Haters hate, entrepreneurs build, and professionals help.

This was written in an excellent post by my friend Mike Zillo on Linkedin.

I add, "the lack of knowledge is the only cause of the delay in the adoption of modern technologies."

In his post, Mike reminds us that 65% of new businesses don't make it to their 10th birthday. He is not talking about crypto projects, but about companies in general.

Companies, like crypto projects, human relations, shoes, and pants, all equally share the old saying of conventional wisdom:

"If you have to force it, it's not your size"

So I take it for granted that 65% of cryptocurrencies and tokens, in general, are going to disappear soon. And it seems healthy to me, because nature is not wrong and if a project did not have enough research, enough cash, and enough marketing, and if it does not fit what potential buyers want or need, it will inevitably disappear.

Those who hate the cryptosphere do their business when a crypto project disappears resoundingly like the recent case of Terra Luna, but they do not do the slightest harm to those of us who are sure that we are facing a new disruptive technology such as blockchain and decentralization.

Why am I in the cryptosphere?

Because of the decentralization that it promises.

Most of the new projects are aimed at "hunting" naive people promising immediate wealth. And they get it. Later, when the project strips bare showing its Ponzi or Rug Pull roots, then the mass media blames blockchain technology.

How ridiculous!

But this is how the mass media work in the hands of the corporations that control them and that are seriously affected by the decentralization that the new generations will surely develop in-depth.

I am not in the cryptosphere to get rich because I am not interested in being rich, but in being wealthy. To be rich is to have money, to be wealthy is to have time. I have a planning horizon of 30 years. I live on the coast and spend a lot of time walking by the sea with my wife and dog. I like good food and good wine. I cook, play guitar, read, write, and play chess every day. Why would I want a lot of money if I am very happy going fishing and then cooking a sea bass on the grill with pine wood?

Image by RitaE from Pixabay

I tell all this because I know, from business experience, that most crypto projects are going to disappear. But I also know that there are some who will live forever and who will help build the decentralized world that we dream of for the next generations. Because what matters is the underlying technology.

I spend my afternoons researching and trying to do future scenarios. I don't think I'm going to see a world running in anarchy and totally decentralized like the one I dream of, without corporations, international organizations, banks, governments, and nation-states.

But I strongly believe that blockchain and its decentralizing ethos is the right tool to start the process towards equality.

So, I have selected for myself a series of projects that I believe can lead us to step by step free ourselves from the web woven by capitalism in 200 years of uninterrupted action.

One of the selected projects, and probably my favorite is VeChain.

VeChain is a smart contract platform designed to program supply-chain-management solutions in companies of any type or sector and integrate them with IoT (Internet of Things) devices, facilitating and making their processes more efficient and auditable.

VeChain captured me from the beginning because it was the first to mention the idea of ​​BaaS, Blockchain as a Service. This is, neither more nor less, than offering companies a service to build on the VeChainThor blockchain, solutions for their usual processes, through a simple programming mechanism that does not require specialists, since the service consists of adapting the corresponding applications of BaaS to the needs of companies.

I have been buying VET for two years. I use it for two things at the moment. First, I lend them on KuCoin in its “lending” section. Second, I hold them in the VeChainThor wallet. For the mere fact of hodling, I receive monthly VTHO. (More about the wallet below).

Still today, and after almost 13 years of the presence of blockchain technology in the media, the vast majority of people associate blockchain with cryptocurrencies, as if they were synonyms. Cryptocurrencies arose from a supportive base that is blockchain technology (more broadly DLT), but the blockchain is much more than cryptocurrencies.

If only 10% of the planet's inhabitants today use cryptocurrencies in some way, I would say almost without fear of being wrong that 99.99% of companies have not yet considered incorporating blockchain technology into their processes. Unfortunately, both cases are the product of ignorance.

