OneLedger ICO Overview

The OneLedger ICO and OLT Token are offering a protocol to facilitate enterprise integration of blockchain technology. Through a combination of business modularization tools, integration APIs and interoperable architecture, OneLedger is designed to make the process of onboarding blockchain technology more viable and efficient for enterprises.

OneLedger present the protocol as a seamless path to enterprise use of distributed ledger technologies for myriad business applications such as supply chain/inventory management, accounting and digitization of assets.

OneLedger ICO Value Proposition
OneLedger is a three-layer consensus protocol designed to provide efficient integration of different blockchain applications for enterprise use. OneLedger allows users to create business applications via the OneLedger business portal, which communicates with the protocol via an API gateway. The business portal enables users with any level of blockchain experience to map their business module onto the blockchain, generate chaincode through modules created by developers and label the process throughout its design.

Interaction between enterprise applications with private or public blockchains occurs through the use of side chains. Below is a breakdown of the three layers of consensus underlying the protocol:

Role Consensus- The first layer utilizes a “role-based” consensus protocol tied to the digital identity of business participants, with each role linked to an individual node. Contracts generated by this layer define the roles and their respective behaviours.

The contract generated by this layer will be generated again as one that is executable on a selected public blockchains such as Ethereum. Through their defined key and digital signature, users are linked to their role in the business, enabling transparency and traceability of anyone who writes information on the blockchain.

Channel Consensus (i.e. Side Chain Consensus) – Side Chain Consensus allows for the execution of interactions (transaction or business actions) between roles. When new block data is recorded, Byzantine Fault Tolerant Partial Synchronization is utilized within the channel among all participants.

The Side Chain Consensus will require all participants to vote and consensus is reached when more than ⅔ of voters have reached agreement. When consensus is achieved, the written block data is broadcasted to all nodes in the channel and stored. Side Chain Consensus also helps initiate transfers between public chains.

Public Consensus – When a transfer between public chains is requested, the pre-consensus step is conducted on the sidechain, with a pre-consensus block sending a proposal to the public chain. The proposal is then voted on by validators of the public chain to lock or unlock assets from the public chain.

If the proposal is returned successfully from both public chains, the pre-consensus block is committed. Once ⅔ of the sidechain nodes commit this block, it is finalized on OneLedger.

Diagram Illustrating Transfer Between Public Chains from White Paper

OneLedger Token (OLT) serves several purposes within the OneLedger ecosystem. Firstly, users will pay a network fee to nodes as they use One Ledger protocol. Network supporters who run nodes will receive OLT in exchange.

Initially, anyone will be able to run a node. As the ecosystem develops, staking may be required to further guarantee the quality of the network. Users can also spend OLT in a marketplace to purchase new business modules and plugins made by developers. OLT will initially be issued as an ERC-20 token.

OneLedger ICO Team
David Cao is the Founder and CEO of OneLedger. David has a substantial track record as a developer and technical consultant with over 20 years of experience according to his LinkedIn. He is currently Chairman of the Canada China Blockchain Professional Association and from 2012-2017 served as Lead Commerce Consultant with Xerox.

Alex Todd serves as CTA of OneLedger. Alex has extensive experience as an entrepreneur. He is the Founder and CEO of a blockchain-enabled social credit rating system called Trust 2 Pay. He is also former CTO of PRESTO, a company that integrated Ontario’s transit fare system.

The Lead Engineer of the OneLedger ICO is Stephen Li. Stephen has over 15 years of experience as a developer since 2002. He has held positions with the likes of IBM and Morgan Stanley over his career, most recently with the latter as a full-stack web developer.

CEO of Polymath, Trevor Koverko, has joined the advisory team of OneLedger.

More information on the team and advisors can be found here.

OneLedger ICO Strengths and Opportunities
The product concept offered by the OneLedger ICO is very business friendly in terms of both usability. OneLedger intends to construct a service-side interface, otherwise referred to as the business portal, for users with any level of blockchain experience to build workflows and map business modules on the blockchain.

OneLedger will also leverage their API to encourage developers to create an ecosystem of plugins for specific business use cases. Developers will be able to make plugins available for enterprises on the OneLedger marketplace, where they can earn OLT in exchange.

To further take advantage of the potential that blockchain interoperability holds for enterprises, OneLedger are developing an SDK specifically for deploying Dapps across multiple platforms.

Instead of coding multiple smart contracts, the SDK will allow for developers to create a master smart contract, specifying the smart contract written in each language of choice for deployment on the desired set of protocols. Developers will have the ability to launch Dapps on multiple platforms at once via this master smart contract feature.

OneLedger ICO Weaknesses and Threats
Interoperability is focal point of blockchain infrastructure projects at the moment. With the plethora of protocols that offer similar promises to OneLedger in terms of scalability and interoperability, competition is considerably high.

According to the roadmap, the scheduled release date for the mainnet will be sometime in 2019. By that point, there is a chance the OneLedger ICO will have to contend with a market where enterprise adoption of competing protocols is already well underway.

The question of OneLedger API integration with existing ERP systems is not addressed clearly in the white paper. Most blockchain projects targeting enterprise clients offer a means to directly integrate existing ERP systems with distributed ledger technology, allowing for a more streamlined transition.

On page 11 of the white paper, reference is made to a “Connector” as part of the OneLedger Business Application Development Kit, which allows for integration between the protocol and centralized commercial networks. To what extent this Connector is compatible with existing ERP systems is critical for determining how OneLedger stands up to any competitor with a blockchain/ERP agnostic framework.

The OneLedger ICO team has little to show in terms of actual product development and has yet to release an MVP.

The adoption of a product targeting enterprise clients will invariably require a substantial period of piloting and scaling, which will not occur to any significant degree until after the final product actually exists and has proven both functional and viable.

The capability of the team to deliver such a promising product will be easier to assess once an MVP has been made available to the public. To monitor product development, OneLedger has created a Github, which is available here.

The Verdict on OneLedger ICO
With little product development to show and the absence of any significant indicators on the business front, OneLedger remains a highly speculative project at the moment. Still, the OneLedger team and concept merit attention and we will continue to monitor the progress of this ICO.