Industries, Looking for Efficiency, Turn to Blockchains
Summary
Since that time, companies in a wide variety of industries, such as health care, government, food, supply chain management and trade finance, have begun exploring blockchain technology.Eventually, the goal is for the blockchain to also handle payments and for it to be useful to anyone dealing with intellectual property or digital asset rights, including authors, songwriters and developers, he said.A shipper of avocados from Kenya to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for example, needs a certificate of origin signed by authorities in Nairobi, another document stating the fruit has been inspected, and a bill of lading, packing list and commercial invoice.The venture aims to have more than 50 percent of the major trading routes connected to the platform in three years, but will have competition from Foxconn Technology Group’s coming blockchain-based supply chain software.Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Hyperledger, an open source blockchains project managed by the Linux Foundation, says companies that work in transactions or that serve as a system of record for an industry will have to adapt.