What Is Waltonchain Network? Introduction to Waltoncoin WCT Token
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What Is Waltonchain?
Waltonchain is a blockchain that tracks radio-frequency identification (RFID) data throughout the supply chain. Waltoncoin (WTC) is the native cryptocurrency token of the mainchain, and users can create their own tokens on subchains.
Supply chain management is one of the most prominent and obvious uses of blockchain technology. Everyone from FedEx to Walmart is working on blockchain solutions to increase efficiency by reducing costs and friction. Projects like VeChain Thor are deeply focused on the problem too, even including NFC and QR codes, along with expanding into other enterprise operational matters.
The Waltonchain team is well-equipped for battle though – co-founders Do Sanghyuk and Xu Fangcheng have pedigrees as the Directors of the Korean Standard Products Association and Septwolves Group Ltd., respectively. And Kim Sukku, a former Samsung VP, serves as Chief Scientist Advisor.
Waltonchain is named after Charlie Walton, who invented RFID technology. It’s also an acronym for Wisdom Alters Label, Trade Organization, and Network. It’s not related to Walmart or the Walton family who owns that retailer.
By focusing on one of the most-used technologies in supply chain, Waltonchain can build a sustainable business. We’ll start our research into the project with a deep dive into Waltoncoin (WTC), the proprietary cryptocurrency coin of the Waltonchain blockchain.
Waltoncoin (WCT) Cryptocurrency Summary
The total supply of Waltoncoin is 100,000,000 WTC. The peak price of WTC so far was $42.46 on January 27, 2018.
The Waltonchain ICO token crowdsale was held from September 1 through 30, 2017. At this time, approximately $10,000,000 worth of ETH was raised by selling around 25,000,000 WTCT (as it was known at the time). Approximately 30,000,000 WTCT was withheld for mining rewards, and 10,000,000 WTCT was retained by the founding team.
Waltoncoin is used to pay for transactions or create subchains on the Waltonchain blockchain on a per-byte basis.
WTC is mined using a combined Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-of-Stake (PoS), and Proof-of-Labor (PoL) consensus mechanism. They call it Waltonchain Proof-of-Contribution (WPoC).
The main chain uses a combination of PoW and PoS. Data exchanges between parent and child chains are processed by master nodes using PoL.
There are three types of Waltonchain master nodes: Master Nodes (MN), Guardian Master Nodes (GMN), and Super Master Nodes (SMN). Here’s the breakdown of the formulas used to calculate WTC rewards:
WTC Holders = PoS Pool
MN = PoS Pool + PoW + PoL
GMN = MN Pool + PoS Pool + PoW + PoL
SMN = GMN Pool + MN Pool + PoS Pool + PoW + PoL
As of December 19, 2018, there are 18 SMNs, 1563 GMNs, and 2281 MNs (which includes GMNs). The Waltonchain Foundation has been actively recruiting 99 SMNs since July 2018. Holding 5000 WTC qualifies you as a Guardian Master Node and 10,000 WTC is needed to qualify as a Super Master Node.
The Waltonchain mainnet was launched March 2018, and exited beta testing in April 2019. A series of token swaps was held to convert mined mined WTCT tokens on the Ethereum-based Waltonchain beta into proprietary ERC-20 WTC tokens on the mainnet. The token swap concluded on block 550,000.
Waltoncoin is accepted by a variety of cryptocurrency exchange markets, including Allbit, Binance, Bithumb, Huobi, OKEx, and CoinMex. Its trading pairs include ETH, BTC, XRP, and USDT.
The Waltonchain mainnet is an Ethereum fork, so WTC is still ERC-20 compatible and can be stored in any ERC20-compatible cryptocurrency wallet. This includes MyEtherWallet and the Trezor and Ledger hardware wallets.
Waltonchain’s RFID Supply Chain Bet
Waltonchain’s value proposition describes a Value Internet of Things (VIoT) in which data from RFID tags is stored on the blockchain. Scanning the RFID tag provides a brief look at necessary information about the product it’s attached to.
In the food supply chain, for example, an RFID tag would hold the harvest date, all parties who touched the product, and any other information pertinent to the end user.
And businesses don’t have to worry about trade secrets being leaked – all Waltonchain users are able and welcome to create subchains with whatever consensus mechanism they choose. This reduces the bottlenecking found in Ethereum’s blockchain and enables scaling.
It seems to be attracting enterprise partners across China and Southeast Asia. Aside from partnering with several Chinese provincial governments, Waltonchain is partnered with Tanyu, Silictec, Lalabobo, Kaltendin, and more. It is not currently partnered with Walmart, and rumors swirling around seem to be based on the similar name.
Although focused mostly on Asian markets so far, there’s comprehensive English documentation building, and the official Waltonchain Medium account is regularly updated.
Now that Waltonchain has proof of concept, it simply needs to continue selling its supply chain management solution to more enterprise users, who sign long-term contracts with big payouts.
The supply chain management market is expected to be worth $19 billion annually by 2021, according to Gartner. Blockchain technology, when combined with IoT and artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning (ML) algorithms, is seen by many industry analysts and experts as the solution to minimizing errors, reducing costs, and speeding up the entire supply chain.
Waltonchain weathered allegations of premining and more from critics in 2018, but it launched mainnet 2.0 in late April 2019. This gives investors hope the project will gain momentum.
Waltonchain Summary
Waltonchain is one of many enterprise-grade supply chain solutions integrating RFID IoT data onto the blockchain. It’s named after the inventor of RFID and is not associated nor partnered with Walmart. The project is well endorsed in China and other countries in the Southeast Asia region. The success of Waltonchain hinges on these key factors:
- Waltonchain stores RFID information in smart contracts on an Ethereum-like blockchain that supports parent and child chains.
- Waltoncoin (WCT) is the proprietary ERC-20 token of the Waltonchain mainnet. It’s mined using a hybrid WPoC consensus algorithm that balances stake and work among nodes.
- Individual users can create and issue their own tokens on the Waltonchain network using whatever consensus algorithm they please.
With these pieces in place, Waltonchain has a solid technical architecture in place and enough partners to keep money flowing into the project. The real issue is whether it can attract enough SMBs, GMBs, and MBs to scale and support the massive supply chain infrastructure in place.
If it can carry the weight, people may one day wonder if Walmart is a subsidiary of Waltonchain, instead of the other way around…
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