Recap: VeChain’s 2nd Bootcamp and Jur’s 2nd Webinar go live at the same time

Recap: VeChain’s 2nd Bootcamp and Jur’s 2nd Webinar go live at the same time

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On 12th May 2020, Jur and VeChain delivered their second webinars, with both starting at 10pm (UTC+8). We didn’t want you to miss out so here are the recaps. Don’t forget to watch the third instalment of the VeChain Bootcamp on May 13th at 8pm (UTC+8).

Philosophy and Technology come together to measure the risk towards the future

The Jur webinar series has been a refreshing touch to the blockchain webinar circuit – with speakers focusing on the practical application of the technology. Episode 2 was no different. Jur’s team once again introduced some elements of smart contracts and online dispute resolution to an active audience of lawyers and people with an interest in the legal field. The questions streaming in were generally about how the technology could be applied in practice, with issues such as regulation, jurisdictions, and enforcement as key concerns.

Mantalena Kaili speaks about her interest and concerns with technology

Mantalena Kaili of the European Law Observatory on New Technology was the special guest, giving an interesting talk about the issues facing global societies and the threats that technology may pose. 5G, blockchain, and AI were all big issues, particularly with the legality & ethical considerations of using them. Kaili noted that data was the “gold of our generation” and remained the biggest topic for discussion among regulators, researchers, and watchdog groups. She conceded that technology had a dark side, and that there are many questions remaining to be answered while regulators sit in uncharted territory.

Kaili was highly focused on technology in the justice system, even recalling the teachings of Plato and remarking that justice is a very serious system to be left to humans.

“We need the tools to make work better and fairer, replace inflexible bureaucratic structures with fragile parts. We need to replace what isn’t working correctly, but not humans.”

She closed by stressing that human intelligence combined with technology is key to addressing many of the issues facing society.

A New Era of Sustainable Fashion – My Story Enabled Sustainability Practice

VeChain’s second webinar covered the importance of sustainability and the value of blockchain for socially responsible companies.

Hosted by Jérôme Grillères, VeChain’s GM of Europe, and Gabriele Manno, DNV GL’s Head of Blockchain Solutions, it was a unique opportunity to understand how VeChain’s blockchain expertise and DNV GL’s domain know-how complement each other and enables them to define and map the data collection and processes required to build the right interfaces.

Gabriele started by explaining five key challenges faced by sustainable brands:

  • Customer engagement: building meaningful interactions with an increasingly connected, tech savvy and better informed consumer profile
  • Information sharing: providing relevant data to customers and stakeholders in the supply chain
  • Brand credibility: developing products customers can trust and using them to build customer confidence and loyalty for the brand
  • Technology adoption: leveraging new technologies such as IoT, blockchain or VR to increase process efficiencies
  • End-of-life solutions: designing disposal mechanisms such as recycling or upcycling to minimise a product’s impact at the end of its useful life

The presentation followed with an overview of My Story, the benefits of building it on ToolChain and how it creates value for businesses.

The benefits of using My Story

From a marketing perspective, My Story enables brands to interact with consumers in an interactive way. By scanning a tag or QR code, customers are forwarded to a landing page where information specific to the product of interest (such as design concepts, raw materials or sustainability certifications) can be reviewed. It gives brands an additional touchpoint through which to tell a story and showcase the company’s core values and what it stands for.

Simon Sinek: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe”

With plans to grow My Story into a more comprehensive service, additional functionalities and the option to create landing apps will be introduced. Companies will be able to gamify the purchasing process and design new programs to engage with customers. Loyalty and social schemes, for instance, could be developed to incentivise consumers who buy sustainable products or recycle and donate unused items.

From an operational standpoint, My Story provides the benefits of digital authentication, monitoring and traceability; increasing assurance efficiencies, tackling anti-counterfeiting challenges and improving product quality and channel control procedures.

Jérôme and Gabriele shared how My Story has helped brands optimise their data measurement, auditing and verification process and how it enables brands to convert data into actionable insights. Gabriele proceeded by explaining VeChain’s role in My Story and how ToolChain’s customisable interface, compatibility with different types of data sources and flexibility to build tailored verification and certification checklist templates makes it the best blockchain available to power the service.

The webinar concluded with a brief discussion on what may happen as more fashion brands adopt My Story how the ecosystem will continue to expand.

