For more surveys, check out the VeChain Community Survey and the Safe Haven Community Survey.

In April, the third project in the VeChain ecosystem was examined by a community survey. This time it was about OceanEx, the growing exchange with strong ties to VeChain.

Participation in the survey was possible from April 15th to 22th. A total of 397 people took part in the survey. The usual significance requirements (95% confidence level, 5% margin of error) were more than fulfilled with regard to the target group.

Summary of results:

75% of the participants became aware of OceanEx before the exchange went live. So it is not surprising that about half (48%) participated in the token sale. However, only 12% of the community joined in 2019. This indicates a slow growth of the community.

Similar to VeChain or SafeHaven, the community is planning OceanEx as a long-term investment. Half of the participants have sold less than 10% or 0% of their OCE so far. 76% said they wanted to keep OCE for more than a year. And the price targets also speak for themselves: 96% would not sell at the current price, 35% only at a price of $1.00 or more.

A look at the distribution of the OCE tokens among the participants reveals an imbalance in the Member Club Levels – especially with regard to levels 4 and 5.

The ratings of the upper levels, for which at least 50,000,000 OCE are required, are correspondingly negative. 48% of the participants are of the opinion that level 4 is too high, with level 5 being even at 53%.

At the same time 58% of the participants are convinced of the member club benefits – this means, however, that 42% still have to be convinced. This part of the community would not store their OCE tokens on the exchange at the moment.

91% have already collected trading experience on OceanEx, 40% have already shifted most of their activity to this exchange. VET (92%), OCE (78%), VTHO (73%) and SHA (61%) were the most frequently traded assets. TIC (29%), USDT (24%) and DBET (11%) are the worst performers. On average, participants stated that 45% of their trading activity was already carried out on OceanEx.

With regard to various dimensions of the project, trust & security received top marks (8.0 on a scale of 1 to 10), and design (7.8) and platform speed (7.7) also came off very well. Trading campaigns (7.0) and marketing as well as social media activities (6.5) were rated lower.

Additionally, different statements about OceanEx should be evaluated again. It was notable that there was a low level of approval with regard to satisfaction with the Member Club program (24%) and a high level of understanding with regard to compliance procedures (e.g. KYC) (76%). The evaluation of all statements can be seen in the complete document at the end of the article.

The mobile trading app was at the top of the list of missing features (8.4), closely followed by fiat trading pairs (8.3). The other places were occupied by the stop/limit trading functionality (7.7), the IEO launchpad (7.5) and the export of the trading history (7.0).

Participants prefer an OCE Club system as the launchpad format (52%). The trading campaigns are used by the participants rather occasionally – most of them stated to participate from time to time (33%).

The coin burn received the highest rating (8.3) for a possible increase in the value of OCE – closely followed by the Launchpad (8.1).

The open text responses also turned out to be very interesting. Here the following wishes were expressed:

– The possibility to buy crypto via bank transfer / credit card

– Implementation of a fiat money gateway

– Connection between VeChain wallet and OceanEx exchange

– More OCE trading pairs & more project listings in general

– Dividends based on the amount of OCE a user is holding

– Export functionality of the complete trading history

– Mobile trading app

– Release of a roadmap / development timeline

– Better communication, more transparency and marketing

Although OceanEx is a very young platform, they have already achieved a lot that they can be proud of. However, there is still a lot of room for improvement – users are used to certain features or offers from other exchanges and don’t want to be deprived of them on OceanEx.

The complete survey report can be downloaded here.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me on Twitter at @hh_tim. You can find more contact options on my website www.cryptolyze.online

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VIP 191 is an upgrade to the VeChain core blockchain. Initially proposed by Totient, it allows users to bypass a transaction fee (VTHO) by delegating it to an application they are using. Many are familiar with MPP, a multi-party payment protocol that allows a smart contract owner to sponsor transaction costs. VIP-191 expands this by allowing sponsors to pay for transaction costs, even if they are not the owner of the contract.

Totient Co-Founder Clinton Bembry discusses VIP-191 at the VeChain Summit

Essentially, it allows a user to request someone else pay their transaction fee in a simplistic manner. In practice, this will likely be hidden behind the interface of an application, but will allow the user to skip past the more complex steps of the transaction, making VeChain more user-friendly than other cryptocurrency platforms.

How does it work?

VIP-191 works by delegating a secondary address to pay the transaction cost. When processing, the transaction will be signed by the secondary address, before being sent to the blockchain.

Example Scenario: A Cometverse user wants to tip another user. The VTHO is supplied by Totient, and the transaction is written to the blockchain at no additional cost to the user.

For a more detailed explanation, read the proposal on Github.

Why is this important?

