Three blockchain projects positively disrupting the supply chain industry
The past year has been an extraordinary test of global supply chains, as they have truly been pushed to the limit. Due to a perfect storm of COVID-19, and labor and materials shortages, among other things, many complex supply chains have been impacted, including the supply chains for semi-conductors, lumber, and PPE, to name a few. Then came the rapid rollout of billions of vaccine doses to every corner of the earth, putting pharmaceutical supply chains to the test.
This perfect storm has demonstrated the clear need for innovation in the sector to respond to growing challenges and uncertainty. With the realities of climate change, ongoing disruptions due to COVID-19, and a changing labour market, it is likely that supply chains will continue to face enormous challenges in the foreseeable future. This is where blockchain can help.
There are few industries that are as natural of a fit with blockchain as supply chains. I mean, they both have chain in their name, after all. Blockchain has the potential to help create more efficient, transparent, secure, and auditable supply chains that will revolutionize the sector for the better. To demonstrate the true power of blockchain to disrupt supply chains, here are three examples of projects that are doing this today.
StaTwig - Improving vaccine and food distribution
StaTwig is an amazing project making use of blockchain technology to improve the efficiency of food and vaccine supply chains. By making use of the immutable, tamper-proof nature of blockchains, StaTwig utilizes open ledgers to create a transparent supply chain.
StaTwig’s platform allows you to track important resources and products, such as vaccines, from start to finish, as they go through all steps from production to distribution:
According to StaTwig, the percentages of food and vaccines that end up going to waste due to supply chain failures are 30% and 50-60% respectively. StaTwig hopes to address this by leveraging “new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, and Blockchain to track all products in the supply chain and gather data about each product. Access to such data helps in preventing failures of distribution, predicting the demand and capacity levels, and reducing the cost and wastage of all limited resources.”
VeChain’s Digital Carbon Footprint SaaS Platform
Recently, VeChain launched a new Digital Carbon Footprint SaaS platform that aims to bring more transparency to the process of tracking an organization's carbon footprint. According to the VeChain Foundation:
VeChain’s brand new Digital Carbon Footprint SaaS Service is a powerful, rapidly deployable tool, enabling enterprises of all sizes to re-engineer their carbon footprint data management practices. This new offering is also the first of its kind to benefit from the combination of decentralized ledger technology and a SaaS business model.
This platform provides a practical solution to the challenge of unverifiable data that often comes with environmental reporting. Whether it’s reporting one’s carbon emissions, the amount of bycatch in their fishing operations, or whether produce meets organic certification standards, it can be hard to independently verify data, especially with so many moving parts in complex supply chains.
VeChain’s platform, on the other hand “allows enterprise users to log key data and integrate it with world-leading third party assurance providers within VeChain’s partnership network”. Through every step of the supply chain, users can enter data, which is stored on the blockchain, and enables organizations to see their impact across the entirety of the process from production, to delivery, to sale.
ReSea Project - Verifying ocean plastic removal
The ReSea Project is an organization based out of Denmark with the mission “to end the ocean plastic crisis while making waves beyond the sea we work in.” From January-April, 2021, ReSea recovered 672,936 lbs of plastic from oceans and rivers, which is the equivalent of 15,261,950 500ml plastic bottles. Now here is the cool part; all of the collection data to support this number is blockchain verified.
So how exactly does blockchain play into this? According to ReSea, “A blockchain-based tracking system secures real-time data and track [sic] the origin of the recovered plastic and all the steps of the cleanup process until delivery at a local waste bank. This ensures true authenticity and the highest level of traceability.” The blockchain-based system in question, which they are referring to, is the ToolChain platform by VeChain.
ReSea, in partnership with VeChain, and DNV, created a seven-step tracking process to document the journey of the plastic waste from the clean-up area to the waste bank. This ensures that secure, real-time data tracks the process from start to finish. To effectively track the journey through each of these steps, ReSea’s digital tracking system is made up of three components including a smartphone app used by the collectors to input data, a blockchain system that stores the data from the collectors in an immutable blockchain database, and an analysis tool that extracts the data from the blockchain for analysis by ReSea.
Conclusion
The immutable, efficient, transparent, and open source nature of blockchain makes it a perfect and natural fit for supply chains. These features could help revamp clunky, disjointed, and outdated supply chains, leading to cost savings, greater auditability, and reduced waste.
Highlighted above are just three examples of how blockchain can disrupt supply chains, but there are others including but not limited to Fishcoin, IBM Food Trust, and Trazable. There will certainly be many more to come launched by both decentralized organizations and corporations, and I can say with a high degree of confidence that 10 years from now the vast majority of large supply chains will make use of blockchain technology. I’m excited to see if this prediction comes to fruition.
What are some other great projects disrupting supply chains with blockchain? Tweet us at @Crypto_Altruism, we’d love to hear from you!
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