Why would a company want to solve its business problems with blockchain technology? Well, because in this way, it does not depend on third parties to verify its actions, especially with regard to the traceability of all the components of a product and its associated logistics. The data recorded in a blockchain is immutable and available to anyone who wants to audit it. There is no need for external auditors. There is no need to trust third parties, the consensus protocol is responsible for securing the information. Isn't this a beautiful path to decentralization? How many businesses, many of them illegal, are there built in the intercontinental distribution chains of goods? How many businesses have the States designed with their customs in each country? It is very clear that a decentralized, permissionless, trustless and publicly accessible ledger would ruin many intermediary parasites.

Image by postcardtrip from Pixabay

When one deeply understands the intrinsic potential of blockchain, it shudders

Companies and their clients could track their products from the production of their components to their dispatch to the market, going through all the semi-finished and final production processes. This allows users to inspect the storage conditions of each component, the temperature of the different stages of storage and transfer, the ecological standards, the carbon emission at some point in the process, and the dignified treatment of a company towards its employees in any of the providers, the list is endless. Everything is registered in the blockchain solution installed by VeChainThor in the client company. The user, especially the end-user, becomes the supreme judge when considering whether or not to purchase a product by investigating in the free and public access blockchain everything that happened before the product in question reaches his/her hands. VeChainThor not only provides the necessary software for the solution but also the IoT devices that would be necessary to capture the data in the different stages of the distribution chain.

VeChain was created in 2015 with the somewhat strange goal of transforming the international logistics industry by utilizing blockchain and IoT technologies. Its founder, Sunny Lu, is an electronic engineer and at the time was a senior executive in China for LVMH, the luxury goods chain. The first native token was called VEN and it was an ERC-20. In 2018, VeChain built its own blockchain and was renamed VeChainThor and its native token VET. The company has offices in the US, Europe, and Japan, in addition to its headquarters in Singapore, and is certified as one of the most eco-friendly public blockchains on the planet, by CTI, Center Testing International Group Co. Ltd.

The VeChainThor Blockchain is built on a modified version of the Ethereum code base. The fundamental mission is to make a blockchain available to companies to enable the implementation process easy in specific use cases. VeChainThor users are manufacturers, retailers, consumers, and all kinds of companies. The service providers build the applications on top of the VeChainThor, such as smart contracts and applications.

The VeChainThor ecosystem is built on a dual token economy: VET and VTHO.

The reason for the creation of a second token for the ecosystem is explained in depth in the White Paper.

After much research, VeChain found that the main obstacle to the adoption of blockchain technology by companies is that the cost of using the blockchain is in direct relation to the valuation of the token of that blockchain. The guiding principle of the model is to prevent transaction fees from being directly exposed to VET price volatility, as is the case in Ethereum with the single token model. In this way, VeChainThor solutions are more stable to conduct business and plan it over time.

The function of VET is to be a means of value transfer, as is normally a native token of a blockchain. Instead, VTHO is the underlying cost of using VeChainThor and running smart contracts, and it will be consumed as the different transactions take place. In other words, with VET, the business carried out by the companies that develop projects on the VeChainThor Chain using the BaaS service, will be paid, and those transactions will use VTHO as gas. VeChainThor is similar to NEO in that it also has two coins and one uses it as gas. It is very different from the case of ETH which uses the same coin for gas and then, the demand for the coin spuriously raises its price, punishing the value of gas necessary to carry out the transaction’s validation.

VTHO is automatically generated by hodling VET. It is interesting that VTHO is a kind of interest that is paid to VET hodlers, who receive this interest in another currency. VET hodlers receive VTHO and can use VeChainThor “for free” as long as the operations carried out consume less than the generated VTHO. But, in addition, the users of the chain can buy or sell VTHO in the event that it is necessary due to large-scale processes.

The much lower value of VTHO compared to VET can be seen in these CoinGecko charts.

The consensus protocol used by VeChainThor is Proof of Authority, a kind of PoS, but much more concentrated. This is another factor that negatively influences companies when they have to decide between IBM or SAS and VeChainThor to implement a business solution. The network is basically supported by the so-called Authority Master Nodes, which are currently 101. They are not few, but they are not many either. Then the specter of centralization appears.