What a future sustainable fashion ecosystem could involve

VeChain101 Analysis:

The webinars show that VeChain, DNV GL, and Jur both have a clear idea of where they need to be and how they can provide value to the business world. It’s impressive to see professionals like Gabrielle Manno and Mantalena Kaili taking the time to remark on this technology. However, it’s clear that these significant industry shifts towards fashion sustainability and decentralized justice will be a gradual transition. For My Story, the results are already starting to show up in our retail outlets. On Jur’s side, their CTO Luca Daniel offered a timeline of 2-3 months before the release of their next prototype, so interested users will need to be patient. One thing is for sure, with the role these solutions will play in society, the results will be worth waiting for.

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All you need to know about VeChain’s Bootcamp series

All you need to know about VeChain’s Bootcamp series

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Whenever there are challenges, there are opportunities.

COVID-19 is forcing companies to rethink their daily operations and fast-track digital transformation. This puts pressure on businesses but accelerates the adoption of new technologies like blockchain. With increasing interest, VeChain has introduced VeChain BootCamp; an initiative to educate, grow and engage with potential clients, developers and the community via live stream webinars. The idea is to offer online courses on how to build business applications with VechainThor and ToolChain as well as to share key learning lessons from their partnerships. One thing to keep in mind during these webinars: They aren’t designed for the cryptocurrency community to learn about new partnerships and announcements. They are designed to help people not familiar with VeChain’s core service offering learn more about what digitalization can bring to a business, and why they should select VeChain as the platform to build on. The first one, with CEO Sunny Lu, was designed as an overall intro to the series, with the later ones focusing more on the actual implementation, use cases, and value to businesses.

Episode One: “The Missing Part of Mass adoption”

The BootCamp kicked off with an overview of the blockchain industry that included the value role played by businesses at each stage, and a rundown of VeChain; which included a quick mention of the ToolChain functionalities to be released in the coming months. The session probably didn’t cover new topics to most veterans but would have been particularly relevant for newcomers as it gave a comprehensive introduction to VeChain’s value proposition, its core values, sample partnerships and milestones achieved.  Something I hadn’t previously considered is the concept of data weighting. AI treats all data equally however, by adjusting the data based on their source and trustworthiness, more reliable decisions can potentially be made in the future.

Save & Exit

While Sunny confirmed that some projects have been postponed due to the coronavirus, it was good to hear that deals continue to be signed and that new products are expected from DNV GL. It would have been interesting to know what industries have shown a change in demand and by how much does VeChain expect its adoption forecast to be impacted (positively or negatively) in the coming years.

A video showcasing COS using MyStory to display the product’s sustainability certification was also shared. The landing page is a great opportunity to deliver the item’s unique selling point, suggest complementary goods and maintenance advice or gamify the purchase/shopping experience.

At one point Sunny made an analogy between the early internet days and the current blockchain industry. As he continued to explain ToolChain, I couldn’t avoid drawing similarities between ToolChain and WordPress, the popular CMS that helped take website development to the masses. Like WordPress, ToolChain provides a standardised and user friendly building service where no prior coding knowledge is required. Both simplify an otherwise complicated process and offer:

  • Core features such as ready-to-use templates tailored to your industry
  • Modularised functionality (e.g. plugins)
  • Technical customisation for more complex features (e.g SDKs & APIs for ToolChain)
  • Integration with 3rd party services
  • Minimal development cost and lead time
  • Value to business of all sizes

A quick roadmap showing the dynamic improvements coming to ToolChain

At the same time, while useful in many scenarios, neither is necessarily the best solution for every use case. WordPress however, benefits from a larger community that helps create user guides, tutorials, troubleshooting materials and a support forum; which helped it become the success that it is today. Hence, it was exciting to hear Sunny recognising that VeChain’s technical delivery has outpaced its knowledge base and that more resources will be released down the line. I’m curious to see how VeChain will approach this as companies like Google invest significantly on their educational programs (e.g. Grow with Google), professional certifications (e.g. Google Ads Certification or Google Cloud Certification) and help center catalogs in order to drive demand and onboard new customers.

