Cryptovest | Aug 03, 2018 03:00AM ET

VeChain Thor (VET) is a public blockchain solution, supporting smart contracts, specially designed to give companies an easy way to track their inventory. It combines the Internet of things (IoT) technology with a blockchain in order to digitize the supply chain.

VeChain allows brands to monitor their sales channels in real time by putting Radio-frequency identification (RFID) labels on the products, which help consumers to track the whole history of a product in just a few clicks.

Basically, the project aims to solve the problem of counterfeiting goods on the market.

Imagine you want to buy a Gucci bag, but you are not sure if it is original or fake. If Gucci is partnering with VeChain, you can simply scan the RFID tag and receive all historical information about the product – year of production, country of origin, type of material, etc.

Brief history of VeChain

VeChain (VEN) is one of the first cryptocurrency technology companies in the world, founded in 2015.

The project launched its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in August 2017. VeChain was built on the platform as an ERC 20 token, but at the end of June 2018 it launched its own blockchain and rebranded to VeChain Thor. Its ticker symbol also changed from VEN to VET.

VeChain has a strong core development team and more than 150 employees around the world. Its CEO, Sunny Lu, has a solid background in IT and Information Security across luxury retail brands. He is a former CIO of Louis Vuitton China.

That’s why their main focus, in the beginning, was the luxury goods industry, but VeChain has also proven itself as a successful blockchain implementation in other industries like wine, agriculture, automobile, liquor.

Partnerships

When you offer B2B solutions the only way your project can increase its community adoption is by making significant alliances. Here are five key VeChain partnerships that helped the project grow.

● PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

In May 2017 VeChain became part of the PwC's incubation program. This partnership is aimed to provide VeChain with access to the Hong Kong and South East Asia markets and PwC could optimize its accounting techniques by implementing the VeChain’s blockchain technology.

● Government of Gui’an

This is a partnership on a national level with the Chinese government. China wants to develop the mid-west part of the country, and that is why Gui’an is a strategic zone. It is part of an experimental national initiative. The plan for it is to become a “smart city” and VeChain was the only selected blockchain technology provider to participate in the building of this new area.

Some of the use cases of VeChain in Gui’an should be to certify government information sharing and to provide traceability solutions for the wine industry and the energy trading. The ultimate idea of this project is to prove to the government that the blockchain technology can be really useful for the country.

Similar projects in the past like the development of Shenzhen and Shanghai Putuo showed that might have a huge impact on the national economy.

● Shanghai Waigaoqiao Direct Imported Goods sales centre Ltd. (DIG)

A total of 30% of all wine imported to China comes through DIG and VeChain provides a tracing platform for DIG. Each bottle contains a label which can be scanned by every customer to check if the product is genuine. This information can’t be faked because it is stored on the blockchain which is immutable.

● Kuehne & Nagel International AG

This is one of the leading transport and