August started off very nicely for OriginTrail with a mention in Forbes. Trace Alliance membership grew significantly, and the dev team worked hard on testnet developments and presented their progress to the community in an AMA, interview with a video and a testnet progress report blog post. Our advisors, Andrew Webster and John G. Keogh, shared their excitement for the project, and we announced the Autumn Roadshow highlights — our team members will lead blockchain panels at the GS1 forum in Dublin and the 2050 China Food Tech Summit. Learn more in our latest report.

Protocol Adoption: The Trace Alliance is Growing at a Fast Rate

Since the launch of the Trace Alliance website, we have experienced an increase in companies’ demand for joining the initiative. A total of 13 new members — from a wide range of industries and countries — joined in August.

Currently, there are 46 active members, collaborating on exchanging knowledge, working through challenges, and sharing complementary technology and knowledge.

With a 57% growth in the number of members who are service providers, it is clear that companies are eager to learn new services when it comes to their blockchain experience. This will not only increase the adoption rate towards faster and more efficient implementation but also towards understanding the blockchain.

Companies, individuals, and organizations are still welcome to apply for membership via the Trace Alliance website. We will resolve all applications within seven days upon receiving them.

In September, we are organizing several interesting activities for Trace Alliance members. We hosted an AMA with the chairman of the alliance, John G. Keogh, on LinkedIn. On September 10th, we will host the first webinar for members. There will also be an exclusive report from a GS1 event in Dublin event for members, and, at the end of September, we will invite companies — Trace Alliance members and others — to participate in a public call for 10 use cases on the protocol. The program will come with rewards and our team will provide mentorship to those selected. Voting will be done by the community. Stay tuned, we will publish the public call soon.

Among other important milestones in August:

Protocol Development: Beta Program Progress Report

It has been two months since our team released the first beta version of the OriginTrail node (Apollo), kicking off the beta program, during which we have seen solid progress and regular updates. In August, we published two new releases (the latest being v1.3.24) with many enhancements, fixes and interface improvements (see release notes for details).

The test network is constantly operating, with imported data coming from both companies and our sources (periodically) being uploaded and integrations being tested with OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN). The current success rate of data creator (DC) offers on the network is above 80%. Node escrow initiation has also improved (above 80%), while confirmation is constantly above 92% (97.6% on average), which can be considered quite high, especially considering breaking changes we introduced as part of the six releases after Apollo.

The upcoming sprints will be focused on optimizing the bidding mechanism and on increasing the resilience of the nodes. We also recently updated the roadmap, which puts the launch of the ODN mainnet to Q1 2019. Read more about the reasons behind the move forward here.

In August, we also published three pieces of technology-related content:

A testnet progress overview blog post by co-founder and CTO Branimir Rakić;

An interview with a senior developer and software architect Janko Simonović, which hides a content gem — a video demonstration of node resilience in OriginTrail’s decentralized network; and

A technical AMA for the community with Branimir Rakić and senior developer and product owner Vladimir Leličanin, which you can watch here:

Communication: Growing B2B Traction

At the beginning of August, the OriginTrail team was thrilled to be featured in Forbes’ article “Why China Will Drive Blockchain And 4 Related Myths” by Mark Tanner. In the article, OriginTrail co-founder and COO Žiga Drev debunked the myth that you can store anything you want on the blockchain for cheaply:

“As blockchain data is held across thousands of servers, storage isn’t cheap. Ziga Drev, founder of blockchain solution provider OriginTrail notes that blockchain wasn’t designed for large amounts of data, but the ultimate aim of the technology requires it to “optimize the way business is done across multiple companies,” such as with supply chains. This does take some data. Fortunately, OriginTrail has overcome the challenge of expensive scalability, storing only “fingerprints” of data on the blockchain itself, which costs cents, or even a fraction of a cent for low cost FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) products, where fingerprinting can be done on a batch level.”

Read the entire article at this link.

As you know, OriginTrail’s advisors are actively included in the co-creation of value in the ecosystem. For August, we can thank our advisors for two brilliant pieces of content aimed at the initiation of protocol adoption:

Andrew Webster , our advisor and Partner at Jardine Lloyd Thompson in the UK, shared his excitement for the blockchain and OriginTrail technology implementations in the maritime and insurance sectors in this exclusive video interview.

, our advisor and Partner at Jardine Lloyd Thompson in the UK, shared his excitement for the blockchain and OriginTrail technology implementations in the maritime and insurance sectors in this exclusive video interview. John G. Keogh, OriginTrail’s advisor and chairman of the Trace Alliance, created an insightful LinkedIn article on how the blockchain is vital for provenance traceability and chain of custody analysis in supply chains. The articles were celebrated in the business community.

Other monthly highlights that we shared with Tracers on Twitter are:

Autumn will be colored with many industry relevant events. We will discuss the GS1 standards’ role in blockchain implementation at the GS1 forum in Dublin. We are delighted to share the stage in Shanghai with many important speakers at the 2050 China Food Tech Summit, organized by our partner Bits x Bites, and much more. Check out the current event plan for autumn 2018 here. It is constantly evolving.

Trace on & stay tuned for more good news from OriginTrail in September!