Up next:

May 12th – Jérôme Grillères (VeChain) and Gabriele Manno (DNV GL)

A New Era of Sustainable Fashion: My Story Enabled Sustainability Practice

Not to heap the pressure on, but this is an event I’m looking forward to for one main reason: Gabriele Manno. As one of the core architects of MyStory, this speaker has a tremendous understanding of what businesses actually need from a technical solution. And unlike the VeChain speakers who have a natural bias to speak highly of their own blockchain, Manno is a third party who isn’t tied down to the platform. For people who have never heard him speak before, he is one of the most technical and business-savvy minds in the blockchain space.

Jérôme Grillères, VeChain’s GM of Europe, is another figure who doesn’t get the exposure some of the other GMs do. He is relatively reserved on social media so there should be a lot of interest in what his projects have been working on. As someone who has been working on ToolChain from the beginning, we are sure his presentation will take a deeper dive than what we saw in the first episode.

May 13th – Sarah Nabaa and David Inderias

Blockchain In Food Provenance: A New Ecosystem Play in Post-Covid World

Like Manno, Inderias is a third-party with a lot of wisdom to bring. His straightforward and blunt approach is great for an industry plagued by overhype and fixations on unrealized potential. Inderias has always been about practical business applications first, exactly the kind of person VeChain needs as a channel partner. His recently announced position as the head of the APAC Provenance Council is another step towards convincing the average goods producer that technology and innovation isn’t just a plaything for Fortune 500 companies to experiment with. On May 13th, David should explain how he plans to use ToolChain, and how it saves his company development effort.

Finally, Sarah Nabaa completes the first group of speakers by bringing the experience she has gained as the leader of VeChain’s Southeast Asia and Australia team. We asked Sarah what to expect, and she explained how excited she was to be working with the APAC Provenance council and suggested viewers tune in to learn more. She’s confident that a number of solid companies will be onboarded thanks to the work her and Inderias are doing in Australia and New Zealand.

Future Episodes

Further sessions are yet to be confirmed but Sunny hinted about a PoA 2.0-SURFACE presentation. The new consensus algorithm was announced earlier this February so it will be interesting to hear directly from Dr Peter Zhou, VeChain’s Chief Scientist. Stay tuned.

Note: VeChain released their own recap, available here.

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OceanEx structured products an interesting twist on standard DeFi investing

OceanEx structured products an interesting twist on standard DeFi investing

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The idea of staking cryptocurrency for annual returns or other bonuses is far from a new concept in this space. Many different platforms, exchanges, and token models offer solutions like this, giving token holders a safe and consistent way to put their holdings to work. Still, adoption is quite low relative to the size of large cap products, as many traders like to maintain their liquidity, have security concerns, or simply can’t be bothered to learn about these investing opportunities.

OceanEx’s Sharkfin

OceanEx spotted an opportunity to make the investment process more engaging using a structured product. In the investment world, structured products take a low-risk asset like a bond and attach a secondary asset to make the potential returns more enticing. If the secondary asset performs well, the investor’s return can be much higher, without adding a lot of risk to the issuer. In the case of OceanEx, the returns are tied to the performance of Bitcoin – if BTC’s value stays within a set window, investors can earn as much as 35.5% APR. This window, known as the hook range, is set to maximize the chance of users earning higher returns.

If the BTC price goes outside of the $8000-$10,000 hook range, investors only get 3% APR returns. Inside that range, the closer to $10,000, the higher the returns. Note: Actual hook range may vary and be adjusted by OceanEx to maximize user benefits.

This gamifies the investment, as token holders must consider how they believe the market will react. And with 3% APR the lowest possible return, it’s a lot safer than risking assets in the futures market, trading with leverage, or just trying to time a few well-placed swing trades.

The short-term lockup (only 6 days) makes the investment product even more appealing as we approach the Bitcoin halving – investors don’t need to worry about locking their funds up for the 90 day or 180 day periods that other platforms offers. Users can put their existing assets to work without entering into a long-term commitment with an exchange.

By the Numbers

  • 3: The third sharkfin structured product subscription period is now running through May 9th at 10PM (UTC+8).
  • 15%: The recent sharp rise in Bitcoin pushed the first two products outside of the fin, meaning investors only got 3% APR additional returns. Still, investors won’t be complaining about an upwards rise in value since the USD value shot up around 15% over the last week.
  • 30: The total amount of Bitcoin being accepted in this third event.
  • 9.63%: The APR for OceanEx’s fixed annual Cryptofarm event being launched at 7PM on May 8, for those who prefer a more stable guarantee.

