DNV GL’s Renato Grottola Presents Keynote on Blockchain in Traceability, San Marino, and Digital Assurances using VeChain

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Renato Grottola’s keynote at the Shanghai Wanxiang Blockchain Week was succinct, leaving audiences without any confusion: Mainly that DNV GL is past the “Proof of Concept Era” and ready to bring the blockchain to businesses. He began by explaining how decentralization and disintermediation was reducing the trust gap and posed a threat to their business model, a model with a 150 year history and client-base in over 100 countries. He then explained how DNV GL began developing their Digital Assurances to provide trust on “the border” of the physical and digital world. This includes verifying that product IDs and data uploaded to the blockchain is accurate and compliant.

Grottola stressed that this was already in production, while referencing their solutions for the wine industry in Italy.

Blockchain plays a major role in DNV GL’s plans to digitize their certification services. Grottola explained how DNV GL was developing digital wallets and identities to be a gateway to DNV GL’s digital services. This digital certification service is scheduled to be online later this year, with the full wallet services being released to over 900,000 customers in January of 2020. DNV GL is authorized to provide certifications on a wide range of industries, including maritime, gas & energy, healthcare, and management systems. Grottola is a big believer in circular ecosystems. His work strives to align a large number of companies working together to create mutual benefit and value. Customers share in this value creation, by gaining benefits that can be contributed back into the ecosystem – a system that needs to be backed by blockchain-based trust. A great example of this is the ecosystem being built in San Marino, a region with progressive leadership and a small but flexible population. VeChain’s public blockchain will be used to encourage citizens to become carbon neutral, by rewarding them with tokens (nicknamed ‘Greenies’) for activities such as public or electric transport, ride-sharing, low-energy and water consumption, solar power installation, and recycling. This system, aimed at tourists as well as citizens, will allow residents and visitors to redeem tokens for a number of goods, discounts, and additional services. This ecosystem will be developed by DNV GL, but will require the participation of a number of large corporations that have yet to be announced. Grottola also stated his belief that blockchain and circular ecosystems are essential for helping with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Circular ecosystems, like the one shown in San Marino, are being developed by VeChain and DNV GL in other key regions, including China and some European nations. They have the ability to activate and engage citizens, providing incentives to meet the SDGs, rather than just relying on traditional government driven initiatives. Grottola concluded with a list of things DNV GL learned on their 2 year journey with blockchain. He stressed the importance of collaboration, and warned that the internal debates between “alt-coiners” and “one-coiners” was extremely detrimental to the entire industry. There was little doubt that among an international audience with many top industry leaders – few were anywhere near the level of DNV GL.

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VeChain celebrates Mid-Autumn Festival with Big Week

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VeChain started the holiday week by introducing the Low Carbon Ecosystem WeChat Mini Program to the Chinese community. You can read more about the blockchain-powered ecosystem co-organized by DNV GL and VeChain here.

On September 13th, CEO Sunny Lu spoke at a seminar organized by incubator Peninsula Corporate Innovation in Barcelona, Spain. This was a good opportunity to establish connections and show off VeChain’s technical capabilities to an audience of local executives and technical experts.

On September 16th, VeChain Technical Director Albert Ma will present VeChain’s solutions at an event organized by Fenbushi Capital and Bloxroute Labs. The event will take place in Shanghai.

September 17th will see Sunny Lu presenting at the Wanxiang Blockchain Summit in Shanghai. This is one of the marquee events in the Chinese blockchain space, with tickets retailing for 5900 yuan ($833 USD). Other notable speakers will include Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, and Muneeb Ali.

The following day, industry experts will take the stage. The VeChain Ecosystem will be heavily represented with Deloitte Global Blockchain CTO and VeChain Advisor Antonio Senatore taking the stage. DNV GL’s Global Director M&A and Digital Transformation Renato Grottola will be presenting as well. This will be a good opportunity to learn how VeChain’s technology is impacting both Deloitte and DNV GL’s international portfolio of enterprise clients.

Finally, in honor of Mid Autumn Festival in China, VeChain rewarded their close friends and employees with a modern twist on the traditional mooncake.

The boxes were tagged with VeChain’s NFC, serving as another example of how blockchain can be used to verify products for businesses.

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Sneak Peek at the Low Carbon Ecosystem’s WeChat Mini Program

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Note: This “Sneak Peek” article contains information about a product still under development. Not all the information is guaranteed to be accurate. Please wait for an official announcement from the VeChain Foundation regarding the launch at a later date.

Ever since last November, VeChain enthusiasts have been waiting for more details of VeChain’s Low Carbon Digital Ecosystem. Last week, the WeChat Mini Program went public, allowing users in China to begin getting involved.

