Application of Blockchain to Supply Chain: Flexible Blockchain Technology

It has been ten years since Satoshi Nakamoto created bitcoin and introduced the concept of a blockchain. The original goal was to propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. Now, Blockchain proves to have the capacity to deliver a new kind of trust to a wide range of services. Applications are being explored in healthcare (patient records), government (land registries) and electronics (Internet of Things). The supply chain is one of the fields that Blockchain is expected to be applied. The paper aims to combine blockchain with distributed storage and propose blockchain for the supply chain. Blockchain is not fit to record a lot of information. It requires both on-chain storage of the core ledger data and off-chain storage of data required by smart contracts for verification and documentation. The Inter Planetary File System (IPFS) is a concrete solution. IPFS is a peer-to-peer distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. Participants can address large amounts of data with IPFS and place the immutable, permanent IPFS links into a blockchain transaction. This timestamps and secures their content, without having to put the data itself on the chain. By combining blockchain with distributed storage, the supply chain system is fit to the industry of the next generation. The characteristics of Industry 4.0 meets the blockchain-based system and the model can aid these changes. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CENTERIS -International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems / ProjMAN - International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist - International Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies.