Supply Chain, Blockchain & IoT — AnyLedger use case spotlight
This is the first article in a series of publications about direct use cases for AnyLedger’s Iot-blockchain enablement platform.
The format is intended to be as informative, clear, and easy to digest as possible.
✔️Chat with us in Telegram -> https://t.me/anyledger_announcements
✔️Read our WP (tech & business) -> http://www.anyledger.io/#whitepaper
✔️Review our code on Github -> https://github.com/AnyLedger
First things first. What is a “supply chain”?
To put it simply, a supply chain is any system that involves the movement of a product from point A to point B. A supply chain can have anywhere from just a few steps to dozens of actors and intermediaries before the final product is ready to be bought in stores.
One example of this could be organic banana chips. 🍌
How do you know that the banana in the store is actually 100% organic?
The banana is planted, cultivated, harvested, cut, fried, packaged, and distributed to your local store before you can buy it — all done by people you don’t know, and regulated by entities who could be incompetent or be bribed. If only fruit could talk…
Just because something says “organic” on the label, it doesn’t mean that it is. The farmer could have lied or hidden the truth from the factory, or the factory could have lied to the regulator — or the regulator’s standards could be very low and allow the banana to be cultivated with a “reduced amount of pesticides” in the first place. 🤨
So when you think about how every product in existence — metals, plastics, pharma, electronics, machinery, food, and every kind of raw material has some sort of supply chain connected to it that could be tampered with, you begin to get a clear picture of exactly how big this problem (and market) really is!
In fact, IBM and Walmart have already experimented with this to track the state of pork and bananas with temperature sensors.
The AnyLedger solution
Blockchain can be used in supply chains all over the world to introduce a new level of honesty — one governed by mathematics instead of people.
Combined with sensors inside trucks and containers or at the place of production itself (i.e. on the field) which measure things like pesticide levels, temperature and humidity, true and irremovable data could be instantly accessible to the customer in the store through a simple QR code.
And in international trades particularly, smart sensors running AnyLedger would be able to automatically record the entire history of every shipment on the blockchain and execute the Smart Contract that the sender and receiver agreed upon at the beginning of the shipment.
Logistics companies can choose to be automatically paid with currency put in escrow inside a Smart Contract which is unlocked after confirmation of delivery. In exchange, they attract new customers and get discounted tariffs from insurance companies. Goods would be monitored from the production plants to the small shops, giving a complete history (provenance) of the product to the end customer.
Many of these applications and use cases are not ready to be fully implemented, yet. Basic infrastructure such as what AnyLedger is building is still missing, and blockchain technology itself is still very young and untested in these areas.
However, when we look back a couple of decades and realize just how much computers and the Internet has changed traceability and international trades, it’s reasonable to assume that blockchain will follow suit — and it might be sooner than you think.
After all, giants like Maersk and IBM wouldn’t be investing so heavily into these areas without a really good reason.
Thanks for reading!
More articles like this one will follow — we have only scraped the tip of the iceberg of what AnyLedger can make possible.
If you want to learn exactly what we do in 10 minutes or less, I can highly recommend this video pitch by Lorenzo, our founder.
✔️Chat with us in Telegram -> https://t.me/anyledger_announcements
✔️Read our WP (tech & business) -> http://www.anyledger.io/#whitepaper
✔️Review our code on Github -> https://github.com/AnyLedger/
