Combining blockchain, smart contracts and nanotechnology to secure the supply chain
Powered by Sextant for DAML from Blockchain Technology Partners
This post was originally published on Digital Asset’s DAML Driven blog as a follow up to the announcement by Digital Asset and Blockchain Technology Partners that they were delivering Sextant for DAML and supporting nanotechnology pioneer Quantum Materials Corp
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TL;DR Nanotechnology, smart contracts and blockchain all come together to create an elegant and effective solution that will help to address a $1.8 trillion problem that has vast economic and human consequences.
Counterfeit goods are a $1.8 trillion criminal industry with vast economic and human consequences. The Boston Consulting Group estimates that as much as $200 billion of drugs sold annually are fakes and 10% of European luxury products are counterfeited. The immutable uniqueness of Quantum Materials Corp’s optical signatures can reinforce trust at all stages of the supply chain.
How so? After over a decade of nanotechnology research in their labs in Austin, Texas, QMC have released Quantum Dots, nanoscale particles so tiny you could line ten thousand of them across the diameter of a human hair. These quantum dots react to energy and light and can be tuned to emit predetermined wavelengths of light. By varying the wavelength QMC can design billions of unique optical signatures which can be incorporated in the production of almost anything, from aircraft components to luxury handbags. Impossible to copy, these optical signatures can determine absolute product identity.
Quantum dots are the stuff of magic but these unique optical signatures are only useful with the technology that enables them to be read and identified securely. This is where Digital Asset and BTP have stepped in.
In order to verify an optical signature, an immutable and cryptographically secure digital twin is required. QMC’s use case lends itself perfectly to distributed ledger technology which, essentially, is an innovative secure database architecture where multiple parties can transact using a single source of truth with mathematical certainty.
Combining their expertise in getting DLT projects into production and generating real business value, Digital Asset and BTP partnered with QMC to provide a blockchain platform that will enable customers to verify the authenticity of their optical light signatures as simply as using a hand-held scanner or smartphone application.
To this end, Digital Asset created and open sourced DAML, a smart contract language that abstracts away the complexity of multi-party business processes on distributed ledgers. DAML is intuitive and focuses on business logic allowing developers to focus on the essential business value of an application and get to market first.
BTP works under the covers by providing its blockchain management platform, Sextant for DAML. Sextant for DAML abstracts away the operational complexity and takes care of the service delivery of the blockchain network. Sextant for DAML currently supports DAML smart contracts running on Hyperledger Sawtooth, an open source distributed ledger technology hosted by the Linux Foundation, as well as Amazon Aurora, a cloud storage engine on Amazon Web Services (AWS), with support for further ledgers coming later this year.
Download the DAML SDK then deploy your smart contracts with Sextant for DAML today!
