VeChain Weekly Update June 20th

VeChain Weekly Update June 20th

DNV GL announced that Viking Line received a My Care verification

Viking Line’s 7 ships and 6 terminals in cities like Helsinki and Stockholm all received a third-party verification from DNV GL on their infection risk management. Passengers on Viking Line ships can scan a QR code to review the results of the verification process. More info here.

AByteAhead releases Python Dev Kit for VeChain

The Python3 developer kit helps coders create tools that involve wallet creation and management, assembling and signing transactions, and a host of VeChain’s finest features, including fee delegation. More info here.

Chief Scientist Peter Zhou holds a Bootcamp webinar with Ken Woodruff

In the 7th VeChain Bootcamp session, Ken Woodruff – CTO of Real Items – explained the story behind Real Items, its vision and what drove them to move away to VeChain from Ethereum. He also gave us a quick run down about the projects they have been working on; including, a Shopify plugin, a WeChat Mini App and Hubspot integration. The full webinar recording can be found here:

Deloitte’s blockchain trends reports discusses VeChain

In the report entitled 5 Blockchain Trends for 2020, Deloitte compared various protocols including VeChain, Ethereum and Corda, three platforms that Deloitte’s Blockchain Lab works with on a regular basis. However, the report also mentioned that most enterprise use cases are suited for a private network, something the VeChain community will strongly disagree with. 

Deloitte also released their 2020 Blockchain Survey, which interviewed 1488 executives from 14 different countries on their organization’s strategy towards blockchain. The results showed that many of the barriers from previous years still exist, but that more and more companies were actively integrating blockchain into production processes. The report cautions against complacency towards regulations and risk, but does seem confident that companies experimenting with “blockchain tourism” is a thing of the past. This bodes well for VeChain, especially as some of the numbers were favorable towards primary VeChain use cases. For example, 27% of the companies revealed that track-and-trace solutions were already receiving attention, with another 23% of companies exploring blockchain for certification. These are VeChain’s bread-and-butter solutions, and both have relatively no impact from potential regulatory hangups regarding digital assets and taxation. 

There are more substantive examples in the marketplace of how both startups and mature businesses are deploying blockchain. Organizations appear to be more committed than ever to blockchain and are demonstrating this by implementing it as part of their normal course of business.  Deloitte’s 2020 Blockchain Survey

More tagged products turn up in Sam’s Club

Community member and Chengdu resident @vetblack19 stopped into the local Sam’s Club and saw a number of products tagged in their Food Traceability Program. In addition to the Tyson Chicken we’ve seen before, they als

o had a wide selection of fresh produce, including nearly all of the item’s in the cold produce section. @vetblack19 shared images of multiple types of mushrooms, leaf vegetables, chives, and more. Most of them originated from a supplier called Dongsheng, with farms located over Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangxi, Hebei, Beijing, Ningxia, Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou provinces. 

Also tagged were these 20-pack of eggs pictured on the right. The producer, Beijing-based Deqingyuan, claims to be the largest egg producer in the world. Also found online were some pork products from Huarun Wufeng, that were posted by community member Fatiebomba, an admin in the Dutch Telegram Channel.

Events this week

COO Kevin Feng took part in a digital presentation on June 18th

Kevin Feng at an offline event in Shanghai

CEO Sunny Lu will take part in a conference about Supply Chain at an offline event in Shanghai

Other updates

 VeChain community artist Dr. H. Quinzel launched his own website this week. His trademark daily postings can be found at drhquinzel.com or on his twitter account. The community appreciates his colorful contributions!

Ecosystem Manager Dimitris Neocleous was featured in the Humans of Blockchain series here on VeChain101.com. His story talks about how he defied his father’s wishes and dropped his promising legal career to pursue a job in the blockchain industry. You can read the full story here.

 

 

Did I miss anything? Let us know at our new Twitter account @VeChain_101.

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Answering those burning questions about VeChain & Sam’s Club chicken

Answering those burning questions about VeChain & Sam’s Club chicken

Last week we shared photos and insights from Sam’s Club showing VeChain integration on a section of chicken. This created a pretty hearty reaction on social media, with lots of questions and comments. Rather than address them one by one, we decided to make a mega-thread here.

Great article!