The Mini Program features a playful tree mascot, and a slick interface and layout designed to attract a mainstream audience here in China. Elements of blockchain are well-hidden by a familiar feeling layout using bright colors, a badge-based achievement system, and custom icons.

For readers unfamiliar with social media in China, WeChat is the dominant app, with over 1 billion daily active users. WeChat’s Mini programs are small applications built into WeChat that provide more advanced features without having to visit an external website.

VeChain’s new Low Carbon Ecosystem Mini Program allows users to gain points for doing eco-friendly activities. The points are divided into two types: blockchain-based Carbon Credits and non-blockchain based Green Power Credits.

Carbon Credits can be earned by users who link their BYD hybrid or electric vehicles to gain points. Other settings indicate that using smart appliances in your home and recycling will soon allow people to earn Carbon Credits as well. These features are not yet available, but will presumably use Haier’s line of smart appliances to automatically connect to user data. Carbon Credits will be redeemable for products and services at a later date.

Green Power credits are points that can be earned for a number of more easily accomplished tasks such as walking. These are designed to make the ecosystem more engaging, especially for users who might not own a BYD or smart appliance. These credits can be donated to other users, or used in fundraising activities on the platform. At the time of writing, there were two separate activities designed to raise funds for needy children in and around Shanghai. One activity, working with Shanghai People’s Radio Station, is raising funds for school uniforms for rural schools.

According to the announcement article, the Low Carbon Ecosystem is already made up of 11 participants, including VeChain, DNV GL, Qinghua University’s College of Sino-American relations, BYD, PICC, Direct Imported Goods (D.I.G.), Renji Hospital, and others.

While the full list of features aren’t yet available, it’s easy to see how this Mini Program could be a popular way for people to track rewards, especially owners of products supported by the Low Carbon Ecosystem. China has been placing a special importance on sustainability in the media recently, with Shanghai making headlines for implementing a mandatory garbage sorting system this summer. This gives the ecosystem a large appeal to users, organizations, and enterprise participants.

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VeChain Community Member Uses ToolChain to Verify Black Tea Products

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One of the more active members of the Chinese community became one of the first VeChain channel partners by registering black tea on the blockchain. This is a great example of how small and medium sized enterprises can use Toolchain to gain access to blockchain solutions.

The tea uses QR codes to provide customers with more complete product data. With items like black tea, the origin can be the difference between valuable and ordinary tea. However, origin can be easily faked because packaging is often self-produced. Having blockchain-backed data can help with building trust and educating customers who might be unfamiliar with the techniques and history of the tea-producing farms.

Since the community member, nicknamed GuaiGuai, is very active in the community, he has even put the product up for sale on WeChat and is accepting RMB, VET, VTHO, and ETH. Currently he is working on implementing his solution into other eCommerce portals, to expand his domestic market.

ToolChain is VeChain’s BaaS platform, that gives approved users access to the same powerful tools used by large enterprises like Walmart China. For more information, visit this post by community member Wilson Cheah.

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Opinion – The Significance of Jur’s Successful IEO

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Jur’s subscription received a staggering $10 million dollars in VET and OCE tokens on Wednesday, surprising even the most optimistic of supporters. We took the chance to break down the significance from a few different perspectives. 

Jur – While their funding was never in doubt – the stakes have now been raised by having such a large audience of token holders. More people than expected will be evaluating their development plan and token model, and the challenge is now on Jur to convince short-term IEO participants to become long-term holders. The IEO marketing campaign was obviously quite effective, but it remains to be seen whether everyone was here because they actually wanted to participate in Jur’s decentralized dispute resolution voting platform, or if they were just seeking a quick flip. Nevertheless, the soon-to-be released Beta Platform’s focus on active participation and game theory should resonate with more impatient holders, who want an opportunity to use tokens and make gains on their investment.

OceanEx – Based on what we’ve seen so far, nearly everything they’ve done has been a success. Their own ICO sold out fast, the CryptoFarm platform has seen nothing but sell outs, they’ve quietly been climbing the CMC ranks, and now OceanEx Go! has flashed its potential. IEOs are quickly becoming the industry equivalent of a cash-grab, but if OceanEx can maintain their effectiveness, it could make the platform real attractive to new projects looking for a token distribution model. This means OceanEx must do a lot of due diligence, but it still bodes well for the China-based exchange. Early investors in OCE will be pleased to see the progress of OceanEx, as it is now unquestionably the biggest standout of all the VeChain ecosystem projects.

