Flexible, Agile Resource
Privatized DLT for a Fortune 100 Supply Chain
Digital Opportunity
In 2018, a major food & beverage client was exploring the capabilities of distributed ledger technology as a potential solution for improved product safety and traceability in their supply chain. I was tasked with:
1) evaluating the adoption use cases
2) considering how to best roll-out the new technology and capabilities into the existing infrastructure of the client’s supply chain, and
3) designing a blockchain integration proof of concept.
My research and design went on to support the firm’s best practices and a $2M project proposal.
(In the end, a competitor of our client moved forward with a very similar blockchain integration, improved the speed of supply chain traceability capabilities and thus, increased the safety of product, created new opportunities for transparency of the end-product for customers, and innovated to drive competitive efficiency and accuracy of their global supply chain processes.)
Rapid Proof of Concept
I had a short window of time to design a blockchain solution for the client’s use cases. Initially, I reached out to friends at several FinTech, smart contract, and Ethereum-based startups.
By learning about historic launches and best practices, I developed assumptions to drive an early MVP. I mocked up a privatized Ethereum blockchain protocol with the current features of the client’s supply chain, then privately presented the design to existing blockchain developers and thought leaders.
After feedback, I leveraged various platforms to connect deeper into the global DLT community for vetting-oriented advice prior to gathering internal advisory from security and blockchain SME’s in our firm.
In two weeks, I finalized the design for a privatized DLT roll-out that supported the priorities of our client.
Technical Considerations
Mirrored Supply Chain Processes and Verifications. Moving workflow into blockchain “smart contracts” deployment.
Leveraging Existing IoT or RFID. Leveraging sensor tech as “triggers” for automated contract deployment.
Ether Fees on Ethereum. When you change anything on the blockchain, you have to initiate a transaction and pay a fee.
Permission-based Blockchain. Internal processing power to drive early blockchain verifications, prior to scale.
Permission-less Blockchain. Open up incentivizes to internal miners to drive block verifications based on a high amount of transactions happening within the client’s supply chain.
Microsoft. At the time of research, Ethereum Blockchain as a Service (EBaaS) was offered to Enterprise clients on Microsoft Azure. Developers had a single click cloud-based blockchain developer environment via Ether.Camp and BlockApps.
Field Trial and Roll-Out
I theorized that a permission-based blockchain application that creates a mirror of current food supply chain data and processes, tying in RFID and IoT data into smart contracts, could move key information through the blockchain by the client’s computer processing and GAS platform fees from Ether.
Once operational, this blockchain application may be scaled within the organization’s supply chain for micro-level goods tracking that creates new traceability and transparency processes to support their food safety goals.
Considering new opportunities for ROI, the client could attempt to open the permission-based blockchain application up through public tokenization (claim 10% of nodes and offer 90% of nodes) via a consortium of trusted suppliers and companies. With existing supply chain adoption of the tokenization, the company could leverage several new (BaaS) benefits — but for this proposal, we focused primary on the supply chain benefits and the task at hand.