Dear Tracers,

July will be remembered for the Trace Alliance Program launch here at OriginTrail. Not only did we launch a brand new website and listed 36 current members on it (including Deloitte, TE-FOOD, Lucid Green, to name just a few), but we also launched new communication platforms, process, and infrastructure to cater to the increasing demand by businesses for the OriginTrail protocol. In our recently published Q2 report, we revealed that more than 200 companies are trialing and exploring protocol functionalities.

Apart from this news, which was the highlight of the month, we will also always remember July for:

The GS1 Slovenia partnership announcement on the 5th of July;

The launch of a new communication format: Monthly AUAs with co-founders. The first one was successfully live-streamed on the 30th of July;

The testnet beta program incorporation and development.

We have a lot of exciting updates. Let’s dive in!

Protocol Adoption: Trace Alliance Website & GS1 Partnership

Kicking off the Month With a GS1 Partnership

Since one of OriginTrail’s core features is based on GS1 standards, we have partnered with GS1 Slovenia to promote their standards and blockchain technology in global supply chains. A long-term partnership will promote the usage of the standards and GS1 will help with project compliance.

Zdenka Konda, Director GS1 Slovenia, said: “GS1 Slovenia will provide expert assistance in introducing GS1 standards for identification and data exchange, and the development and application of traceability systems based on GS1 standards, in particular GS1 EPCIS. We will participate in the preparation and implementation of traceability projects with OriginTrail customers.”

You can read more about the GS1 partnership here.

Trace Alliance Website Launch

In July, we reached an important milestone by launching the Trace Alliance website. There are more than 30 companies who are already in the Trace Alliance, trialing OriginTrail technology and looking into different use cases. Among the early adopting members are companies like Deloitte, Oregon Tilth, TMA Solutions, and Trust Provenance.

Trace Alliance will enable faster and more efficient adoption of the OriginTrail protocol. If your company is interested in becoming a member and cocreating the OriginTrail ecosystem, just follow these simple steps on the Trace Alliance website.

A Welcome from the Chairman of the Trace Alliance

Protocol Development: Beta Program Progress Report

The launch of the OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN) testnet represents the beginning of our beta program which will last until the launch of the OriginTrail mainnet. The purpose of the beta program is to gain as much insight as possible into the operation of the nodes and the network in different node environments and network conditions, both in terms of the ODN as well as the blockchain. By participating in the beta program, you help our team enormously by observing and reporting visible issues with the operation and user experience of your node. You are also helping indirectly because automatic logs about your node are sent to our analytics tools, which lets us analyse information on a daily basis. It is important to note that, even when the beta program ends, the testnet will stay live as a free development environment for anyone wanting to build on OriginTrail, much like how the various testnets of Ethereum are used.

So far, we have released several versions of the node client to test out different scenarios in the network setup. Some of these have introduced significant changes which we have been communicating with active node holders through our beta program channels, mainly Discord. One month into the beta program, we have observed several interesting KPIs, such as the number of nodes present on the network, which peaked at 174. Our team has been running additional tests with spawning significant numbers of our own nodes as well, in order to run simulations at different scales of the network. The testnet is therefore being exposed to periodic data uploads which are used to test out the bidding mechanism, replication and reading capabilities. So far, the success rate of finalized offers has been very high (above 90%), taking into account that several important changes have caused the network to be in a state where all offers can not be completed. Additionally, we have observed a very low number of litigation procedures, which is measured in single digit numbers per day.

One important note is that the market conditions are still not very insightful, as the network itself is operating with test tokens and test ether. The focus right now is to ensure the proper operation of underlying mechanisms that should enable a stable environment (and thus, market). Therefore, the main targets for the upcoming period of the beta program is to further secure network stability and lower the transaction costs associated with interactions with the blockchain. The team is already working on a solution that will be able to lower the amount of transactions, minimize the amount of transactions that do not result in compensation, optimize smart contracts and introduce further flexibility in the protocol. We will be publishing updates and documentation in the coming weeks which will explain improvements to be introduced.

We are also working on the existing codebase to make it more flexible, scalable and, above all, failure-resilient, as the stability of the nodes in the production environment (main network) will be a top priority. We released several minor releases during July and we are currently working on a major update of the code, which will introduce a command sourcing pattern — a very significant improvement.

Communication: First Public AUA with Founders & Growing B2B Traction

We published a Q2 report on July 30, 2018. OriginTrail is committed to the following forms of communications with the community:

Monthly reports such as this one, which include information about achieved milestones, roadmap information, and one-time events. Reporting is done on a monthly basis in Medium posts, going out by the 7th of every month. All the information published in these reports is official and gives the community and other stakeholders insight into how the OriginTrail project is evolving. Quarterly reports, such as the latest Q2 report, present a deeper overview of the OriginTrail project. The report will include information about financials, business, the Trace token, HR, marketing and PR. Biweekly newsletter: join thousands of community members who are getting selected updates delivered directly to their inbox.

The OriginTrail’s communications team is also posting announcements as they occur in the announcement channel on Telegram and distributing it over social media. We are aiming to communicate with our respected community as frequently as reasonable and responsible from a business development perspective.

In July, we introduced the fourth official communication form: monthly AUAs (Ask Us Anything). The first AUA with Žiga Drev and Tomaž Levak was successfully live-streamed on July 30. You can watch the recording here:

You can also read the summary, if you prefer to absorb information in a written format.

As for the other communication highlights (events, publications, etc.), you can learn more in these tweets:

July was a successful month for OriginTrail, the team has made significant steps towards promoting the adoption of the protocol as well as securing the technological excellence of the network with diligent testing. Huge thanks to everyone who is participating in beta network program and shares the excitement for the project.

What are other things that we are all looking forward to happening this summer? Žiga Drev and Tomaž Levak are in Asia, as they revealed in the AUA, securing new protocol adoption opportunities and partnerships. Trace Alliance activities are in full swing — we expect to announce other members soon — and the team will soon delight us with a much-anticipated roadmap update.

Trace on & Happy August!