OceanEx Go!’s decision to skip the time-sensitive first-come first-serve model and allow a generous 4 hours of unlimited subscriptions was an eyebrow-raiser at first, but it seems to have paid off as well. According to OceanEx, new registrations and KYCs were up significantly, an overall positive result that should expose more people to OCE. Rather than consolidate tokens into the hands of a few timely investors, OceanEx is hoping to grow their active userbase with the goal of more long-term progression.

Based on user-feedback, most people were complimentary of the platform, with only a few complaints about server issues early on in the IEO. After that was resolved, people were able to subscribe successfully, and tokens were distributed almost immediately after. Speed and reliability are two of the biggest nagging issues with IEO platforms, so this should be good news for future projects and investors.

VeChain – The VeChain ecosystem has shown it’s more than capable of persuading projects to join the ranks, and the Jur success story will be another great example of what can happen. The community support is still strong, and the business-first orientation of VeChain is still inspiring belief. Enterprise partners proved enticing enough for Jur to port over from Ethereum, showing the value in having credible partnerships behind a project.

Jur is another member of their “real valuable transactions” group, and strengthens VeChain’s ties to San Marino and Italy. Jur has the legal skills to assist VeChain on a number of key issues, adding an important legal vertical that the ecosystem had been missing. Altogether, the IEO listing was very positive for VeChain, OceanEx, and Jur alike, but now the focus shifts to seeing whether Jur can maintain holder confidence while OceanEx Go! must continue to find high-quality projects.

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3 Things the Western Media is Missing about China’s New Digital Currency

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This is an editorial by Ben Yorke. The opinions listed here are in response to the mass-reporting of a national Chinese digital currency from the People’s Bank of China (PBoC).

As much as it pains me to say this, China probably isn’t opening up to digital currencies. After the PBoC announced their digital currency was ready after 5 years of development, we’ve all seen the rumors floating around, and as usual, the media doesn’t know how to handle stories about China. Political and cultural complexities are once again oversimplified without considering the underlying implications. Here are a few things to take away from the announcement:

1. There will be nothing “public” about it.

For investors of VeChain, NEO, or any other China-based projects, this is going to be a tough pill to swallow. The world’s second largest economy isn’t going to trust their national currency to a blockchain startup. They will have a private chain, running on private nodes, that they have total control over.

2. China already has a digital currency.

There is no need for a national cryptocurrency from a public perspective. For all intents and purposes, the RMB has already been fully digitized thanks to Alipay and WeChat Pay. In 2018, China processed over 57 billion mobile transactions, a little more than 1800 per second. This number should continue to skyrocket as cash becomes more and more inconvenient to use. On a personal note, I’ve literally gone weeks without carrying or spending cash, nearly everything is conducted using QR Codes and WeChat.

For Beijing, the upside is that each of these transactions are tied to a WeChat or Alipay account, meaning personal identification numbers and bank accounts are all tied together. It’s impossible to have any sort of anonymity, a key reason Beijing is so supportive of this digital economy.

3. Control is the Name of the Game

The PBoC doesn’t want to make cross-border transactions easier. They don’t want to make it easier to buy and sell goods under the table. It’s not about increasing access to banking services. So what is the primary motivation here?

This announcement comes at a time when they are trying to limit their national banking system’s access to loans and shadow-banking. After the recent collapse of the Bank of Jinzhou and Baoshang Bank, the PBoC is on high-alert for more failing institutions. Low liquidity as well as abuse of interbank lending and wealth management products (WMPs) has ignited a concern that a financial crisis might be closer than Beijing had realized.

An interbank network could certainly help the PBoC control certain areas of banking activities. According to various news sources, the new digital currency would have a two-tier system with the PBoC at the top and commercial banks on the second tier. From Beijing’s perspective, this makes a lot more sense than an open-source, public blockchain such as Libra. Still, it’s not the kind of thing that ordinary people will come in contact with, or even need to know about.

Is this a response to Libra?

Certainly, everything China’s top economic policy-makers do has been evaluated from a geo-political angle. CoinTelegraph went for a more sensational spin by saying that “The PBoC has been planning to get ahead of the U.S. and Facebook’s Libra by issuing a national cryptocurrency, as American politicians slam the brakes on the social network’s stablecoin because of regulatory concerns.” While China’s state-run media might parade this as an example of innovation, Libra’s announcement came loaded with technical details, in the hope that they could begin implementing a revolutionary new infrastructure. China’s announcement came without any information, an indication that the title was more important than the actual details themselves. Don’t fool yourselves, China’s government (wisely) isn’t going to turn their financial system over to a public blockchain anytime soon. Still, the PBoC planning to use a blockchain for a national digital currency has a nice ring to it. In a world where most people only read the headlines, it seems like a smart move.

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