Slovenian foodtech startup, OriginTrail, is adding a significant layer of trust to all product supply chains by innovating on a Blockchain. It is developing a decentralized solution which will close information gaps, save money, and increase trust between organizations. A highly efficient solution will have seamless interoperability between different IT-systems. OriginTrail is planning a Token Generating Event (crowdsale) in November to make the decentralized network open for anyone.
“We already have a strong track record of successful traceability projects with complex, global supply chains and from different food sectors. To bring trust on an even higher level, we started implementing Blockchain in our solutions in 2016. OriginTrail solution is already used by the leading Slovenian food producers to show the provenance of meat, dairy and vegetable products to consumers” said Tomaž Levak, co-founder and CEO. “Our mission is to break the information gap in all supply chains with a collaborative Blockchain-based solution. We have strong partnerships, experienced development team, and inspiring new pilot projects ahead of us.”
Getting supply chain to the Blockchain
With the globalization of trade, we face an inevitable increase of the complexity of supply chains. While enabling enormous efficiency, savings and more choice for consumers, complex supply chains also open doors for fraudulent behavior which can be hard to trace. Supply chain process setup is obsolete in today’s interconnected world. The major problem remains data fragmentation. IT providers who want to establish full supply chain visibility currently have no common ground for collaborative data exchange. Blockchain offers data immutability, but is not cost-effective and can only handle a limited amount of transactions.
OriginTrail is tackling this issue with its own decentralized solution that combines data from all stakeholders in the supply chain and performs consensus checks. Fingerprints of data are safely stored on a Blockchain. “We are already implementing the Blockchain-based solution with our partners. Four high-level pilot projects in Europe and China are being implemented and are using Ethereum Blockchain to track all points in a supply chain, from the primary producer to the point of sale” said Tomaž Levak. To help with the expansion, OriginTrail recently opened its second location in China.
“China presents a huge opportunity for development of retail in general. Being a large market, tech-savvy consumers in large cities increasingly pay attention to where their food comes from. They want to be reassured that what is written on the label in actually true” said Žiga Drev, co-founder and COO, who is managing operations in Shanghai, China.
Next stage: ecosystem, open for everyone
OriginTrail is developing its solution as an open, standard protocol which will help improve efficiency and increase trust in supply chains on a global scale. This peer-to-peer network enables further development of decentralized apps for supply chain management, optimization, compliance, certifications, and much more. The distributed network will be fueled by pre-mined utility tokens which are used to facilitate data processing and exchange functionalities of the network. OriginTrail is planning a Token Generating Event (crowdsale) in November.
“Our new protocol will bring interoperability and information integrity to the fragmented supply chain world. It will be a plug & play Blockchain-based solution, applicable for all product supply chains. By supporting global standards for data exchange (GS1, IoT, compliance standards), OriginTrail assures compatibility with all existing ERP systems, making implementation process seamless and efficient. Finally, it is fully decentralised and open source.” explained co-founder and CTO Branimir Rakić.
The solution will include all information along the supply chain and will enable verification of information at any time. It will be especially useful for complex, globalized supply chains, where implementation of a general solution is often halted or limited by the capabilities of individual systems. With Blockchain being the base of OriginTrail protocol, it firmly stands as a solution that brings the highest standard of data integrity.
Industry-renowned advisors and recognitions
Advisors to the project include professionals with industry-specific knowledge that will help the solution scale. Among them is John G. Keogh, global authority and advisor on end-to-end supply chain integrity and the application of supply chain standards and technologies. His advisory work is especially focused on food chain issues relating to policy, consumer safety, traceability, recall, brand protection and anti-counterfeit. He is working closely with the GS1 organization on global supply chain standards.
OriginTrail’s previous-stage solution was already internationally recognized. It has received 2016 People’s Choice Award in Food+City competition in Austin, Texas, and the winning award from Open Data Incubator for Europe in 2016.