To run a Master Node you need skills and technical knowledge. VeChainThor offers four hodling tiers:

Strength: minimum staking 1 million VET

Thunder: minimum 5 million VET

Mjolnir: minimum 5 million VET

Authority Node: minimum 25 million VET

In January 2021, the Sync 2 network update was introduced, achieving compatibility with all major browsers and facilitating the accessibility of dApps.

VET supply is capped at 87 billion. To operate a Master Node, you have to stake 25 million VET (at the price of the end of May 2022, just over $800,000), that is, it is an operation that can only be assumed by companies, strategic partners, and/or associations. This means that being 101 the Master Nodes, considering that there are other classes of nodes that are not so important, there is currently more than 2,500 million VET staked, out of circulation.

It seems that staking is the main activity of the VET token, and the hodlers, basically companies associated with VeChainThor, ensure the stability of the chain. But what will happen to the price of VET when more and more companies want to develop their business on the VeChainThor blockchain? What is going to happen is that there is going to be greater demand for VTHO, and this is the token to watch. There is a big difference between this business model and Ethereum's. In Ethereum, there is only one currency for everything. In VeChainThor there are two, and the one that can grow the most is received as "interest" by VET holders. I find this model very attractive, and I think it has a great future.

But I'm looking a little further. I have a vision of a future world in which most of the devices that are part of our daily lives are interconnected by IoT devices. When this happens, the municipalities or "counties" will be able to show their operating efficiency and their degree of commitment to the environment and care for the ecosystem. In this case, VeChainThor can greatly contribute to the social development of the municipality, providing software, IoT, and data management to correct gaps. What will happen to VET and, above all, to VTHO?

Imagine the following scenario. A company that manufactures and distributes perishable foods has all its machinery interconnected with IoT devices that collect data 24/7 from all critical points in the process, from the receipt of raw materials from qualified suppliers to storage and dispatch. The Company has developed an application that runs on VeChainThor with its BaaS service, so it did not have and does not have to hire specialized personnel to maintain the functioning of the blockchain technology in the process, a technology that it did not know about until a few months ago. All the data collected by the IoT sensors are automatically stored in the VeChainThor in a definitive way so that it cannot be deleted, it cannot be modified, and it is available to those who want to audit it. It's that simple. Under what conditions do you think a company of this type will compete? End consumers also benefit from being able to inspect, if they so wished, everything that happened to the food they are going to put inside their bodies.

Another example. A company that sells household appliances in the retail channel requires its suppliers, as a condition of qualifying as such, to develop an application with VeChainThor with the BaaS service so that end customers have the possibility of tracking the product they purchased since the first part was received. This includes not only the manufacturing, but also the storage and transfer on overseas ships, with the temperature that the equipment endured during the trip, and the times that it was moved in the port of dispatch and destination.

Another example. For you who are a lover of good food and an accomplished gourmet. Soon, the best restaurants will only accept ingredients that can be tracked by customers. In other words, you will be able to sit down, order a dish, and demand that the restaurant let you inspect its blockchain to find out the origin of the pork tenderloin you are eating and under what conditions it was fed and raised, at what average temperature the potatoes that accompany it were stored, and know if they received harmful agrochemicals in their cultivation, and also know in which latitude and longitude the wine you are drinking was grown, in what year the grapes were cultivated, in what farm and on what lot, and what were the different transfer stations that that specific bottle had on its way from the winery to the restaurant. Isn't this a competitive advantage of the restaurant? Will diners become this demanding?

These transactions between companies that have their applications on VeChainThor will be paid in VET, and the network of validators will validate them using VTHO.

Is it understood what the growth perspective of these tokens could be?

How far are we from an IoT world interconnected and operated with blockchains like VeChainThor?

I think much closer than you might think. All that is needed is a new generation of managers educated in the efficiency of blockchain technology, the lower costs that it brings, and the possibilities of developing a decentralized and transparent world, which, in addition, eliminates almost all the possibilities of crime in the logistics of products on the planet.

As you can see, the bet is very big, and one of the fundamental points to achieve it is the support of the people who manage such an ambitious project, and the quality of the partners, the institutional investors that VeChainThor attracted and will continue to attract, and the usability of the stakeholders in general.