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Why the APAC Provenance Council finally gives supply chains a reason to evolve

Why the APAC Provenance Council finally gives supply chains a reason to evolve

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What is the APAC Provenance Council?

Headquartered in Brisbane, the APAC Provenance Council is a not-for-profit consortium that includes standard agencies, food industry bodies and companies in the blockchain, finance and packaging sectors. Their aim is to provide end-to-end authentication, provenance, traceability and trade finance solutions for Asia-Pacific’s agricultural, food and beverage industries.

Official Article on Medium

So what’s different this time around?

For years, we’ve been hearing about the magic of blockchain. You’ve all heard this before: It could reduce fraud, cut costs, improve efficiency, increase trust – the whole nine yards. Only there was one major hurdle that many people overlooked: Businesses lacked urgency. Despite all the government pressure, investment and hype, many in the business community still weren’t convinced that spending money and making significant changes to established business processes would result in a stronger financial performance: Would consumers pay more for a product just because it was on the blockchain?

In order to make that answer a resounding yes, we need one of two things to happen. The first, which is increased consumer awareness, appreciation and demand for blockchain traceability, is likely to be a gradual process. The second could be achieved much faster: Giving businesses a secondary incentive that is tangible in nature. This could come in the form of access to new markets, faster customs processing times, more retail coverage, or faster payment processing times.

The APAC Provenance Council promises to do many of those things, but really excels by helping local producers in Australia get paid for their labors. Cash flow is a major bottleneck in the B2B farming world, especially with COVID-19 piling on uncertainty to what was already a high risk industry. Unlike the B2C business world, where customer payments arrive nearly instantly, farmers in a B2B world need to be much more patient. How much of a difference-maker is this? According to Fresh Supply Co and APAC Provenance Council head David Inderias, this brings the payment time down from receipt of goods plus thirty days to mere seconds. This makes exporting products to China go from being a major financial risk (and headache) to being as easy as selling to your next door neighbor. Suddenly, the challenge of implementing blockchain to the supply chain seems a lot more appealing.

That’s not to say the APAC Provenance Council is only about facilitating payments. One of the biggest challenges with putting technology in agriculture is the limited knowledge and patience that local farmers have for locating and vetting potential service providers. The APAC Provenance Council brings a group of complementary companies together to provide a reliable solution for nearly any situation. Producers can explain their needs and receive advice and consulting on how to actually implement the solution using the council’s member companies. This includes service providers that build unique solutions for packaging, labelling, IoT, smart fingerprints, trade finance, and of course blockchain (VeChain is the sole blockchain provider). Local producers who might not see the full value in building resilient supply chains and integrating technology will suddenly be presented with an offer they can’t refuse, bundled up in a complete package, and at a time where doing business is more challenging than usual.

Unlike with building a startup from scratch, funding is available for major infrastructure projects like these. The Council is on the receiving end of government funding for good reason: if they can help make Australia’s agricultural industry more efficient, it’s a big win for Australia’s economy. Inderias mentioned that New Zealand was also involved, as these two markets both have a similar target in China’s growing appetite for high-quality imports. While Inderias is adamant he prefers building business models independent of government funding, he recognizes COVID-19 is a time to be building infrastructure, so that the farming industry can rebound stronger than ever. He doesn’t believe in just taking handouts unless he can actually provide a valuable service to farmers at a time when cash flows and liquidity are at record lows.

From a VeChain Perspective

In an editorial last week, VeChain101 tipped VeChain to succeed by doing one thing and doing it well. That one thing VeChain does well is verifying products in a supply chain, which businesses can do using tools like ToolChain, MyStory or Real Items. The APAC Provenance Council helps fulfill this vision by placing ToolChain alongside other business enablers. VeChain won’t have to carry the bulk of development on its own, as other partners like Fresh Supply Co and government agencies like Food Agility and Australian Made can push the consortium forward. VeChain can focus on being the underlying ledger that local businesses write data on when verifying their supply chain data.