Question for you Ben – were the codes on each packet of Chicken in that freezer the same? What I’m trying to understand, is whether each individual item is tracked or is it done by a batch at a time? — Nashe (@ef_2104) June 4, 2020

Thanks, Nashe. As you may have seen from the sticker below, there is a 10 digit code underneath the QR code. This “ID Code” (身份吗) is unique on each product, and each one links to a different transaction. I wish I would have documented that better, next time I’m back there I’ll try to show that off. It’s also interesting that they chose such a long code – I guess they plan on making a lot of these.

I don’t see a @TysonBrand logo anywhere. It looks like they’re working with a generic label @SamsClub processing plant who gets chicken from Tyson.

This is still pretty cool though. The best #blockchain supply chain stuff that I’ve seen working in real life. — JESSE ℂOUℂℍ (@jessecouch) June 6, 2020

Well Jesse – while I share your enthusiasm, I guess Chinese isn’t a native language of yours. The logo below is the official Tyson Foods logo in Chinese. Pronounced Tài Sēn, this chicken company shares a Chinese name with a famous boxer. Here’s their official website if you feel like a second opinion.

i mean this is great, but until we see adoption outside of stores china, then ill get excited.

— σ ɱ ȥ🔻ギんシ ♥ ₿ (@oj89_) June 4, 2020

Hmm.. while I understand your desire to expand rapidly, I think you are overlooking the scale of things here. Besides having 1/5th the world’s population, most of what people buy in stores around the world comes from China. So for a supply chain tool like ToolChain, I’d be worried if they weren’t showing major traction here. After all, more than 1 in 4 things made in the world are made in China. Alibaba is one of the largest internet companies in the world and they service China nearly exclusively. And that’s not to say VeChain isn’t being seen outside of China – take a look at what DNV GL is doing with Italian wines and canned foods. Also check out the Webinar Jason Rockwood did with Producers Market, a company with a growing presence worldwide.

Infographic: China Is the World's Manufacturing Superpower | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

Finally solving the chicken verification problem!!

— WindowLinker (@windowlinker) June 5, 2020

While I suspect WindowLinker may be trolling with that screen name, I like that this was brought up. The problem isn’t verifying the chicken, the problem is that people want to have more data about what they are eating. This creates accountability in the product, as it’s no longer just a pallet of meat that showed up in the loading dock. With this QR code, everyone can see the path from Shandong (the farm) to where it was sold, as well as the ID of the worker responsible for processing this. The accountability isn’t just for the consumer though – it’s Sam’s Club holding its third-party suppliers accountable, and the third-party suppliers holding Sam’s Club accountable (Don’t sell our meat after expiration!). The reward for consumers is obvious, but Sam’s Club gets known as a trusted retailer, while the supplier benefits from the Members Mark labels and preferred branding around the store. Everyone wins, except those companies that try to bundle their overpriced consulting services with a private blockchain and charge a fortune for it!

Cool, but those qr code stickers are so low budget

— Jason Laczkovics (@Lacko_party_pak) June 4, 2020

You know that old saying… it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. If a company needs to slap stickers on hundreds of thousands of products, they don’t want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on fancy tags. This is no different from a standard price tag on any other product – it’s fast, cheap, and effective, while not distracting from the packaging. The idea that blockchain can add transparency without costing an arm and a leg is very important. Especially for produce and food, where the total cost of the product might not be very high to begin with, as compared to a luxury bag or imported bottle of wine. And in any event, it’s not like the technology bottleneck is about designing fancy stickers.

“Low budget” has another benefit – once the stickers are on, there’s no taking them off and swapping them

Any idea if this will show whether the chicken as been cleaned in ammonia or not? @SamsClub — jontask 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇨🇦 (@jontask1) June 7, 2020

At the moment, it doesn’t. But there’s no reason why it couldn’t. That’s something that I’m sure My Story and DNV GL will be looking at. This is an example of how every use case can fit the business need: Chinese shoppers aren’t as focused on details like that, whereas place of origin, date processed, and manufacturer is more important to them. It’s a great use case though.

Excuse me. How can they provide the products journey within the supply chain (Tyson’s) if they are not working with them?

