EtherZero, abbreviated ETZ, is a hard fork on ethereum providing no-fee, high expansibility, real-time transaction or operation feedback services. Aiming to be a general-purpose smart contract platform, ETZ helps developers set up DAPPs that not limited in finance and business scope, but those more frequently used in daily life, to popularize decentralized services to more people and industries. ETZ eliminates the gas fee system from Ethereum network core and adds a Transaction Restriction Policy Protocol layer that associates the threshold, frequency, depth, etc. of initiating transactions with the account balance to combat DDOS like attacks. In particular, ETZ also draws on DASH's two-tier network architecture built with Masternodes transaction verification network and blockchain ledger layer, and its built-in community autonomous system to provide users with real-time operation feedback and high transaction concurrency, no longer need to wait for a long transaction confirmation time. ETZ picks the proven experience of Ethereum on smart contracts, removes its less scalability gas-based fee system and designs a fully accountable trading limit and security strategy against DDOS Class attacks. The final two-tier network composed of the main node and pow consensus layer laid the foundation to achieve free of charge, high concurrency, real-time transactions, independent evolution and several other features. What does no-fee mean to DApp Dev? Taking a simple Todolist DApp as an example, its decentralized implementation can be applied to the team task decomposition process, which requires all participants in the project to know the tasks of other members. Each task is a team consensus result with demand of traceability. The application involves registration of members, additions, deletions and alterations of tasks. According to Ethereum development requirements, all of these operations require gas consumption, which is clearly unreasonable for the users of the application. While in EtherZero, the transaction initiation frequency and the execution depth of smart contracts will be positively related to the balance possessed by the account. This mechanism is similar to POS, it takes into account the fair use of bandwidth and set a relatively high capital threshold required to launch a DDOS attack by malicious attackers while providing free services. This kind of limited and cost-effective free mechanism will spread the decentralized application into the scene of life.
OriginTrail provides a helpful protocol solution to the problem of maintaining trust among all players involved in bringing a product to market by making the “chain” in “supply chain” more literal. Using blockchain technology, OriginTrail can append immutable data to products as they take each step along the supply route. Thus, each participant not only verifies that their conditions are being met but that at every previous stage, the right conditions were also met by everyone else. This is achieved by making an application layer that allows data to be collected in the real world, and then stored on the blockchain. OriginTrail started out by testing their tracking with organic beef products in 2014, and they are still mostly involved in the tracking of food products in general. It wasn’t until 2016 that they introduced a blockchain into their system. In January 2018, they raised US$22.5 million in their ICO. Since their ICO they’ve successfully launched their testnet, implemented privacy features, and achieved compliance with the GS1 standards that are integral to their business model. Their roadmap is robust and full of details, citing certifications with international bodies, alliances with companies, and entering new markets. Their mainnet is scheduled for launch in Q3 2018, and thereafter they appear to be on track to having all their services fully operational by 2020. OriginTrail is not the first or only company to recognize that supply chains could benefit a great deal from blockchain technology. Ambrosus is also going for the same market, though they seem to be focused on food and pharmaceuticals specifically. It should be noted that most supply chains have their own specific quirks, and so specialization might be be a good option. Another potential competitor of OriginTrail is Waltonchain, a company based in China that puts heavy emphasis on RFID chip scanning as part of their business model. In other words, where OriginTrail wants to leverage existing systems for their infrastructure, Waltonchain wants to try and establish new standards and methods. OriginTrail’s token is called TRAC, and it’s an ERC-20 token, making it storable on any ERC-20 compatible wallet. The total supply is capped at 500 million tokens. The value in TRACE tokens comes from their utility on the OriginTrail network. Tokens are spent to store, retrieve, and send data about supply chains. Since TRACE can be bought and sold in a speculative market, that creates the potential for the price to go up, which would be counter to the needs of people on the network looking for stable prices for setting and getting data. However, prices for data saving and retrieval will be determined by auction, which should counter increasing token value for those using OriginTrail as a service. The Internet of Things is a topic that gets a lot of press, and the general consensus is that it will be standard practice in the future for almost everything in the world to be tracked and traced for a wide variety of purposes. OriginTrail is one company that is demonstrating a concrete plan for exactly how that will be manifest. There really isn’t much to criticize in terms of the overall intention of the project. OriginTrail has identified a weak point in the very important world of supply chain management, that of reliable transfer of information all the way up and down the chain, and aims to provide a workable and clearly understood solution.