Grocers Embrace Blockchain in New Era of Transparency | Progressive Grocer

February 19, 2018

“We’ve been very fortunate as an advocate for standards and education in industry to join the ride,” continues Nuce. “We built the UPC or the GTIN as a way for people to have interoperable identification all over the globe. These foundational traceability standards were developed many, many years before blockchain was ever a glimmer in someone’s eye. But now it’s all coming together.”

Source: Grocers Embrace Blockchain in New Era of Transparency | Progressive Grocer, Jenny McTaggart – Feb 16, 2018

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EY – Blockchain-enabled platforms are changing marine for the better – EY – Global

February 12, 2018

Blockchain-enabled platforms can successfully connect all players in the shipping value chain and advance critical capabilities.

EY and Guardtime, as well as other industry and technology leaders, present the “first of its kind” enterprise-scale platform to integrate and secure the entire stream of disparate data sources involved in insuring shipments around the world.

When risks ebb and flow, should insurance premiums adjust?

Source: EY – Blockchain-enabled platforms are changing marine for the better – EY – Global

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Will Provenance Be the Blockchain’s Break Out Use Case in 2016? – CoinDesk

July 6, 2017

Much has been said about the blockchain as an ownership layer. But what exactly does that mean?

It means that blockchains represent ownership of an asset in terms of control over the data relating to that asset. In other words, only the current owner can authenticate a transaction that would cause that asset to be transferred to another owner.

This is provenance expressed in protocol form. The word “provenance” is derived from the French “provenir” which means “to come from”, and is used to describe the custodial chronology of an object.

Provenance is one of the backbones of economies, whether it relates to artifacts or real estate. There has always been a need to authenticate that a party actually owns an asset prior to any business dealing involving that asset, to ensure that the asset is “true” rather than stolen or faked.

In the past, trusted third-parties have traditionally played this role.

However, blockchains can streamline this function by serving as the infrastructure for registering and authenticating asset ownership between untrusting parties with common interests.

Source: Will Provenance Be the Blockchain’s Break Out Use Case in 2016? – CoinDesk

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IBM Think Academy: Blockchain, How it works

July 6, 2017

What is Blockchain? Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger for recording the history of transactions. It fosters a new generation of transactional applications that establish trust, accountability and transparency—from contracts to deeds to payments.

Frees up capital flows, speeds up processes, lowers transaction costs and most importantly provides security and trust. We believe that Blockchain will do for business what the Internet did for communications.

Source: IBM Blockchain

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The difference between public and private blockchain – Blockchain Unleashed: IBM Blockchain Blog

July 6, 2017

The sole distinction between public and private blockchain is related to who is allowed to participate in the network, execute the consensus protocol and maintain the shared ledger. A public blockchain network is completely open and anyone can join and participate in the network. The network typically has an incentivizing mechanism to encourage more participants to join the network. Bitcoin is one of the largest public blockchain networks in production today.

A private blockchain network requires an invitation and must be validated by either the network starter or by a set of rules put in place by the network starter. Businesses who set up a private blockchain, will generally set up a permissioned network. This places restrictions on who is allowed to participate in the network, and only in certain transactions. Participants need to obtain an invitation or permission to join. The access control mechanism could vary: existing participants could decide future entrants; a regulatory authority could issue licenses for participation; or a consortium could make the decisions instead. Once an entity has joined the network, it will play a role in maintaining the blockchain in a decentralized manner…

This type of permissioned blockchain model offers the ability to leverage more than 30 years of technical literature to realize significant benefits. Digital identity in particular, is fundamental for most industry use cases, be it handling supply chain challenges, disrupting the financial industry, or facilitating security-rich patient/provider data exchanges in healthcare. Only the entities participating in a particular transaction will have knowledge and access to it — other entities will have no access to it.

Source: The difference between public and private blockchain – Blockchain Unleashed: IBM Blockchain Blog

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Beyond Bitcoin: How Enterprises Can Integrate Blockchain | AppDynamics

July 6, 2017

Blockchain is already used in a handful of applications including cryptocurrency. This year, as more people set their minds to understanding the technology and finding creative applications, we will see a sharp increase in new use cases in industries as diverse as agriculture, finance, healthcare, energy, and manufacturing.

Click to read more about supply chain, food and beverage and “Limited blockchains”

The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2025, one-tenth of our GDP will have made its way onto the blockchain. For a nascent technology, that’s a bold prediction. But we’re living through a period of technological transformation that moves at unprecedented speeds. If you’re not already thinking about blockchain, you may already be behind.

Source: Beyond Bitcoin: How Enterprises Can Integrate Blockchain into Business [Infographic] | Application Performance Monitoring Blog | AppDynamics

References to what’s also known as Provenance and Private Blockchains

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