VeChain — undervalued technology solving real-world problems. CryptoMedics have been vocal supporters of VeChain since it came to our attention back in November 2017 at 0.20 USD. It’s has only started and its potential is clearly in top 10 CMC.
What is VeChain?
From VeChain’s website:VeChain strives to build a trust-free and distributed business ecosystem based on the blockchain technology self-circulated and expanding, they are one of the earliest blockchain technology companies in the world, demonstrating proven blockchain implementation experiences in industries such as luxury goods, liquor and agriculture.
What are the use-cases?
Food/DrugsVeChain records tracks of food/drugs from its origin and puts it into the blockchain to follow it till it reaches the end-user. The tracking of the food/drugs throughout its lifecycle is then possible which enhances monitoring over it, which boosts consumer’s trust in the food/drug safety.AgricultureVeChain creates the solution of blockchain based cloud services using IoT technology designed for the green organic agriculture industry. Its goal is to provide precise data to enhance the quality and quantity of the crops, minimizing the negative impact to the environment and increasing the value of the quality inspection of the crops in the same time.Anti-counterfeiting in luxury goodsVeChain places its specially designed anti-counterfeiting NFC chips into the products to prevent counterfeiting, and make product’s past public and enable lifecycle management with the blockchain technology (all with cooperation with top brands). Users can find out about the unique “story” behind the product by scanning the chip with their mobiles.
The Apotheosis
The Apotheosis publishes VeChains governance model, introduces their steering committee and provides the concept of Masternodes
Thor Power
Apotheosis Part II released on 30th December 2017 presents a second token into the VeChain ecosystem, which serves as a reward to VET holders operating Authority and Economic nodes and will be used by enterprise partners to operate on the VeChain Blockchain. When it comes to the concept, it may look similar to GAS and NEO, yet, it’s claimed to be very different.
Masternodes
VeChain is going to use two different nodes — Authority Nodes and Economic Nodes. The Authority nodes, (Thrudheim Nodes), will be limited in number and subject to a strict vetting process for operators, to ensure node operators have a legitimate long-term interest in supporting the VeChain ecosystem.
Projects and Partnerships
Gui’an New Area, China — National Government MandateThe Administrative Examination and Approval Bureau of Gui’an New Area has already commenced using the E-Government System powered by VeChain Thors blockchain technology. They will store the business registration related documents, such as a business certificate, bank account certificate, tax registration, organization code, foreign trade registration and audit reports.Healthcare Co. Ltd. (Mlily)Mlily will be using VeChain Thor for Proof of Origin, Proof of Authenticity and Supply chain management. It is predicted that this project will use at least 20 million RFID chips every year for the next five years (blockchain data entry points).BitOceanVeChain has reached a strategic partnership with BitOcean. BitOcean is an ATM solution selling cryptocurrencies nationwide across both China and Japan.As one of the fastest growing solutions, BitOcean is one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges to become fully licensed by the Japan’s Financial Services Authority (FSA).Renault and MicrosoftPartnership to deliver a digital car maintenance book which is capable of stopping the practice of “car clocking”.VeChain worked with VISEO and Microsoft on this proof of concept for a ‘Digital Passport’ for their vehicles.Global Assurance Provider DNV GLDNV GL (86,000 enterprise customers in 100 countries, and 15,000 employees across 350 offices) is working on a number of proof of concept and live implementations with VeChain. VeChain team is working with DNV GL to launch a cold-chain logistics assurance service where each customer can quickly check the logistics information for the fresh products, from the food factory, through cold-chain logistics provider, cold storage in the store, and ultimately on the shelf to sell. They are using a chain of stores with 26,000 locations.Direct Imported Goods (Shanghai) — DIGPartnership to deliver a blockchain platform to combat counterfeiting and improve product safety.
The Power of Partnerships
VeChain CEO Sunny Lu used to be the CIO of Louis Vuitton China. LouisVuitton is part of the LouisVuitton Moët Hennessy group, of which Givenchy is also a part of. Whilst not formally announced, it’s anticipated that Givenchy will be announcing a partnership with VeChain in pretty soon. Brands like Louis Vuitton, Dior, Bulgari and TAG Heuer, alongside Wine/Champagne brands including Moët & Chandon,Veuve Clicquot and Dom Pérignon are also a part of speculation.Rumour: It’s known the VeChain met with BMW, but Sunny could not comment owing to NDA (which pretty much confirms a partnership) and we are yet to hear anything official from Givenchy.