The VeChainThor ecosystem is run by the VeChain Foundation. The Steering Committee and the Advisory Board can be consulted here. A high degree of professionalism and experience can be seen in all members.

Over the years, VeChainThor has managed to put together a wide network of Partners, Enterprises, and Connections that shapes it and allows it to reach the places that can really decide on the incorporation of blockchain technology in their processes. At the beginning of 2022, there were about 150 partners, including DNV, PWC, Draper Dragon, Crypto.com, University of Oxford, City University of Hong Kong, Walmart China, De Cecco, NTT Docomo, DHL, Schneider Electric, Bayer AG, LVMH, BMW Group, Groupe Renault, Intercontinental Hotels, Shanghai Gas.

These companies are implementing VeChainThor's BaaS solutions. They got on the boat and took the lead. Take the case of De Cecco, the Italian pasta maker. Being of Italian descent, and a huge pasta eater, what noodles do you think I'm going to buy from now on?

Image by RitaE from Pixabay

The communities around VeChainThor are growing and are very fun. See for example VeChainFam. It seems that Sunny Lu said that “to the moon” was not enough and that he preferred Mars.

So these guys want to send a VET hodler to Mars in 2024!

on Telegram

On Twitter

I use the VeChainThor wallet, available for iOS and Android.

The wallet allows to view, transfer, and receive the tokens developed on the VeChainThor chain, known as VIP-180 tokens. It is noted as a warning that they can only be transferred to the VeChainThor chain and not to Ethereum, not even to VEN, the first token that the platform developed as ERC-20.

In addition, you can interact with more than 80 applications developed by fans on this blockchain. From swaps to the purchase of NFTs on VeSea, the most active market in the chain, through messaging services on the blockchain, signing services, and management services so that companies can manage assets on the blockchain. There is also a series of games like so many other platforms, in which you have to feed dragons and collect humanoids that survived a holocaust. There are very interesting games for children.

There is also, among the applications, a Naming service to obtain human-readable addresses and a DEX called Vexchange.

In the “rewards” section you can see the rewards received for operating a Strength Node (a smaller instance of a Master Node), for which you need to stake 1,000,000 VET. I'm not using it at the moment, but it's one of my future goals. Very soon, companies will begin to realize the value of incorporating blockchain technology into their processes, and for this reason, I bet on VET.

Conclusion.

An ant has more flexibility to protect itself from changes in scenery than an anthill. The anthill is a hierarchical construction of ants that serves a specific purpose. If a gale breaks out, the lonely little ant can run and find a hiding place to take cover. Instead, the anthill is nailed to one spot. It responds to ancient structures of construction, operation, and development. It has a hierarchical structure that is very difficult to change. If the gale is big enough, the anthill will be gone, but our lonely little ant will probably survive.

My vision regarding the massive adoption of blockchain technology by companies has a figure similar to that of the anthill.

The companies are run by ancient management structures, graduates of universities that continue to teach their students the management techniques of a past that will never return. The external gale materialized in a fundamental change in management technology is not being perceived by companies at the moment. Most of today's traditional managers believe that all this blockchain and cryptocurrency noise is a fad (to some, “rat poison”) and that everything will be back to normal soon. However, the lonely little ants are beginning to understand and that is why they have a much better chance of surviving.

This is also extensive for governments and public administrations. These are ultraconservative anthills generally made up of people with few intellectual resources, who come to power for having fulfilled their sad role as lackeys of the political party's leaders. Not only do they not care about the gale, but they also don't even realize what's going on outside. In their sole quest for power and money, they only care about how to get more power and more money.

This is VeChainThor's bet. By using the BaaS service, it is relatively easy for an anthill to become an efficient company adapted to the new paradigms. The lonely little ants are going to start asking for efficiency, transparency, speed, and in-depth knowledge of the actions carried out by each of the companies and governments.

Everything will depend on us, the ants.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

As usual, none of the things written in this post are financial advice and are not intended to replace personal research. My sole intention in writing this post is informative. Several of the things discussed here could be wrong, so in no way can this post be construed as financial advice, and in no way should it replace your own research.

Thank you for reading!

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them down below

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