VeChain’s Marketing Continues to Push Old Partnerships

VeChain (VET) is leaving nothing to chance. Overshadowed by other rival crypto projects, the blockchain schemed to signup big name companies like Walmart China, appropriating the partnerships to gain mileage, even if that meant taking old deals and making them look new again.

On Sept. 26, the cryptocurrency and smart contract platform announced a partnership with TruTrace Technologies, a blockchain firm that tracks legal cannabis and other goods along the supply chain.

It is the latest in a series of deals by VeChain over the past year. Only that the announcement was not completely new. VeChain first revealed the deal with the Canadian firm to its 590,000 Twitter followers on Aug. 29, and then again on Sept. 26.

Corporate propaganda

There was nothing fundamentally different about the repeat announcements: both pointed to the same deal terms, just a play on words.

“We’re excited to announce a strategic integration partnership with TruTrace Technologies, a Canadian software-as-a-service platform…” said the initial announcement.

One month later, the second one: “TruTrace and Vechain announce the integration of their complementary technologies on the blockchain platform for the legal cannabis, food, apparel, and pharmaceutical industries.”

Some observers suggest that the latest announcement reveals the specific list of industries to be integrated into TruTrace – something which may have been missing from the first press release that concentrated mostly on declaring the partnership.

However, the targeted sectors were never in question from the outset.

VeChain U.S. general manager Jason Rockwood said in August that the deal “will bring [our] technology to a wider portfolio of consumer brands” developed as a “specific niche” by TruTrace in the industries of “food, pharma, and cannabis”.

VeChain denies wrongdoing

For VeChain, the quest for success has on occasion meant staging cunning, if not unethical, publicity stunts, ostensibly in order to gain popularity.

Or to prove, if ever there was any doubt, that the project somehow retains its relevance in a market shown to be unkind to sluggards.

A spokesperson for VeChain denied the platform recycled old announcements.

“The source of the content you’re referring to is a community member who recently posted the TruTrace article under their own volition,” the spokesperson told Be[In[Crypto.

“We subsequently retweeted, leading to several third party outlets creating media of their own. We retweet all kinds of similar content, we did not initiate this intentionally,” they averred.

What is VeChain?

Founded in 2015 by ex-Luis Vuitton China executive Sunny Lu, VeChain is a smart contract blockchain that provides software solutions for businesses of all kinds, from fashion to cars, biofuels to sport, as evidenced by its recent $100M deal with mixed martial arts outfit UFC.

VeChain’s biggest selling point is its ToolChain, an enterprise supply chain feature that helps companies track their shipped goods in real time over the blockchain. It then records that information as the product goes through the supply chain.

In 2018, VeChain ditched the Ethereum blockchain network for its own so-called proof-of-authority (PoA), “a form of permissioned consensus”, and rebranded to VeChainThor (VET).

VET is the primary native token of the VeChain ecosystem, utilized for storing value and governance. There’s another, VTHO, used for transactions and fees.

Over the years, VeChain has established partnerships with several prominent companies in different industries, including Walmart China, Bayer China, carmakers BMW and Renault, fashion designer Luis Vuitton, Shanghai Gas, ASI Group, and others.

While VeChain has won praise for its real-world use cases of blockchain applications, and for helping organizations to reduce their carbon footprint, it remains somewhat beclouded by other competing blockchain networks.

It is the 36th most valuable crypto project, boasting a market cap of over $1.6 billion, as per Coinmarketcap data. VeChain dwarfs in comparison to speculative memecoins like DOGE. Created as a joke, DOGE sits tenth in market cap terms, with a value of $7.9 billion.

Ripple (XRP), the payments platform at the center of a long-standing legal battle against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, boasts a market cap thirteen times bigger than VeChain’s, at $21.13 billion. Ripple is used widely by businesses in the real world for payments, much like VeChain in its own way.

Building the hype

Despite its supposed successes, VeChain has become the focus of much controversy and internet trolling due to its marketing strategy that centers on the announcement of partnerships, and re-announcements, to gain prominence and build hype.

In May, it announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AMW), which was reposted two months later, in August. AMW confirmed the deal, but posting it for a second time proved as a cheap attempt by VeChain to milk the Amazon brand by recycling an old deal with minor new information.

It worked though. The VET crypto token reacts to the news, sometimes with a small rally. Following the Amazon repost, the token soared by as much as 17% at the time.