From an investor standpoint, VeChain’s two-token economic model creates value for VET holders by earning them the VTHO used to power the blockchain. However, for the many projects working on the blockchain, such as Plair, Safe Haven, or Decent.Bet, requiring users to purchase VTHO is an unnecessary step that could discourage less-technical users from adopting their services. Third-party apps such as Vexchange.io or Cometverse could also benefit from streamlining the user experience and absorbing the costs of transactions. It also opens the door to more creative pricing models, such as subscription-based, where users could be charged a fee to use the platform, and then have all their transaction costs handled by the application.

This simple innovation will make the VeChain platform more attractive to third-party developers, as well as new ICO projects looking for a platform to launch on. By optimizing the user experience, VeChain can encourage more usage and higher user retention.

Making the platform more user-friendly and more developer-friendly should ultimately lead to even more usage over time.

When can this be used?

VIP 191 was first proposed in late March, and later shown off at the VeChain Developer Summit. Currently it is being tested, and will likely be implemented in an upcoming upgrade of the VeChain core protocol.

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On April 18th, founder Rik Rapmund announced his new blockchain-based startup, WorkPi. He described WorkPi as “Uber or Airbnb platform for the labour market, but owned by its users without commercial commissions and enriched by data applications powered by smart contracts.” He joined us to answer a few questions about the new platform he is currently developing.

Q1: First off, thanks for taking time to answer these questions. Could you talk a little about the state of the labor market, and why you felt a decentralized approach through blockchain was the correct way of solving this real-world problem?

Rik: Thanks for having me Ben! The answer to your first question consists of two parts: the labour market has an ethical and economic challenge. A lot of people in the recruitment industry say that ‘hiring is broken’, and I agree with them. The influence of recruiters on the hiring decision is too big, causing a huge bias in the process. Women & minority groups have a smaller chance of getting hired, which is unjust and irrational. We need to digitize the space and make unbiased decisions based on real data like assessments. From an economic perspective, the job market is dominated by mediating recruitment firms and changing due to the upcoming platform economy. Platform economies like Uber work really well for the users, but the commercial fees make them inefficient. With a decentralized approach, we can establish complete disintermediation, resulting in a very efficient shared economy.

Q2: Sites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and other job portals are very popular with job-seekers and employers. What gives WorkPi a competitive advantage over sites like that?

Rik: Social platforms like LinkedIn work very well because they offer free services and everybody is on it. However, people don’t realize that their personal data is the main selling point of the platform. WorkPi will not sell the data to third parties but incentivise you to leverage the data by sharing it with our AI-recruiter. The AI-recruiter will be a unique feature of WorkPi because it matches a candidate with real enterprise data. As soon as our AI-recruiter learns patterns, it will also be able to provide career advice based on a person’s unique WPI-profile.

Q3: What do you see as your target market? Are there any particular industries that you think are good fits for WorkPi?

Rik: It’s easy to mention our target market: every employer and employee/worker in the world! However, complex vacancies such as managers or consultants are still hard to fulfil because of the importance of soft skills. We will get better at measuring soft skills over time, but in the meantime, we will focus on hard skills. We conducted extensive market research within the U.S. to identify industries with a high number of jobs & hires per year. We decided to develop our MVP within the freelance and hospitality industry because we’re able to measure key skills, characteristics & preferences of hospitality workers and it’s a top volume industry with a lot of hires per year. We want to show the world an example of how people can work together peer-to-peer before we roll out in every other market you can think of. WorkPi is designed to target an enormous market, but we have to test and pilot our solutions in specific industries carefully.

Q4: Why did you choose VeChain to develop on?

Rik: Our grand vision is to develop a shared economy which is owned by its users. VeChain was the only public blockchain with an aligning strategy. The problem with PoW & PoS blockchains is that the foundation has no control over the selection of nodes providing the network. The only way to make sure that the network is provided by enterprises that derive utility from the rewarded token is to verify them (Proof of Authority). VeChain & WorkPi are both designed to be very scalable and adopted by extensive amounts of enterprises. If WorkPi proves to be working by improving HR & Recruitment processes, the enterprise partners within the VeChain ecosystem could also implement it easily (they are likely also steps ahead of their competition in the field of ‘smart money’ asset management).

Q5: How do you plan to onboard users who might not be familiar with blockchains and decentralized protocols?

Rik: I like that you’re asking me that. The fact that VeChain focuses on allowing people to use the blockchain unknowingly is another reason for us to use their chain. We will make sure that users don’t need any crypto-related knowledge to use WorkPi. For example, users will be able to pay for services with both $WPI tokens as fiat currencies.

Q6: How are you going to raise funds? Will you do an ICO?

There will probably be no ICO because we want our platform to be owned by its users. Enterprises will be the heavy users of the platform (workers only switch jobs a couple of times in their life, they have no incentive to hold $WPI long term). WorkPi will be funded by registered employers who hire a lot of employees on a yearly base. Maybe we will have a very small ICO for X-node holders and registered freelancers.

Q7: Can you tell us anymore about the projected roadmap for WorkPi?

