Q: How does supply chain work on the blockchain? [Free #21]
This seemingly very dense topic is actually quite simple: Apply IoT and NFTs to supply chain, and you have a single version of the truth in supply chain. We'll uncompact that in today's issue.
Well hello there, my friends!
Last week was a bit of a gap week for me (with the summary/FAQ post), and now I’m getting back in gear with new content. Coming up, I have a number of interesting interviews planned for publishing this month and next with folks from my past in the world of NFTs and enterprise technology.
This week, however, we’re starting to venture into our “blockchain 201” content. The vast majority of the content we’ve published this year up to now has been blockchain 101 type stuff, explaining basic and foundational content. Today, we’re covering a topic that a lot of you in enterprise are very familiar with: supply chain.
If you’re not one of those subscribing familiar with that term - it’s the term that refers to the constellation of software products that track an item’s journey from it’s creation to it’s ultimate sale to a customer, and everything in between, and it’s the topic of today’s Blockchain Deep Dive: both how and why these two topics are made for each other.
Interestingly, it may be an idea who’s time is come. The general market is very much familiar with the mechanics and potential of an NFT both with digital and physical goods. That understanding is more easily transferrable to an enterprise implementer looking to bring some of the value of IoT and blockchain technology to the sometimes messy world of supply chain.
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Blockchain Bulletin
Kongregate.io will launch NFT games later this year. Kongregate, a 15-year-old game platform best known for its free-to-play web games, is launching Kongregate.io, a new web-gaming portal featuring NFTs, reported VentureBeat.
Horizon Blockchain Games nets $4.5M to build its gaming ecosystem. Horizon Blockchain Games is forging ahead with its collectible card game Skyweaver, reported VentureBeat, as the gaming ecosystem continues to build with nonfungible tokens.
Newegg now accepts Litecoin. Newegg has become the largest online retailer to accept Litecoin via its partnership with Bitpay, reported Pymnts, this follows the company being one of the first e-retailers to accept Bitcoin in 2014.
Blockchain Behind the Scenes
Mastercard launches program to incubate cryptocurrency startups. Mastercard is bringing out the big guns to help cryptocurrency startups with a new accelerator program called Start Path – seven startups have already joined the program.
Miami intends to launch a cryptocurrency. In an attempting to generate more revenue, the City of Miami, Florida, plans to release its own cryptocurrency, “MiamiCoin,” which is now open for mining via smart contracts built atop Bitcoin, 30% of the revenue will go to Miami’s reserves.
Blockchain Deep Dive: How does supply chain work on the blockchain?
For those who’ve been following along, though and want a one sentence summary: supply chain on the blockchain is a fusion of IoT (internet of things) and NFT technology to track items from creation to sale of the customer.
What is the principle application of blockchain? It’s to reduce the requirement for trust between counterparties.
If you’re a large vendor, you have many, many counterparties (some in-house and some outside organizations).
The problem here is that every party within the system is trusting a large vendor to be a faithful and equitable participant in this ecosystem and never making mistakes and never fudging numbers.
It can be far better to have an interdependent system where everybody has single version of the truth where things are settled without human interaction.
IoT (Internet-of-Things) is a pre-requisite technology for a truly trustless and effective supply chain/blockchain solution.
A functional IoT / blockchain based supply chain system reduces manual overhead, and creates a single version of the truth for all parties.
This is not a bleeding-edge technology, it is able to be accomplished with in-market public and private blockchain technology.