Supply chains are under growing pressure to improve for various reasons, including social responsibility, efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Not only is the pressure coming from regulatory agencies, but also clients and consumers who have to bear the brunt of the cost of inefficiency.

Changes in customer expectations are driving businesses to seek blockchain solutions, but companies like Oslo-based seafood supply chain firm UNISOT, who are one of the first to use these pioneering technologies are already reaping the benefits. UNISOT has been using the BSV blockchain to enhance buyers’ and sellers’ food supply chains and eliminate data silos.

Struggling to Keep Up with Demand

UNISOT CEO and co-founder Stephan Nilsson notes that data silos reduce a company’s productivity since they are unaware of up-to-date information in their supply chain. This leads to asset underutilization of countless ships, personnel, vehicles and manufacturing facilities.

Similarly, enterprises along the supply chain often only have access to one tier up and down from their position, restricting their ability for long-term planning. This forces companies to construct buffers in response to shifting market conditions, adding to the inadequacy of current supply chain structures.

The pandemic has heightened customers’ desires to know the course their items had taken, not just one step along that path but all the way back to its source. By developing the Life Cycle Assessment Manual, UNISOT has made it possible for users to examine information connected with all outputs and inputs at every stage of the supply chain.

Nilsson shares that the app’s next development phase will strive to automate laborious operations, offering even more efficiency to organizations employing the BSV blockchain supply chain system.

IPv6 Critical to Advancing Supply Chain Management

At the Global IoT Summit in Dublin, IPv6 Forum Founder and President Latif Ladid estimates blockchain’s complete integration with food supply chains would take about five to 10 years. This is because existing blockchains continue to employ IPv4, even though IPv6 is necessary for accurate end-to-end traceability.

IPv6 is regarded as a more secure and private Internet protocol than IPv4. As Bitcoin creator and nChain Chief Scientist Dr. Craig Wright has said on several occasions, integrating blockchain with IPv6 has always been a part of the roadmap from the beginning. Unfortunately, IPv6 was one of the features developers removed when he stepped back from Bitcoin.

With other issues like deforestation and slave labor plaguing the industry, these problems are expected to worsen as Ladid anticipates the food demand to double by 2050. The Demeter project by turnkey IoT/AI solution provider DunavNET aims to mitigate these issues.

The Demeter project will help the agricultural industry achieve European-Green-Deal focus areas in organic farming, pesticide reduction and other sustainability initiatives. DunavNET CEO Dr. Srdjan Krco discloses that Demeter employs smart sensors on farms to gather data on everything from chicken weights to temperatures and sunlight.

With this data, farmers can effectively monitor everything that gives space for more sustainable practices. Dr. Krco says he imagines all this data resting on top of a “blockchain layer,” allowing information interchange in a searchable knowledge graph.

Because data is stored by its source rather than a central ledger, it can be exchanged, preserved and maintained rapidly and securely on the BSV Blockchain. Companies can then access more real-time sourcing data to facilitate effective planning and distribution of their resources.

Industry leaders appreciate blockchain’s transparency benefits, yet many still use private blockchains, essentially defeating the purpose. Blockchains have to be public in order for complete transparency to occur. Walled gardens will not permit private blockchains’ intended data flow, making them no better than spreadsheets.

What is needed is a scalable, IPv6-compliant blockchain like BSV, which can make data available to everybody while maintaining privacy. Otherwise, they might find themselves aboard a sinking ship.