VeChain Thor Public Blockchain: the promise, extent, and possibilities

The retail industry has for decades faced a problem with counterfeiting. Not only do fake goods steal them from their earnings, but they’re also often of lower quality, giving users an experience that’s not on brand with the companies. This, in turn, gives them a poor image, thus harming them in all possible ways.

While many attempts have been made to curb counterfeiting, most of them happen at a retail level, leaving customers to trust whoever is selling them goods. 

Until now, there has never been a way for a customer to be 100% sure they’re purchasing legit items other than authorized retailers.

VeChain aims to fix this.

A blockchain for supply chains

The blockchain immutable ledgers can be used for hundreds of things, as the recent boom in projects has shown. 

One of the most creative, yet undeniably useful ideas, comes precisely from VeChain. This particular blockchain attempts to keep track of products from the moment they are made until they reach your hands. In other words, it’ll allow you to be 100% sure of a product’s origins and where it has been.

More importantly, all of these features will also be available to brands and manufacturers, allowing them to check where their products are at any time.

How does it work?

The VeChainblockchain essentially abstracts goods and created smart contracts to symbolize their transport. So when products are moved from one place to another as part of the supply chain, the smart contract is executed to symbolize this.

This would be entirely useless on its own, since it would mean putting a bunch of numbers in a ledger with no governability whatsoever. However, there are two details that make VeChain work. 

First, items in inventory will be directly linked to their store counterparts – that is, along with its barcode or QR code, every item will ship with a unique code that will be tied to an item’s whole supply chain.

Even when it might sound silly, this is very important because this feature allows retailers to make sure what they’re receiving is legit. 

When a product is shipped to them, the specific code of each of the items in the lot should appear as sent to their store or area in the blockchain – and if this is not the case, the product is likely to be counterfeit or stole.

The other detail that makes the chain work is how it doesn’t allow just anyone to process or authenticate transactions in it.

To avoid having bad actors, the VeChain instead uses a handful of authorized nodes for authentication, these nodes being run by organizations that participate in it.

Therefore, nodes are considered trustable as a whole and attacks would be difficult, if not impossible, to perform.

How does the cryptocurrency work?

First, the main thing: You can’t mine or stake crypto on VeChain. You can, however, purchase and hold it if you wish.

Yet even holding crypto here won’t make sense in many cases. VeChain Thor has two separate cryptocurrencies, those being VET and THOR. The thing is, VET tokens produce THOR tokens – thus making holding THOR tokens impractical.

On top of that, THOR tokens can only be used to pay for transactions among smart contracts in the blockchain, making them useless for individuals.

Of course, one could hold a lot of VET and sell the THOR it produces to companies that might need it – but whether this will ever be a profitable enterprise is yet unknown.

VeChain hopes the tokens will remain stable, meaning the chances of such a venture growing profitable are slim to note.

Is it a good blockchain? Does it have a future?

VeChain is one of the most specialized blockchains out there. The fact that individuals can’t really invest in it in a way that makes sense is a design choice, and one made with the aim of separating VeChain from the cryptocurrency craze.

So far, VeChain hasn’t changed the way supply chains work, but adoption has been slowly growing. As more areas of the economy open themselves up for blockchain as a technology, it’s likely more supply chains will start using VeChain, making the likelihood that this project will succeed rather decent.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you should invest in it. It’s likely to succeed, but it has also been designed with the specific intent of keeping blockchain investors out, so hold these tokens at your own risk.