Why is Vechain so valuable to business?
There’s multiple benefits to the businesses VeChain is doing. Let’s talk about it.
Supply Chain
Literally the chain of steps involved in the creation of a product to its eventual consumption by the customer. Let us use wine as an example because the wine industry suffers a lot of counterfeiting as 20% of the market is fake. A brief overview of the supply chain for wine might be: Vineyard > Crushing > Storage & Fermentation > Bottling > Delivery to distributor warehouse > Delivery to Retailers > Customer.
Customer-facing Benefits
Trust in the product builds brand reputation and drives sales. If you like your wine from a certain area, you now have assurance it did in fact come from that area. If you’re paying more for a good bottle, you can be sure it’s not one of the 20% of fakes. If you’ve been educated that wine needs to be stored for a certain time at a certain temperature, then a temperature sensitive chip could verify that to you as a customer. If you want your product ethically sourced, you can track its journey to a registered ethical vineyard. If you heard about an outbreak of a virus in Sierra Leone, you can track your wine to make sure it didn’t pass through Sierra Leone.In the same way that having a luxury brand logo makes your bag more affluent, having a VeChain chip makes it more premium. It becomes a differentiator at first, then becomes the standard later on.
Business-facing Benefits
For instance, a batch of product was spoiled. Currently, producers need to recall every product or if they already have some kind of batch identification system going, they can recall the entire batch. If products are individually tagged, the faulty products can be individually recalled which saves on reputation damage and costs in terms of refunds and processing the recalls.If you have a product that is sensitive to external forces (e.g. food) then you can improve the quality of your product by identifying any point in the journey to the customer that has damaged the product’s quality. Currently, most manufacturers have a decent idea of what the product looks like when it leaves the manufacturing plant and anything after that is a black hole. Have you ever bought a tub of ice cream that’s obviously half melted and then re-frozen?. Well, that’s one thing that you can avoid and if it was a courier’s fault, you can even reclaim costs on damaged goods. The end customer receives higher quality goods which makes you brand reputation better and you recoup costs on faulty products.
Supply Chain Efficiency
Imagine you have a huge supply chain that goes across international borders. Right now, you only get basic information when certain milestones have been reached. Think about your tracking number. That thing is basic and you pay extra for it. Imagine being able to see exactly where your shipments are, how long it’s been there, what conditions they’re in, etc. Now you have a bunch of data you can use you improve your operations. Maybe 20% of your delivery time is sucked in by one particularly poorly managed distribution warehouse in China. You can use that information to organise better delivery terms with another courier. Or maybe your delivery costs are high because everything is going out as individual orders. Instead, you can delay one shipment by 20 mins for another one to arrive and have them delivered together. Maybe you constantly have theft or product damage from one particular point in your supply chain. Now you know you need to put more security there or avoid the area altogether. There is a lot of money involved here. A huge company like Coca Cola, for example, is moving millions of dollars’ worth of goods a day.
Inventory Management
If you have a better understanding of where your goods are, their delivery times, and their viability for sale you can start to optimise your inventory as well. Walmart might stock $10M worth of Coca Cola at any point in time because they don’t want to run into a situation where they run out when people are looking for the product. That’s $10M worth of assets that is sitting there and losing value. That’s also $X worth of inventory floor space that is costing them money as well. With better supply chain transparency, maybe they can cut that down to $5M, which has just given them $5M to invest in other things. This could even become predictive analysis — if the VeChain chip is destroyed once the bottle is opened then you know how many unopened bottles of Coke are circulating in the consumer market outside of your own supply chain. Maybe there’s a magic number of circulating supply that requires restocking. Coca Cola can also use this info to adjust their production lines.
