Chronicle: You Say Provenance, We Say Open Source

BTP’s Blockchain-Backed Provenance Product, Chronicle, Is Now Open Source

We at BTP launched Chronicle — our blockchain-backed, domain-agnostic provenance product — last summer at the European Blockchain Convention, and made it generally available at the Hyperledger Global Forum in September 2022. We have now open-sourced it on Github, as proprietary code has no place in a blockchain stack.

How It All Started

A while ago, we identified provenance as an area that offered great potential to not only boost the adoption of blockchain and associated technologies, but also to generate significant economic value across industries.

We strongly believe that provenance is a force for good, as it brings transparency and trust to a wide range of markets; and that the lack of efficient and trustworthy provenance negatively affects both businesses and consumers, and can cause serious harm to the global economy.

As a consequence, in early 2022, we made the strategic decision to move up the stack — we had been a blockchain DevOps provider for years — and focus the company’s efforts on digital provenance, and invest in the development and launch of Chronicle.

Why Open Source?

In a previous blog post, I Love Blockchain. But, Let’s Talk Open Source., I talked about how not only the use of blockchain — and distributed ledger technology (DLT) more broadly — has to be multiparty, but its development too. Simply put, open source is fundamental to DLT. DLT is just too powerful and valuable to be owned and controlled by a single organization.

All this is equally true for protocols, standards, and services that are built on top of a blockchain or distributed ledger. Notions of collaboration, decentralization, and transparency — which are fundamental premises of blockchain technology — don’t go well with the proprietary concept. Openness is key to making a blockchain project work, and it starts with the code.

When software is open source, it means that there’s a community behind the code, and that it’s developed both collectively and in the open. As opposed to proprietary approaches, open-source software development allows anyone to evaluate, use, and improve or enhance the code. Ultimately, all this helps establish confidence in the technology.

We strongly believe in the power of open source, and we should practice what we preach, right? So, let us introduce Chronicle, our newly open-sourced, blockchain-backed, domain-agnostic provenance product.

Configuring Chronicle

Although Chronicle is a domain-agnostic offering, we made it easily configurable to enable users to capture provenance information for a range of applications and use cases such as the traceability of artwork, critical infrastructure, food items, medical devices, precious metals or real estate, just to mention a few.

Along with Chronicle itself, we have also open-sourced a number of Chronicle examples, on Github— e.g. creating and selling, or manufacturing and certificating a high-value item — which serve as a great starting point for anyone interested in creating their own domain.

We look forward to seeing contributions to both Chronicle and the examples, which are equally valuable.

Early Chronicle Wins

Over the past months, we’ve been working on some exciting provenance projects, utilizing Chronicle, in the creative, energy, and financial services sectors.

A NY-based artists agency is using Chronicle to underpin its artist-centric platform that captures the life journey of physical artworks — including changes in ownership — and also manages their sale and resale.

A Fortune 500 energy company is leveraging Chronicle to guarantee the safety of critical infrastructure, by recording provenance data on specific assets such as gas pipes, as well as work carried out by staff and subcontractors in connection with those assets.

An S&P 500 financial services firm is using Chronicle to enable greater transparency when it comes to the management of user consent across multiple parties, and reduce the risk of unwanted data sharing.

P.S.

Blockchain-backed provenance is anticipated to be a trillion-dollar opportunity by 2030 in terms of global business value, so don’t hesitate to reach out and talk to us about it.

Join Chronicle Works on Slack!