While HM is yet to confirm the partnership, VeChain’s main investor is already speculating as to how the two companies’ collaboration will expand.
Cos, the luxury subsidiary of the fast-fashion brand HM, appears to have partnered with blockchain platform, VeChain, to provide detailed supply chain tracing data to customers.
During a recent ‘ask me anything’ (AMA) with Sunny Lu, the chief executive of blockchain-based supply chain management platform, VeChain, revealed that the company is working on a new project with a “fast fashion brand” with which it had previously partnered.
VeChain CEO reveals new project with ‘fast fashion brand’
Lu stated that “more than 4,000 sustainability products were traced” using ‘MyStory’ – a traceability platform powered by VeChain that was developed with international classification society DNV GL.
Speculation quickly surfaced that the mystery partner must be HM, Vechain’s platform had been used to verify the organic manufacturing underpinning the manufacture of HM subsidiary, Arket’s apparel, in 2018.
Sleuthing conducted by Chinese media platform, Uncle Cat, quickly identified the HM’s high-end fashion label, Cos, as the likely partner, before spotting one of the company’s jumpers donning a MyStory tag.
Since being founded during 2007 in London, Cos has expanded to comprise 290 physical shops located in 44 different jurisdictions.
VeChain investors believe Cos partnership will expand
An article published by Cream, a blockchain and crypto investment firm and “one of the main driving forces behind VeChain”, suggests the partnership could also see blockchain technology used to enhance Cos’ second-hand marketplace ‘Resell’:
“For example, clothing items can have an NFT (non-fungible token) pairing generated at the point of sale, providing the new owner with a token proving authenticity and an immutable record of ownership.”
Cream suggests that VeChain and MyStory could be also used to strengthen internal supply chain transparency, in addition to consumer-facing sustainability monitoring.
In 2019, ConsenSys launched a platform in partnership with Microsoft and French global luxury goods conglomerate, LMVH, to verify the authenticity and ethics of high-end fashion, including brands Louis Vuitton and Parfums Christian Dior.
Hedera Hashgraph Blockchain to Launch, Release Coins Starting Sept. 16
Hedera Hashgraph, a blockchain-like public network for enterprises, is adding a U.S. financial giant to its governing council.
Hedera announced Thursday that FIS Global will become the ninth addition to its 39-member council. Hedera also announced that it intends to launch its mainnet in beta on Sept. 16.
The company claims its distributed ledger technology can facilitate micropayments and distributed file storage; support smart contracts; and will allow private networks to plug into the public one to take advantage of its transaction ordering mechanism. At launch, Hedera claims it can support up to 10,000 transactions per second and file services at 10 transactions per second.
FIS joins council members from multiple industries and four continents, including Japan-based Nomura Holdings, India’s Tata Communications and American tech giant IBM. It is the first U.S.-based financial services provider to join the group.
FIS declined to comment.
“We wanted to make sure that those initial members were diverse enough”, Leemon Baird, co-founder, chief scientist and inventor of the hashgraph consensus algorithm, told CoinDesk. “They’re on different continents, under different governments and in different industries.”
Greater reach
While the addition of FIS will further decentralize Hedera’s governance, the network is still looking to diversify its governing council – both by geography and by industry.
“We started with what we think are the low-hanging fruit, but there’s a large swath of the market we have not begun to touch”, said Mance Harmon, CEO of Hedera. “For instance, we don’t have anyone in the energy sector or the automobile industry.”
When the mainnet is launched, the distribution of Hedera’s HBAR tokens will begin and continue over the course of 15 years. So far, the company has raised $124 million after three rounds of funding through simple agreements for future tokens (SAFTs). The first distribution of HBAR tokens will be to the approximately 1,000 participants in the SAFT rounds.
Hedera is releasing HBAR in tranches over time to avoid anyone cornering the HBAR market, which would allow them to monopolize the nodes as well.
Before the mainnet launch, Hedera will announce a 10th governing member, and 13 nodes will run the open system with three of the 10 governing members running two nodes. (Hedera says that 13 nodes are more secure than 10 nodes. In the future all members will run one node.)