Smart Contracts
A lot of delay, fraud, and expense happens in maintaining the financial side of things too. When your distributor delivers to the retailer, staff need to check the products for damage, count that the order is correct, then sign off on the delivery. The deliverer then needs to take that sign off and put it through their financial systems to claim their fee. The sender then needs to check that invoice as well to make sure there’s no funny business. Smart contracts can automate the entire process. The pallet of wine arrives, a few bottles were damaged but the chip has already notified everyone of that, it arrived 12 hours late so there’s a contract 10% discount, the courier drops it off and just leaves. Floor staff just put them straight on the shelves. The finance teams of everyone involved don’t need to check anything, payment has already happened automatically.
Others
It’s all about data. You can call it a supply chain management token but VeChain is really about collecting data where once there was no data to be had. Data is what allows people to create competitive advantages or make good business decisions. You don’t know to focus your sales in this area of the country unless you have data saying consumption there is highest. You don’t know that your delivery route is taking longer than it needs to unless you have data on the actual route they’re taking. What if in the future everyone has a digital wallet embedded in them? Then you can just walk up to a bottle of Coke and when you open it, the chip executes a smart contract to deduct the price from your digital wallet? Or what if drone delivery becomes widespread and you can view in real-time where your delivery is and have it come directly to you based on its current location and estimated flight time? Or what if you tag everything in your house and the next time you lose your keys you just login to the app on your phone and find it?Now, lets summarise why we think VeChain is the real deal (based on community’s AMAs:
- 23% of total supply was allocated to enterprise investors when ICO was launched in August 2017. This pool will gradually be sold off as we identify strategic partners.
- 33 Million VET was deducted from the foundation wallets during Q4 2017. There was a misconception that this was company sell off, whereas in reality these were sold to the strategic partners from August 2017 (during ICO) and were merely held as these partners did not have the necessary procedures/wallets put in place to receive these tokens.
- trying to accommodate for crypto-noob enterprises proved to be challenging, but not without its rewards. The first ever cryptocurrency disaster recovery plan was conducted during this challenge.
- the VeChain Foundation has never sold VEN/VET on the open market.
- only 5% of total supply will have been paid out to the team over a period of 2 years.
- an example of custom knife manufacturing was used and whether a VeChain RFID chip can be implanted into the product — the short answer was yes, and this is said to be crucial to achieving mass adoption by enabling small/business owners to use the VeChain blockchain — not just the bigger enterprise users
- uploading data onto the blockchain will constitute as a transaction. Frequency depends on a case by case scenario with different clients.
- as Sunny Lu states “Use cases guide product, product guides technology” VeChain focuses on the TPS required for the client, not what can be tested in a lab.
- VeChain is working on cross-chain technology as part of the VeResearch program with renowned universities. This will become a standard function of the VeChainThor and is scheduled for Q4 2018 on the roadmap.
- all businesses and all commodities will benefit from VeChainThor.
- VeChain are already working with some of the largest retail enterprises in the apparel and fashion industry. They benefit from VeChain solutions in 4 ways: 1) Enhance supply chain management and anti-counterfeiting 2) Provide new customer experiences by enhancing the interaction and making product unique to customers 3) Providing data solutions on retention, product life, user experience etc 4) New innovative ideas to create value to VeChainThor as valued and encouraged
- VeChain are currently in contact with companies within the pharmaceutical industry.
- in terms of payment, it is free for customers to verify the products. There will be a cost when uploading data onto the blockchain. Enterprises can choose to pay for the cost in either VeThor or a fixed fiat fee. VeChain has also created a global patent pending payment model (MPP), which allows parties other than the sender involved in an on chain transaction to opt to pay for the network fees of this transaction.
- if enterprises do not wish to hold VET, they may engage in a BaaS service product that uses VeChain. Through this, they can choose to pay a fixed fee in fiat to use the blockchain platform. It can be seen like as if an enterprise company were choosing to invest in real-estate for their office rather than pay a monthly rental fee.
- it is mentioned that something similar to a VeThor only exchange will be put in place where companies that use Thor can buy directly from the exchange and users generating Thor can list it directly to that exchange.
- detailed business arrangements of confirmed partnerships are confidential and hence why VeChain can not release more than they do on each respective partner.
- VeChain are engaging with various types of partners including system integration partners that help with application development when dealing with the growing amount of partnerships. By doing so, VeChain can focus on the development of blockchain infrastructure, smart contracts and APIs. VeChain is also expanding as demand increases.
