With the release of the Cecil Alliance Foundation’s Project Manifesto right around the corner, we decided to take a quick look at some of our project’s core principles and operating strategies. In Part 2, we are breaking down the foundation and core technologies powering its solutions.

What is the Cecil Alliance Foundation?

The Cecil Alliance Foundation (CAF) was founded to build a global platform for the tagging, tracking, and transacting of animals and animal data. To do this, the CAF uses public blockchains, IoT, and private database technologies. Our core philosophy is that knowledge is opportunity, and that every animal tracked is a chance to learn more while creating a network of more trustable data. This brings us closer to our ultimate goal of using technology to improve animal welfare and conservation.

Animal data can then be put into collaborative efforts across companies, industries, and institutions around the globe. The CAF is the decentralized body tasked with governing these collaborations. As part of this role, they must find a balance between:

Monetizing developers

Creating profit margins for companies

Establishing fair and secure data alliances

Leveraging animal data for the greater good of animal life in general

Understanding the Horizontal Structure

With so many areas to improve and issues to solve, the CAF realizes that it needs to have an organized horizontal structure to achieve its goals. By having a horizontal approach, entities using the Cecil Alliance Platform (CAP) are more agile in their ability to plug and play components, features, tools, solutions, and products across, or in collaboration with, a multitude of verticals. The participants of the CAP, governed by the CAF, strengthen these offerings by developing hardware and software solutions that can be adopted across various industries to encourage collaboration between organizations in animal-based industries, software developers, and hardware manufacturers for their own profit. In doing so, new entities can be established that create even more targeted verticals benefitting zoos, livestock, wildlife, pets, sports, and other industries.

One example of such verticals is MustangChain. Using solutions provided on the CAP, MustangChain can target the horse industry. Customized software will allow horse owners together with veterinarians, verified stakeholders, and studbooks to tag, track, and upload data relating to their horses. The data won’t be limited to one industry, as it can be transacted and used with appropriate authorization across the entire Cecil Alliance ecosystem.

Understanding the Decentralized Governance

The ideal governance for the CAF is one that encourages ownership, monetization, and fair value flow through the platform while still bolstering the overall advancement of the animal kingdom. Individuals, developers, and entities using the platform within their business processes will have the opportunity to oversee the foundation in a decentralized manner.

The most important aspect of the Cecil Alliance Foundation is to:

Vote to issue and accept grants using the Foundation’s funds to advance the Cecil Alliance Foundation’s mission

Vote on changes to the platform such as fee structures, design, branding, technical implementations, etc.

Vote on how funds within the Cecil Alliance Foundation are utilized for short term purposes

Vote to establish the criteria for acceptance of governance applicants

Vote to establish expectations and rules changes to governance participants

Vote to remove governance participants

Vote on the hiring and firing of the CAF President

Vote on the yearly budget of the CAF

By using a decentralized governance structure, the Cecil Alliance Foundation can ensure the sustainability and growth of the platform is aligned with the interests of those bringing the most value to the platform. This safeguards the work of developers and businesses attempting to help the CAF find new ways to improve the welfare of animals everywhere.

New Technologies

To support their line of products and services, the CAF will need to blend a robust combination of both software and IoT hardware. CAF will have access to a number of IoT sensors, hardware, and development tools. The VeChain Foundation has already built a suite of sensors including accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses, gas sensors, GPS, and other positioning devices. Since the chips used in these sensors are sourced from top companies such as Bosch, ST, and Qualcomm, users can be confident in the overall quality of the hardware. Additional partnerships with third-party IoT companies will allow the CAF to develop other products necessary to complete their tech offering. Altogether, this will include:

Active mode devices, such as GPS positioning sensors

Passive devices, such as NFC and RFID tags

Hybrid devices, that have limited battery functionality

Blockchain-enhanced physical animal IDs or passports

Built with enterprise adoption in mind, VeChain’s Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus model spreads permission to validate data within the blockchain between 101 trusted entities around the globe. This decentralized governance gives businesses peace of mind, while giving the network faster speeds and increased scalability compared to more traditional governance models, such as Proof of Work.

VeChain also has exclusive features that make the network more convenient and appealing for developers and users alike. This includes:

Multi-Party Payment: Allows users other than the sender to pay transaction fees. This form of “fee delegation” results in users being able to participate without having to hold tokens or understand the fundamentals of blockchain.

VIP-191: A second form of fee delegation that allows the user to request a secondary party pay for the transaction fees. This can be hidden behind an application’s UI, making blockchain usage simplistic and conducive to mainstream adoption.

VIP-181 Non-fungible Token Standard: Non-fungible tokens are unique tokens created for a single unique object that is registered on the blockchain. Non-fungible tokens could, for example, give authorization over a single data record; such as ownership of a pet or animal. Information and details added about this asset would be included in the blockchain, making it verifiable and trustless.

Stay tuned for part 3 of our article series “Discover Cecil”.

Follow us on our social media to stay tuned for future developments and to support us in our mission to build the Internet of Animals: