source

Besides studying management accountant, I also specialized in logistics and production. During doing some research for a project I stumbled across OriginTrail and started to take a deep look at it.
It didn’t take very long and I recognized the potential this project has to change the Supply Chain landscape.

What are they doing?

OriginTrail is building a unique blockchain protocol for Global Supply Chains to track various goods from their primary production as far as to the end customer.

Why is this important?

Nowadays more and more customer mentions their need to know anything about a certain product and the way it came from. Every year there are thousands of people around the world who suffer from contaminated food and get sick or, in worst case even die as a result. These contaminations are caused by inappropriate handling of goods along the Supply Chain or bad production conditions.
Additionally, people are more focused on buying goods where they know that the employees are treated well and fair paid. With the blockchain solution, it is easier to determine that information and raise the pressure on producers for fair payment and better working conditions.

How does it work?

OriginTrail calls their solution OriginTrail Decentralized Network or ODN. The protocol itself runs off-chain and is connected to the blockchain.
It operates on 4 layers:

• Blockchain Layer
  Theoretically, the solution can run on every possible blockchain, howe, er OriginTrail is preferring Ethereum, at the moment. This layer is responsible for data security and is necessary for reaching consensus.
• Data Layer
  The Data Layer contains the actual database of tracking. Along the Supply Chain there are various parties, like produces, warehouses, retailer, involved with individual databases. To ensure a gapless information flow this layer gathers all the databases and connect them to the blockchain.
• Network Layer
  This layer provides the access to the gathered data. The network consists of nodes which contain parts of the decentralized database. Also, it stores the Supply Chain data in graph form.
• Application Layer
  The final layer is the place where consumer and business apps take place. Most people will only interact with this layer since e.g. a consumer can use an app to track the goods of interest.

source

For a deeper technical explanation please take a look at the Website and the Whitepaper

Anything else important?

Yes!
They already got awarded by Walmart Food Safety Collaboration Center which is pretty impressive since Walmart is heavily researching the blockchain space for a long time already.
Medium Article

They also partnered with Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
Medium Article

And finally, they can show some strong partnerships with Asian companies which are more than interested to use their solution. Also, there are partnerships in their domestic market (Slovenia) with some pilot projects (see here).

---

Important links

If you are interested now, please take your time and do some proper research on your own.
The most important links are provided below.