The first year of our roadmap is very important because we are not planning to raise all our funds at the start. We want to prove that our solution could work with a MVP (Minimum Viable Product). We will raise the funds for the MVP through a seed round in Q3.

Q8: How can people get involved with WorkPi?

Rik: We will soon announce a way to get involved with WorkPi on the @WorkPi_official twitter. It will involve a whitelist to be one of the first users of the WorkPi Alpha release early next year.

To learn more about WorkPi, check out their website workpi.io and follow their twitter.

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With many key projects and ecosystem developers descending on San Francisco for the inaugural summit, we took a speculative look at what might make the April 18th event noteworthy. In addition to hands-on tech demonstrations, attendees will be hoping to hear plans from the multitude of speakers taking the stage at the summit.

NOTE: These predictions are based on publicly-available information and prior knowledge of the speakers. Words in italics are unofficial predictions by the author. Vechain101 writes unofficial articles on the VeChain ecosystem and the thoughts and predictions don’t represent the views or plans of the VeChain Foundation.

Product announcements:

On April 16th, VeChain gave us a glimpse of VeChainWorld, a development hub and application center designed to provide third party developers access to key resources. This will be instrumental in the creation of new dApps and blockchain-based games. At the summit, we hope to learn more about how products like VeChainWorld will allow non-foundation developers to get involved. From 10:30 to 11:10, COO Kevin Feng and core developers Tony Li and Jack Wu will discuss a number of planned features and products for third-party development. 

In the afternoon, from 1:00-1:40 Jerome Grilleres (GM of VeChain Europe) and Sarah Nabaa (GM of VeChain SEA & Australia) will introduce ToolChain, which provides resources for SME’s looking to implement blockchain solutions for their own products, services, and supply chains.

Core Business and Blockchain Development:

A 2:05-2:30 pm speech from Luca Crisciotti (CEO of DNV GL’s Business Assurances) will likely discuss how DNV GL is successfully implementing blockchain solutions like My Story around the globe. Of notable interest to attendees is plans to expand into the seafood, clothing, and automotive industry as My Story moves beyond providing European wine makers with verification and traceability solutions.

From 1:40 – 2:00, VeChain CTO Gu Jianliang will discuss how in-house hardware products are combining with ERP and ISM solutions to give enterprises easier access to blockchain solutions.

Stanford’s Dan Boneh, a leading blockchain researcher, will likely discuss how they are working with VeChain to provide new advancements in blockchain technology. Those familiar with Boneh will be particularly interested in hearing about Bulletproofs, a proposed technology that allows private data to be partially obscured while still remaining verifiable on the blockchain. This would grant enterprises even more key tools and allow them to upload more sensitive data in a secure fashion.

Key Ecosystem Partners:

From 3:00 – 3:25, all eyes will be on Cihan Albay from the IT Tech Office of BMW Group as he discusses how BMW is integrating VeChain blockchain solutions with their VerifyCar app. VerifyCar app is likely to provide users with immutable data from built-in vehicle sensors and vehicle service centers. 

Deloitte has yet to release any information regarding their rumored cooperation with VeChain, so Parminder Parmar (Senior Blockchain Architect at Deloitte’s Digital Blockchain Lab) should grab the attention of summit attendees.

Similarly, X. Eyeé, a blockchain ambassador from Microsoft Azure, will likely discuss how public platforms such as VeChain are enticing and providing value to enterprise customers. Eyeé assists Fortune 500 companies adopt blockchain solutions, so should provide valuable information on the role VeChain is taking.

Draper Venture Network sent their COO, Sid Mofya, to provide insight on how global investors are approaching public blockchain startups. Information on how VeChain is working with Tim Draper’s clients and investments would be welcome by those in attendance.

Sergio Motolla, the CEO and Director of the Scientific Committee of San Marino Innovation, will likely focus on how governments, including San Marino’s own government, is approaching blockchain and innovation. Summit attendees will be keen to hear the role VeChain plays within San Marino’s blockchain development plans.

Other Speakers Around the Ecosystem:

OceanEx’s CTO Zhou Jiayu (Michigan State University Professor) will likely share details on OceanEx’s development, including how key technologies like AI are allowing OceanEx to establish themselves as an industry leader.

Totient, the creators of the VeForge block explorer, VeForge Vault (A Ledger hardware wallet solution), and Comet (a web-based VeChain wallet and NFT ecosystem) will likely be sharing their experiences developing on the VeChain platform.

Other VeChain ecosystem projects such as Plair, Decent.Bet, Safe Haven, and 8 Hours will be on hand with tech demonstrations and interactive exhibits to showcase their projects.

Last but not Least

All eyes will be on VeChain CEO Sunny Lu, in the hopes he will include information on a number of existing projects, such as the Low Carbon Digital Ecosystem. As Sunny Lu has spent the last few months in an endless series of meetings around the globe, listeners will also be hoping for details on potential new cooperations, use cases, and roadmap details.

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