the average investor, few names command more attention than a member of FAAMG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google). So when the community saw pictures of Microsoft Azure and VeChain co-hosting an event at PwC’s office in Singapore, it left many scratching their heads as to what it actually meant. Since not all of us are Computer Science majors, let’s take a closer look at what this actually means.

What is a partner?

The cryptocurrency community has somewhat abused this word over the last few years, tossing it around and raising expectations in the hope of gaining a few extra investors along the way. Slowly the word partner has become to hint at exclusivity and anything less than that is likely to trigger mass confusion.

The reality is that many tech companies have hundreds of partners, spread across different fields and serving different purposes. AWS and Microsoft Azure are perfect examples, as competing cloud computing companies, it is their goal to offer as many products and services to their customers as possible. In this manner, they can convince companies to use their services for all their business needs: such as internal company networks, customer databases, data storage, analytics, ERP systems (Think HR and Finance software, inventory and supply chain management software, other business planning software) and whatever other needs a business might have. The costs of all this is quite high, with Azure contributing more to Microsoft’s bottomline than the departments in charge of Windows or Office.

So why is VeChain’s partnership with the two largest cloud computing companies significant?

A pessimist might say it’s a lot like saying 7-11 is partnered with Coke, since they sell the product there. They might point to the fact that both AWS and Azure are blockchain-agnostic, and feature other blockchains like Hyperledger, Corda, and Ethereum. You could even argue that VeChain’s integration is just an install on a preconfigured virtual server, and nothing to write home about.

But before you stop reading, consider what this means for both sides. For starters, cloud services are incredibly expensive, with Flexera’s 2019 State of the Cloud reporting that half of all enterprises participating in the survey spent more than $1.2 million dollars on cloud services in the previous year. For small and medium-sized businesses, around 49% spent more than $120K over the same time frame. That means these companies can be really aggressive in pushing their services to clients, which is what we saw in summer, when China’s AWS clients all received an email about VeChain and DNV GL in their inbox.

Both Azure and AWS would really love for their clients to begin developing blockchain solutions powered by VeChain, since it could make them quite a bit of money in the process. And with 84% of companies using a multi-cloud strategy in 2018, there is real urgency to encourage clients to deploy on their cloud, before the competition beats them to it.

That’s one of the main reasons why companies like Azure and AWS are keen to educate their enterprise clients about the benefits of public blockchains. They know that blockchains are an emerging technology which enterprises are spending freely on through research and early prototyping. They also recognize that by supporting VeChain in the education process, they can start unlocking another incredibly lucrative market.

And that’s how we found ourselves at the event co-hosted by Microsoft Azure and PwC on the 14th of November. A number of Azure’s major clients turned up to listen to speeches on how VeChain’s public chain technology was being used by companies like BMW, Wal-Mart China, PwC, DNV GL, PICC, Dai-Nippon Printing, Reebonz, and Fresh Supply Co. VeChain was able to demonstrate the wide range of utility a public blockchain could have, while showing off VeChain’s unique features that make enterprise adoption easy compared to other public chains. And thanks to good feedback from the event, VeChain and Azure are already exploring more opportunities to hold similar workshops in other countries around the world.

Furthermore, VeChain’s integration with these big cloud service providers is an essential step in gaining mass adoption. Existing Azure clients don’t have to worry about switching cloud service providers, and can use quick deployment to do fast prototyping while receiving quick, reliable, and global computing power for a blockchain solution powered by VeChain. These solutions are convenient to start, since cloud-based solutions don’t require any additional hardware purchases, are easy to scale upwards or downwards, and are part of a global network that will be consistent regardless of whether the project starts in a major region like North America or somewhere smaller like Singapore.

Take the case of Reebonz, who are developing a VeChain-powered C2C trading platform for luxury goods. Even if they preferred one cloud over the other, it would still be easy for them to deploy VeChain’s backend solutions on their existing account. Making it easy for enterprises is the ultimate goal, and one that VeChain is slowly succeeding at.

https://twitter.com/Sarah_Nabaa/status/1194931428795928576

So What Should We Expect?

If you are already heading over to VeChainstats.com to check for updates, you may be disappointed. Corporations don’t react very quickly, and require a lot of patience throughout the development process. Still, educating clients becomes so much easier when AWS and Azure begin carrying the torch. Credibility is at an all-time high, as it would be incredibly unlikely for Azure to push a solution that they didn’t see any real-world value in. The impact should be felt over the long-term, as we accelerate the process of on-boarding clients and come closer towards the realization of VeChain’s grander vision – a world where VeChain exists as one of the top global blockchain infrastructure providers, delivering value to users, clients, and token holders alike.

Thanks to MiRei for his technical contributions to this article.

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VeChain and OpenNodes Bring Blockchain to the Singapore FinTech Festival

The Singapore FinTech Festival takes place from November 11th through the 15th, advertised as one of the largest FinTech exhibitions in the world. It showcases the innovations of a number of large financial institutions, such as DBS, Standard Chartered, Bank of China, as well as national pavilions from countries like Canada, Japan, France, and Germany. It’s hard to ignore the growing influence of blockchain solutions, as the technology becomes more and more an integral part of the FinTech Scene.

This year’s blockchain pavilion was hosted by OpenNodes, a Singaporean blockchain ecosystem consisting of investors, government agencies and civil servants, enterprise leaders and solutions providers like VeChain. Established by the Infocom Media Development Authority of Singapore and Tribe Accelerator, OpenNodes brings together companies like BMW, Ernst & Young, PwC, IBM, and Intel to help connect blockchain use-cases with real world application.

OpenNodes is an impressive result of Singapore’s thriving blockchain culture mixed with progressive regulatory structure and corporations willing to work with local companies and startups. The “Hyperconnected Singapore Blockchain Ecosystem” organizes events for blockchain companies to interact with top enterprises, allowing the technology to develop and mature in a structured and supported environment.

As the only public blockchain with an enterprise-grade approach to supply chain solutions, this gives VeChain an important opportunity to explore and optimize the depth of their solutions. Throughout the week, VeChain’s team had the opportunity to show off their solutions with corporate and organizational delegates, other exhibitors, and around 45,000 other visitors to the week-long event.

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