Regrettably, the initial announcement on Cointelegraph missed the mark by focusing on major names and numbers rather than the actual benefits of the consortium. This is a common theme in the cryptocurrency space, where the members of the partnership are more important than the actual scope of the project itself. The focus should be on a billion-dollar trade industry that Inderias is set on bolstering, rather than a few big corporate names.

Despite all the uncertainty in the global economy, the APAC Provenance Council is exactly the type of initiatives VeChain should be looking into. We can sum up these reasons in the following list:

  • They have the support of very established enterprise and government partners
  • They don’t need to lead the development on all fronts
  • Blockchain technology can be a secondary feature of the grand solution, rather than the main selling point
  • There is an existing demand for the service
  • The consortium has a dynamic leader in David Inderias who bridges the gap between technology providers and real businesses

Special thanks to David Inderias (interview) and Kou-Hau Tseng (Writing) for contributing to this article.

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Jur’s webinar shows glimpse at potential of blockchain within the traditional legal space

Jur’s webinar shows glimpse at potential of blockchain within the traditional legal space

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Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the Jur team has been relatively quiet on the PR side, claiming a focus on developing out the court hubs of their dispute resolution platform. Decentralized dispute resolution will allow blockchain-based voting on commercial disputes, such as contracts, freelance agreements, and mediation cases, among others.

On April 29th, the Jur team hosted their first ever online webinar, introducing the main concepts of the technology to a noticeably large audience of legal professionals and community members. Alice Namuli, who founded the Legal Innovation Hub in Uganda, was also a part of the presentation to talk about how the continent of Africa was approaching this topic. She helped Jur organize the event in collaboration with the Africa Innovation Law & Tech Academy, the East Africa Law Society, and LEX Africa, which is the continent’s largest legal alliance. The audience, with many members from the aforementioned legal organizations, peppered the speakers with intelligent questions tackling all phases of adoption as well as the potential societal impacts blockchain and smart contracts could have.

From the onset, it was obvious that this audience was different from most other blockchain events. They took an avid interest in Chief Legal Officer Raffaele Battaglini’s presentation on smart contracts, and engaged Legal Engineer Luigi Cantisani on issues of human rights and the internet. The speakers pointed out how access to internet was quickly becoming a basic human right in the eyes of many governments, which should pave the way for technology to become a foundation of worldwide justice systems. They also discussed the need for trustless oracles to be the touchpoint between real-life and the internet, leading to more complete data and fairer rulings.

A lot of questions centered around the enforcement of online dispute resolution, as people might not be so quick to comply with a ruling delivered over the internet. Cantisani addressed this by talking about how this required the embedding of smart contracts into ODR and escrow services. On the Jur platform, after a dispute is resolved, funds will be transferred automatically, making non-compliance a non-issue.

CEO Alessandro Palombo gave the active audience a definition of a dApp, and talked about how these could impact economic business relationships. Palombo is a big believer in the the power of decentralization, explaining how many apps and services will shift to this model in the future, cutting out middlemen, reducing corruption, and lowering costs in the process.

CMO Federico Angeloni moderated the event and was impressed with the turnout. “We were pleasantly surprised by the very warm welcome that the African audience has reserved for us. In a flash, we realized the topicality of the problems we carry out and we can’t wait to expand the reach of our events to get more and more professionals interested in legaltech.”

The issue of cryptocurrency

One issue of keen interest to the VeChain community revolved around the topic of the JUR token and stablecoins. A question from audience member ‘Jeremy’ asked how the platform intended to handle volatility, and whether or not stablecoins would be used. Jur’s CTO Luca Daniel responded by stating:

“In the legal industry, there is a huge need to be user-friendly with as little friction as possible. If you want to submit a case to one of the hubs on the Jur platform, you need to be able to do that with your fiat currency. What the platform will do under the hood is translate and convert your normal currency into JUR tokens. You won’t be able to see that, unless you want to dig deeper and see the exchange rate that was applied. You don’t need to know how to manage a wallet or know how blockchain works. If you are a blockchain expert and want to dig deeper, you can see the transaction of course, but that’s our approach.”

“With regard to the volatility, it won’t matter if the price fluctuates, if I pay the dispute fee of $3,000 dollars, that’s going to be $3,000 today, and $3,000 dollars tomorrow. The system will do the conversion of the tokens. On the other hand, that point you made about a stablecoin is essential when talking about an escrow. When you have an escrow and are in a commercial relationship with another party, you need to transfer money from one end to the other, and you do that with a smart contract, it’s very important that the money escrowed is in a stablecoin.”