- the entire purpose of the twin-token economic design is to stabilise the cost associated with the transactions of payments, or execution of smart contracts on the VeChain Thor blockchain. Transaction fees will be significantly lower than existing public blockchains such as Ethereum, but the expected amount of transactions will be much higher.
- VeChain welcomes all community members to help raise awareness of the VeChain platform within their communities or regions. There will be ‘Community Entity’ announcements coming for non-technical community members to contribute.
- VeChain asks their clients, “Please list your requirements, and we will evaluate it for you.” There are many different types of hardware devices, chips, tags, sensors etc, which are suitable for many types of solutions. There is not a single chip that is end-all for every use case.
- VeChain’s solutions are already being used by companies now on their consortium blockchain. These clients will be migrated over to the VeChainThor public blockchain on mainnet launch.
- VeChain have signed several esteemed companies in the United States that are currently under NDA. There has been plenty of interest out of the US with many respectable companies reaching out to VeChain. A lot of time and resources will be devoted to North America in the future.
- to the VeChain Ecosystem, Artificial Intelligence (AI) utilities would be a category for many ways to analyse data, along with other forms of machine learning. VeChain sees AI as a function of a type of application running connected within their ecosystem. AI is to solve problems in a much quicker and reliable fashion than humans. However, for this data to be reliable, the following 3 technologies must be met: 1) IoT sensing technology is accurate and reliable 2) Connection technology is reliable for data transmission 3) VeChainThor blockchain technology cannot be tampered with
- in most cases, business partner solutions are formalised by combination of different technologies such as IoT, Blockchain and AI
- there is the example of partner iTaotaoke who they are working with on the distribution of contents with copyrights or intellectual properties. This is just yet another use case for VeChain. It is now said there there are over 250 use cases on the pipeline.
VeChain MainNet launching June 30th
The countdown for the VeChain MainNet launch has finally begun as we are already a week in this month and June 30 is the expected scheduled date. With Thor network launch, VeChain is planning to start a new phase. Currently down by almost 23 percent since last week’s price, VEN is suffering due to the major BTC drop.After rebranding the VeChain (VEN) to VeChainThor (VET), the project is finally approaching its main net launch. However, June 30th it is not a definitive date and may be subject to change.With this MainNet launch, an integral point to focus on is the exchange of VEN units for VET tokens as these will become the native tokens of Thor network.So, to begin with, you need to move your ERC-20 tokens to the official VeChain wallet. Different time durations have been communicated for different node tiers like X-Nodes, Authority Nodes, and Strength by the VeChain foundation.When the launch takes place, the exchanges are expected to handle the token swap as well as happened in the recent MainNet launch cases of other cryptocurrencies. VeChain will also be launching a new wallet that you can use to do the swap.When it comes to the token swapping, every ERC-20 VEN token will be equal to 100 VET. This means, at MainNet the price of VET will be 1/100 of the market price.VeChain team recently released its ambitious and updated version of the whitepaper that talks about the project’s plans to enter into IoT, blockchain IDs, supply chain logistics and government affairs.
Prediction:
Current price: 2.80 USD/46463 satoshi (BTC Price $6480) (13th May 2018)End of 2019 — Vechain should be a top 5 coin. No one has business adoption like Vechain, no one has official partnerships of this magnitude, Vechain is already about to start doing what we thought wouldn’t happen with blockchain as a whole until 2020+.Everyone is sleeping on it, thinking its in the same stage as the other Alts. That’s a joke, most these projects have years to go before they are at the stage Vechain is, and by the time they’re there- the market will belong to Vechain already.Vechain is building an entire business ecosystem that will change the way B2B. Interactions are done, in more ways than I can count on my fingers and toes. this coin is world changing. We cannot emphasize enough how big this project is. In all years of crypto, we only seen a few projects this promising.
There’s more to come…
Rumours have been ripe about listings on further exchanges, Bittrex and Bitfinex being possibilities. Recently, Sunny Lu has confirmed he had entered into ‘a couple’ of exchange agreements in the past weeks, however regulatory issues in Korea and the US could be holding things up.
VeChain is currently listed on Huobi, Bithumb, Binance, HitBTC, liqui.io,gate.io, LBank, Kucoin and EtherDelta.
The article was based on multiple online sources.
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