OriginTrail is the first and only blockchain-agnostic data-sharing protocol built for supply chains, providing much needed transparency and data integrity for this $64 trillion dollar industry.

Able to connect directly with legacy systems already in place, as well as the multitude of blockchain platforms and dApps on the market, the potential scope of this project is tremendous.

What we like about the project:

• Interoperable?—?works with legacy systems and other blockchains
• Experienced and dedicated team?—?working on the project since 2013
• Clear use case and existing commercial clients
• Well connected?—?Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Consensys, and more
• Presence in Europe, America, and China
• Under-the-radar, small cap compared to competitors

Why is this needed?

The global supply chain market is immense. Tens of trillions of dollars of goods are moved each year, with each product passing through dozens of manufacturers and distributors before reaching the end consumer.

Our world has never been more connected, yet our logistics systems are still isolated, compartmentalized and outdated, with many still managing shipments with pen and paper, excel, and email.

“A single shipping transaction may involve 28 different entities including customs, terminals, forwarders and carriers.” (Porter, 2017)

These inefficiencies have dire consequences to businesses. A staggering half a trillion dollars of global imports are counterfeit, and cargo loss from theft or negligence costs companies $50 billion, annually. (Hayes, 2004)*

For consumers, the risks are more than financial, as exemplified by the tainted milk scandal in China which resulted in 54,000 babies hospitalised and dozens of deaths. (Kraemer et al., 2016)

Is it any wonder that regulatory agencies and consumers alike are pressuring companies to take control of their supply chains to guarantee the origin and quality of their food products?

What’s the solution?

Blockchain is the ideal platform on which to anchor supply chains. As a decentralized, distributed, and trusted ledger, every transaction can be recorded with complete transparency and with full data integrity.

Data that was once locked into corporate silos, can be made available to all, to support faster product recalls, enable analytics, optimize costs, improve safety, and provide greater confidence in the origin of products.

How does OriginTrail work?

OriginTrail is a building a interoperable protocol designed to unlock supply chain data and store it on an immutable, decentralized platform.

The protocol acts as a kind of middleware between a company’s IT systems and various blockchains, designed to easily plug into corporate systems such as SAP in order to extract data to the OriginTrail Data Network (ODN).

ODN is a P2P distributed network powered by nodes incentivized with a token economy. ODN acts as a data layer and is engineered to store data in a graph database, allowing the protocol to take full advantage of the relational nature of supply chain data.

OriginTrail ensures data interoperability by applying GS1 global standards so that objects such as products and attributes are described using the same language. Each time data is written to ODN, the network stores a hash on the customer’s blockchain of choice to guarantee integrity. The use of zero knowledge proofs are added to protect the privacy of data and encourage participants to share data with greater confidence.

Customer apps powered by an API is where supply chain participants such as producers, consumers, and regulators extract value from data. They can query data for such things as product origin, certifications (e.g., organic, Halal, etc), and compliance checks (e.g., inspections, control measures, etc.). Data represented as graphs allow for fast queries of large data sets and offers clients more flexible data analytics and modeling. In addition, data stored off-chain ensures that the solution is scalable as needed.

Who’s on the OriginTrail team?

OriginTrail team is founded and led by Tomaž Levak, Žiga Drev, and Branimir Rakic. The three have diverse educational backgrounds and draw on various fields including social science, economics, and engineering. They have been deeply involved in the supply chain industry since 2013.

There are currently 12 core team members and the team is currently expanding, with several positions available.

Who are OriginTrail advisors?

OriginTrail has 8 advisors, all of whom bring expertise from their respective fields, most notably:

• Dr. Srdjan Krco is the CEO of DunavNET and board member of the International IoT Forum. He has published over 15 patents and more than 70 papers at international conferences and journals.
• John Keogh, president and Managing Partner, Shantalla, a major company that provides advisory services and research primarily focused on four key area: Strategy and Policy, Supply Chain, Product and Consumer Safety, and Compliance and Governance.
• Tomaž Štolfa, entrepreneur-in-Residence at Matrix Partners, and Co-Founder at Layer (TechCrunch BattleField winner); and (formerly) Founder & CEO at Vox.io.
• Anthony Lai , senior director of UOB (commercial bank), Partner at Fintech Connector, and Co-Founder of Inspiar group/ Petra.
• Srdjan Krco, CEO, DunavNET; Past: Senior Research & Innovation Consultant, Ericsson. Founding member of IoT Forum, Member of Alliance for IoT Innovation

What partnerships and alliances do they have?