It’s no secret that a stablecoin is needed on the VeChain network, but it remains to be seen how that is put into place. In the past, the speculation surrounded a Euro-based stablecoin, as part of VeChain’s close connections with regions like San Marino and Italy. While that speculation has cooled off of late, knowing that Jur is planning on using one may be an indication that the plan is still in place.

Legaltech in Africa

Last to take the stage was guest host Alice Namuli. She mentioned that in Africa, legaltech adoption falls into two categories: Legal technology that enhances the way law firms deliver services, and technology that improves citizen’s access to justice. She noted that most law firms are adopting various technologies to ensure that they deliver timely services and to ensure they cut down their costs.

Alice Namuli side-by-side with Jur CEO Alessandro Palombo

“So many big law firms in the last 3 or 4 years have also caught up and are now using all kinds of products ranging from simple AI to advanced AI. On the continent, we have many legal innovators who are building tools, platforms, and systems. The biggest disadvantage is that many people don’t know about them so it becomes a little bit difficult to use them.”

“On the access to justice side, services range from ensuring that as many people on the continent are able to access justice and making the legal justice system more transparent and less costly. That’s why I’m very interested in platforms like Jur, but we don’t have anything on the continent yet like Jur. The biggest challenge we have now is that many lawyers haven’t been able to fully appreciate this [legal technology platforms], and they are either rejecting them or they are just not willing to adopt them. So many people have been denied justice because of the backlog or because our justice systems just don’t work at all. So we are very interested in the alternatives. We are very pleased to have this training or session [The Jur Webinar] where we can learn about what’s available and how we can use them.”

The feedback in the chat box shows that Jur has the ability to engage and connect with their legal audience

Final thoughts and key takeaways

For many regions, the issue of how small and medium law-firms can get access to affordable tools is a major question. Unlike many legaltech platforms for large law firms that come with a exorbitant licensing fee, platforms like Jur are much cheaper to use. The nature of Africa’s many different legal systems shows a huge potential use case for blockchain, a way to bypass the slow, costly, and even corrupt traditional courts. It’s one area where Jur can not only gain traction, but can also provide a much-needed social service that benefits less fortunate regions. It would be refreshing to see an instance of blockchain used for this cause, and could bring a lot of exposure and goodwill to the blockchain industry as a whole. It’s clear from the webinar that Jur has a professional team with a product that resonates with the legal community, and not just the cryptocurrency community and token holders. The challenge for Jur now will be on execution, to actually make this idea a reality.

To watch a replay of the webinar, head on over to YouTube: Link.

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Predicting the Future on VeChain – Why ToolChain & MyStory Must Succeed

Predicting the Future on VeChain – Why ToolChain & MyStory Must Succeed

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Editorial by Ben Yorke on what VeChain needs to be successful in a competitive blockchain industry.

This week, we got another look at a new company working with VeChain’s blockchain technology – COS, a subsidiary of H&M, that focuses on sustainable apparel.

This would seem as a step in the right direction for VeChain, especially after a few months of a COVID-19 induced hangover on the PR front. Mainly, it demonstrated that VeChain was making progress with an H&M brand for the first time since 2018. Still, a good portion of the community was less convinced, questioning whether or not this was just another test, that may or may not result in wide-scale implementation.

This brings us to our first sobering fact: Over the past year, it’s no secret that the VeChain community has become very results-oriented, and is more and more demanding of visible on-chain transactions as the only metric they are interested in. While this argument has its merits, it lacks a bit of vision. For VeChain to succeed, the most important factor won’t be immediate transactional volume, but actual revenue earned from real-world customers. More revenue will lead to more investment opportunities (both for and from VeChain), more developers, more marketing, more R&D, more grants, more offices, and a sustainable long-term business model.

Make no mistake, the community is right to be somewhat cynical. They have been fed a steady stream of announcements and articles about proposed ecosystems and revolutionary business models since before the mainnet even came online. While these partnerships are all backed by real business development, there’s no denying the fact that many of them were idealistic and driven by innovation teams and think-tanks, not organic consumer demand.