— ⓧRPlusⓋET (@fredostat) June 6, 2020

Easy! VeChain creates the infrastructure (ToolChain) which they then share with channel partners and consultants. The consultants push it to clients like Walmart China & Sam’s Club China who then sign a contract, white-label the technology to match their needs and branding, and then issue directives to suppliers and manufacturers on how to use it. Partners pay the consultant a big fee and buy ToolChain Credits from VeChain. Each product ID or data upload burns VTHO and contributes to the rising mainnet traffic. But suppliers at the end of this ‘chain’ won’t necessarily have to deal directly with VeChain, or understand how the blockchain works. That’s the beauty of working with a top enterprise blockchain protocol with fee delegation.

Note: I saw some people get a little overboard on the Tyson & VeChain partnership hype. First of all, this is Tyson China, which is a subsidiary, so nothing to do (currently and that I know of) with the North American producers and supply chains. Second, this is the Sam’s Club Traceability program, so Tyson China would only be doing it for products that get sold in Sam’s Club stores. As a major B2B buyer, companies like Walmart and Sam’s Club can set standards for their suppliers. If the suppliers want these major retailers as a client (spoiler: they do), they will comply. Twitter user @BitStreetSheep got this right when he said:

#SamsClub says to #Tyson, “Hey, we want to continue to buy and carry your product, but moving forward, we need you to roll with the punches and include all this other information about it, by means of this new app (ToolChain). Tyson agrees, though they may not know about $VET

— Sheep Ⓥf ₿it Street (@BitStreetSheep) June 6, 2020

Well, mostly right. I would say it’s more of a “Hey, we can include your chicken wings as part of our Member’s Mark guaranteed products with special branding and placement throughout the stores (retail & online) if you are willing to provide more complete data with your products.” It’s more of an opportunity than a threat.

That’s it for now. If you have anymore questions, feel free to find us on Twitter @KouTseng or @benyorke.

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Sam’s Club in China – is blockchain really being used?

Sam’s Club in China – is blockchain really being used?

For many “partnerships” in the blockchain space, a new announcement doesn’t always mean what the community would expect. Facts are often overstated, raising investor expectations while little action is actually seen on the blockchain. This week’s major announcement that VeChain would be the public chain infrastructure of Sam’s Club in China might have been no different, except for one key difference: the product is already on the shelves. 

Making a case for Sam’s Club

While parent company Walmart China is a major whale in China’s retail industry, Sam’s Club is no minnow. COVID-19 has encouraged the Chinese marketplace to alter their buying patterns from daily shopping to less frequent bulk grocery shopping trips, a trend that has caused Sam’s Club to grow at a faster pace than regular Walmart outlets in China. This double-digit growth has caused Walmart Inc to announce the planned opening of 100 more Sam’s Clubs over the next 8 years.

Sam’s Club in Shenyang

Sam’s Club in China targets a higher class customer by carrying bulk imported items that focus on quality and safety. Having a members-only policy makes the brand feel exclusive, with a yearly fee of around $35 (US) just to make a purchase. Their signature Member’s Mark stamp is applied to products sold throughout the store, with in-store marketing featuring the country of origin and other provenance data, making it an ideal use case for blockchain solutions.

Member’s Mark marketing on display

High ceilings, stacked products, and over-sized shopping carts encourage the shopping spree mentality

So are they using VeChain or not?

Sam’s Club members are no stranger to technology – the membership is registered through a WeChat Mini-program, and many products throughout the store have QR codes offering more information. Their online service offers home delivery in under one hour, a major attraction for consumers, especially in a country still cautious about potential virus infections.

After a quick look around Shenyang’s spacious Sam’s Club, it didn’t take long to find products tagged with the Blockchain Food Safety & Traceability QR Codes (powered by VeChain’s ToolChain). An entire freezer section of fresh chicken meat from Tyson Foods was tagged. The QR codes shared the details of the product’s journey from being raised and processed in China’s Shandong province to the store in Liaoning’s capital city. It’s worth noting that Tyson Foods China was established in 2001 and is a subsidiary of the US company Tyson Foods.

This entire freezer of Tyson’s chicken products was tagged with VeChain-linked QR codes

Screenshots of the blockchain traceability landing page

It’s clear that efforts from Sam’s Club to validate products from third-party suppliers is swinging into force. A glance at vechainstats.com shows that daily data clauses on weekdays are now routinely over 100k – a marked increase over the inconsistency of previous months. As the traceability program continues to roll out and cover more products, an optimistic outlook becomes more probable over the coming months.

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