OriginTrail has a number of ongoing industry relationships including:

• Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA)?—?First agnostic purpose-built protocol for supply chains to become a full member
• Walmart Food Safety Collaboration Center’s Innovation Pipeline?—?Walmart’s accelerator for innovative startups.
• Blockchain for Social Impact Coalitions by ConsenSys
• Trace Alliance?—?An OriginTrail-created association of companies, technology vendors, and supply chain experts who will lead the adoption of the OriginTrail protocol when it first goes live in September, 2018.
• TagItSmart?—?European pilot program to use TagItSmart sensors and OriginTrail’s protocol to track premium wine bottles to their destination in China.
• Yimishiji?—?Pilot program to track food origins with China’s first online farmers market.
• Bits x Bites?—?OriginTrail was accepted into this food tech accelerator in China.
• Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA) industry
• GS1 Global Standards
• Existing European customers?—?Natureta, Zelene Doline, Planika, and Perutnina Ptuj

How far along is OriginTrail’s development?

OriginTrail first came to life in 2013 when the founders conducted initial hands-on research into milk, poultry, and meat supply chains.

In 2014 they used this knowledge to launch a smartphone app in 2014, with integration with Microsoft Navision, SAP, and other 3rd party ERP providers.

By 2016, over 20,000 unique shoppers were using the system, with over 1200 raw material providers tracked in the system. In 2017 they began implementation of OriginTrail with Ethereum, linking their existing users to the platform.

They have an aggressive roadmap that includes a testnet in June, 2018 and the launch of their mainnet in September. The team has a detailed development release plan and they have consistently met their roadmap targets.

Who are OriginTrail competitors?

A number of competitors offer blockchain-based supply chain solutions, though none are blockchain agnostic, being tied to their respective platforms.

As OriginTrail has been designed to bridge the gap between legacy systems and between blockchains, their ‘competitors’ could actually benefit from integrating with OriginTrail.

What is OriginTrail’s competitive advantage?

• OriginTrail is the only blockchain agnostic supply chain protocol, and has been specifically designed for rapid onboarding of companies. They have engineered an approach that works with a company’s existing enterprise technology such as SAP, and which uses familiar integrations such as web services, APIs, and XML.
• Designed as a data layer protocol, OriginTrail is blockchain agnostic. Companies using widely different blockchains are all potential customers for OriginTrail.
• There is no expensive hardware or software to buy and in-house blockchain experience is not required meaning that companies can connect to OriginTrail much quicker and for less cost than the competition.
• OriginTrail is supply-chain agnostic. Although the company has deep knowledge of the food industry, their protocol is generic and can be applied to other supply chain verticals, something the company has stated as a goal.
• OriginTrail’s approach is intensely focused on data sharing and analysis. The protocol’s application of GS1 standards ensures data interoperability among supply chain members. The use of graph databases enables fast query speeds, data modeling, and ability to show relationships between data points. Employment of ZK-Snarks to protect sensitive data encourages greater sharing among participants.

What awards or recognition has OriginTrail earned?

• Food + City Challenge Prize (Austin, Texas) People’s Choice Award Winner (2017)
• #Smartvillages Initiative panelist (2017)
• Open Data Incubator for Europe Winner (2016)
• Belgrade Venture Forum Winner (2014)

Walmart’s Food Safety Innovation Spark Award

After a successful pilot program with Yimishiji, a popular online food company in China, OriginTrail were also chosen as one of 12 companies to join the first generation of the Walmart’s Food Innovation Program.

What are the token metrics and utility?

TRAC tokens will be used as a form of payment between supply chain data producers and data consumers on one side, and the OriginTrail masternode holders on the other.

This in turn incentivizes the use and ownership of nodes (simply a network of machines that are all running OriginTrail software clients) in the peer to peer (P2P) network to perform network and system functionalities.

-Circulating supply: 290 million
-ICO price: $.10 USD
-ICO hard cap: $22.5 million

The tokens were distributed as follows:

• Presale and crowdsale?—?50%
• Future development?—?20%
• Liquidity pool?—?5%
• Founders and pre-ICO contributors?—?18%
• Team and advisors?—?5%
• Bounties?—?2%

Here’s what Blockgrade likes:

• Unlike many blockchain companies that are launched with a just white paper, OriginTrail has an experienced team, existing product, and an aggressive roadmap for blockchain integration that culminates with a mainnet in September, 2018.
• The fact that OriginTrail has been mostly off-the-radar is reflected in a small market cap of $50M when compared to larger competitors such as VeChain (36x larger) and Waltonchain (8x larger).
• The hands-on founding team has been actively building global relationships and has established a presence in Europe, America, and China. We expect this to continue as the business grows.
• OriginTrail’s innovative and unique blockchain-agnostic architecture is highly scalable, easy to implement, and data focused.

Our OriginTrail rating: 8.8 / 10

Vision?—?10/10
Team?—?8/10
Advisors?—?8/10
Partnerships?—?8/10
Roadmap?—?10/10
Token utility?—?9/10

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Note: Blockgrade Capital and its affiliates do not provide investment, legal or accounting advice. This material and opinion above has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, investment, legal or accounting advice.