So as we sit here more than a year and a half since mainnet launch, we can look at what VeChain truly needs to be successful. Let’s start with the basics:

The era of coming up with an idea and creating a token for it are, for the time being, looking like a fairly unrealistic get-rich-quick scheme. The blockchain has a lot of feasible use cases, but investors are showing that being a decentralized version of Kickstarter isn’t one of them. With the majority of the VIP180 tokens being miles below ICO value, we should stop looking to small cap alt-token projects to add value.

The word “Ecosystem” is overused

An ecosystem implies a thriving circular economy supported by the Foundation, businesses, government agencies, developers, and end-users. While that might be the endgame for blockchain development, right now VeChain’s main struggle should be focused between blockchain projects and businesses. VeChain has always said that their motto was to “Create Valuable Transactions”, not “Create complex commercial relationships between multiple parties”.

Don’t succumb to “Scope Creep”

When a project starts adding new functionality and stakeholders, the original goal tends to get a bit lost. That’s why every adept project manager knows to pick a target and see it through, regardless of the distractions that might appear along the way. The blockchain industry is very guilty of falling into the scope creep-trap, brainstorming revolutionary new business models while pondering about the theoretical potential of the technology. What we really need is hard proof: evidence that businesses are willing to pay for blockchain solutions.

So while discussions about carbon credit schemes and self-reporting vehicle passbooks are nice, and probably something we will see in the future, the current focus should be VeChain’s original use case: Supply chain optimization and product authentication. Don’t expect businesses, consumers, and government agencies to come piling into intricate ecosystems – make it easy for ordinary companies or individuals to start plugging their products into the blockchain.

Two Simple Solutions – ToolChain & MyStory

First, this is where ToolChain really shines. A simple package of IoT and blockchain, sold directly to businesses without the need for additional software development. London fashion designer Sarah Regensburger showed us how easy it was when she added ToolChain’s NFC tags to her creations at Paris Fashion Week earlier this spring. Like Sarah, there are many other companies manufacturing products with unique origins that would also benefit. These come scattered all over various industries including food & beverage, apparel, furniture, and much more. Reaching them and showing how easy integration is will be the first step – convincing them that their product sales or brand reputation will improve is the bigger challenge.

MyStory is the next level up – it’s essentially ToolChain with DNV GL as a trustable third-party verifier and implementation specialist. It comes with a price tag, but for businesses like COS that are serious about their brand image, the added price should be worth it. DNV GL’s respected reputation as a classification company should help with client outreach, but once again the challenge becomes proving that integration will lead to higher sales. That’s why seeing another H&M brand working with VeChain is so encouraging. COS undoubtedly saw the results of the previous use cases, and decided that MyStory’s service was worth it.

The brands at H&M aren’t the only ones. We’ve long seen Italian wine producers (Ricci Curbastro, Ruffino  and Torrevento) using MyStory for verification, earlier this spring Italian olive oil producer Buondioli and food producer La Fiammante also appeared to have joined them. This once again shows other brands confirming what the early adopters believed in – trust matters.

If we add H&M’s COS to the mix, we see a steady path of adoption, the kind of progress for DNV GL that earns revenue and keeps the MyStory project a priority for the 150 year old corporate giant. And these are the questions every VET holder should be asking: Does it benefit companies like DNV GL, VeChain, and PwC to keep pushing public blockchain solutions? Will companies pay to authenticate their products? Can VeChain afford to keep hiring employees and expand their operation?

Thankfully, right now the answer seems to be yes. And when you look around at the competition for ToolChain and MyStory, there isn’t much out there, other than extremely expensive consortium solutions from large technology providers running on a permissioned chain like Hyperledger Fabric. It’s exactly ToolChain and MyStory that set VeChain apart from every other public blockchain protocol in the business. You could theoretically build a vaccination tracking network from the ground up on a number of decentralized platforms – but you could only get a complete product authentication software suite in one place: VeChain. That’s why if VeChain is to succeed, it won’t be because of what we saw yesterday on the block explorer. It will be because what companies all over the world are doing, as they take notice of how increasing trust is leading to higher sales, validating their decision to try out blockchain.

VeChain just needs to keep things simple, and stick to what they do best: Authenticating goods and making product data more visible. And with DNV GL around to verify things, it shouldn’t be too farfetched to see VeChain come out on top.

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