OriginTrail meetup in Belgrade was our first public opportunity to do the wrap-up of the token sale that successfully finished in January, where the hard cap of USD 22.5 million was reached 18 minutes after the token sale was open to the public.

The main topic of the meetup, however, was data scalability in the decentralized world and discussing our proposed solutions with Serbian blockchain community. Our founders & developers shared their vision on how to tackle this challenge in the most complex, yet lucrative arena of supply chains. We were happy that more than 150 people joined us in the heart of Belgrade!

OriginTrail’s mission & token sale recap

Tomaž Levak (CEO), who co-founded OriginTrail with Ziga Drev and Branimir Rakic back in 2013, shared some milestones from the company’s path that ultimately led to innovating on the blockchain and building of the decentralized protocol. OriginTrail’s solution tackles the complexity of global supply chains, where 32% of manufacturers say they are unable to guarantee the ingredients they use are not fraudulent.

Tomaž reminded how traceability solution started before the blockchain, how OriginTrail received people’s choice award at Food+City program in Austin, Texas, presented at the European Parliament, how it did the first steps in the Chinese market, got admitted to the innovation program from Walmart Food Safety Innovation Program, organized meetups all over the world from New York City to Hong Kong, and ultimately successfully closed the token sale.

Tomaž Levak, CEO & Co-founder

Scalable linked data network for supply chains based on blockchain

In the tech part that followed, CTO Branimir Rakić and Senior Software Lead Vladimir Lelićanin took space and explained the distributed technology and logic behind the solution. Decentralized ledger, as opposed to the centralized one, does not require any central body or middleman to verify the transactions. The trust is put in the network mechanism instead, based on mathematics and cryptography, which makes the ledger immutable and practically impossible to manipulate. Since there is no single point of failure in the blockchain, the system can survive catastrophic events.

OriginTrail already built a pilot project on Ethereum network. The distributed ledger is a basis for trusted information about the product journey from the farm to the table, for establishing accountability within the supply chain, and for product safety — the protocol can also include data from sensors and other internet-of-things data. Branimir shared with the audience that OriginTrail’s consensus check mechanism found data inconsistencies already in the first day.

Building the Trace Alliance — OriginTrail’s global partnerships

COO Žiga Drev manages the implementation of OriginTrail’s pilot projects with global partners. All companies interested for further implementation of the OriginTrail protocol and building decentralized applications on top of it for their specific business purposes are invited to join the Trace Alliance — a group of organizations, experts, and developers that will closely collaborate on the development of the protocol.

Žiga Drev, COO & Co-founder

Zero-knowledge proof & consensus checks — utilizing public blockchain in a multi-organizational environment

In the last part, we went deep into the data, privacy, and confidentiality. One of the main obstacles for sharing data between partners can be a reluctance to sharing business secrets and other competitive data. Aleksandar Veljković, OriginTrail’s data expert and researcher, shared his presentation on the zero-knowledge proof. The basic idea is to verify the integrity of data without revealing the content itself, based on the encryption and zkSNARK principle — Zero Knowledge Succinct Non-interactive Argument of Knowledge.

Decentralised networking time!

The place was packed, and it remained such for quite some time after the end of the official part. Networking by snacks and craft beer provided us with an opportunity to further connect with the Serbian tracers and also present them with opportunities that are opening in our offices.

OriginTrail’s development team is based in our Belgrade office and we are currently expanding our team to develop the protocol for the next stage. It is a unique opportunity to work with the latest technology and tackle most advanced challenges in the exciting crypto space.