How many Enterprise customers are currently piloting on the testnet? 20 as pre-announced? Who are these and how did it perform so far? What info can we expect? Long ago it was said that more info would be released around testnet completion.

For enterprises that were pre-arranged to participate in the pilot program, they are required to go through the onboarding process which typically consists of 5 steps: 1) based on preliminary interest and high-level use case, determine participation status in the pilot program — 2) detailed outline/spec of initial business objectives and use case, as well as ultimate test KPI/metrics to measure success — 3) technical implementation from our end to deliver initial pilot MVP — 4) business-side implementation and use — 5) report conclusions and review. Obviously, around 20 enterprises have passed step 1 which is confirming participation, but as expected, the coordination of internal resources (on the enterprise side) to support the progression through the 5 steps could be limited or slow at times. Currently 6 enterprises are at step 2 and 2 have reached step 3.

What we did not expect was the cautiousness of the enterprises in publicly disclosing anything that has to do with experimenting with blockchain or crypto-related endeavors — most of them have the attitude of needing to be 80% sure of either long-term strategic value or 100% sure of production-level implementation in order to be willing to release news surrounding it. In hindsight it makes sense as these enterprises are typically large multinational brands or public companies that have strict PR policies. To balance this, we are exploring opportunities to work with smaller and more agile tech and internet companies as well, which are far less conservative in this regard.

Other than that there are exceptionally high early adoption indicators from electric car companies and the automotive industry in general, from market feedback on the APEX blockchain as well as our very own pilot program. Retail and travel come next, and financial services rank last. Also note, that initial pilots are the China or APAC (Asia Pacific) Branch of multinational companies or local Chinese corporations so adoption speed, and relevant characteristics and attitudes may differ from what you would expect if we targeted global or North American/European HQs. The latter we will definitely explore in the future but China HQ is a good and convenient starting point.