It's the highest ranked coin we've had so far! Ranked in the 150's, OriginTrail ("TRAC") is currently priced at £0.1356 with a total market cap of £46,715,576 (the result of a circulating supply of 339,969,187 which is 68% of the maximum supply). TRAC aims to improve cohesion in global supply chains by enabling a universal, collaborative and trusted data exchange. It's higher rank by market cap is largely explained by the significant number of case studies it has at its disposal, including work with Fortune 500 companies. Although this is quite a concentrated industry with a lot of competition, OriginTrail operates differently than most which gives it a strong footing for the future. It is a blockchain agnostic protocol that accumulates data from various sources and then allows for multiple actions such as secure linking of data and easy sharing of data whilst ensuring that these actions are safe from manipulation. Being blockchain agnostic means that OriginTrail can be built or operated from different underlying blockchain technologies. Note that OriginTrail is an open source protocol created by trace labs.

There are three big problems that are experienced by businesses that attempt to connect their existing infrastructure to the blockchain. These are:

• Supply chain data fragmentation: Where not all departments/businesses can access a full set of data or the source of data ("data silos");
• Supply chain data centralisation: Attempting to centralise all data to circumvent data silos results in questions surrounding data integrity; and
• Sensitive data protection: Businesses do not share all information as it may undermine their competitive position.

OriginTrail's protocol ("ODN") establishes interoperability by incorporating globally recognised GS1 and W3C standards. GS1 are the body that set standards for global communication. They invented the barcode in the 1970s and have been managing global standards ever since. Once data is aligned, consensus checks to verify datasets can take place. Auditing via compliance organisations can be authorised automatically. As mentioned above regarding sensitive data, the ODN is designed to provide a “zero-knowledge” method to prove data validity.

OriginTrail's protocol keeps data off-chain on the ODN network where it can be tailored for specific supply-chain sharing needs. OriginTrail leverages the power of graph data structures, which allows for flexibility and connectivity of supply chain data. The blockchain is incorporated as a platform to ensure data integrity and to subdue the cost of using the blockchain itself. All information that is recorded generates a tamper-proof "fingerprint" which is stored on the blockchain at the time of arrival. This is used to prove the data has not been modified in any way.

The TRAC token is used on the ODN network for four fundamental reasons. These are:

• Data creators and data holders must stake TRAC in their node to take part in the ODN;
• Data creators publish data jobs on the ODN using TRAC. The amount of TRAC required for each data job is affected by data size and time taken for completion;
• TRAC from a data holder's stake is locked for the length of the data job to prevent tampering as well as to ensure the data is held for a period of time. If the data holder cannot provide the data when requested, it will lead to the loss of the staked TRAC. When the job is completed, the data holder earns back their original stake and the quantity staked by the data creator; and
• TRAC could potentially used in a market for data allowing data creators to sell their data.

OriginTrail have worked with a number of significant businesses and are continuing to do so now, these include:

• The British Standards Institution in conjunction with The Supplier Compliance Audit Network - Utilise the OriginTrail Decentralised Network to monitor and audit factories servicing major United States brands. These include factories run by Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, and Walt Disney;
• The British Standards Institution - Safeguarding the validity of issued training certificates and business standards;
• Perutnina Ptuj - Allows consumers to trace poultry back to the farm allowing for informed purchase decisions on sustainable farming practices; and
• Binance - The cryptocurrency exchange announced that it lost 7,000 bitcoin in a hack in May 2019. The OriginTrail protocol is built to trace any data flow and put it into context when additional data becomes available allowing for the tracking of the stolen Bitcoins and how they were being transferred.

TRAC is easily purchasable and can be bought on KuCoin (TRAC/BTC & TRAC/ETH) as well as UniSwap (TRAC/WETH). The TRAC coin is an ERC20 token and should be supported by any wallets that support Ethereum.

This is amazing! The technology actually seems great as well as the case studies that are available to its name. If people are concerned about competition with other coins in this space such as VeChain ("VET"), fret not. VeChain is a logistics and authentication blockchain compared to OriginTrail which is a blockchain agnostic protocol. It would be expected that VeChain and any other logistics blockchain would operate independently and than OriginTrail would be able to aggregate this data. If this is on an exchange that you use, I'd think about dedicating a healthy amount of your altcoin portfolio to OriginTrail.

Whitepaper: https://origintrail.io/storage/documents/OriginTrail-White-Paper.pdf