Blockchain, Smart Contracts and the Internet of Things (IoT)
Blockchain, Smart Contracts and the Internet of Things (IoT)

One of the cornerstones of the modern world economy is the global supply chain network that is used by millions of market participants on a day-to-day basis. Among these market participants are billion-dollar multinationals and large governments, but also small business owners and private consumers - each operating from their geographical region and jurisdiction. These large varieties in both market size and geographical location have caused the global supply chain to become a highly complex and dynamic system.

Two essential variables are required to ensure the smooth functioning of such a highly complex supply chain: transparency among market participants and traceability of the products that are being traded. As a result of the digitalisation of various processes, great improvements have been made to increase the global supply chain’s transparency and improve the traceability of numerous products and commodities.

However, with large parts of the supply chain still heavily under-digitised and various economic powerhouses being located in politically unstable regions, the aforementioned digital innovations are often incapable of providing intermediate trading partners and end consumers with unambiguous information of how and where their goods were manufactured.

As the world is steadily growing towards a carbon-neutral future, increasingly more end-consumers are changing their behaviour to consume in a more environmentally friendly and conscious way.  Alongside an increased demand for carbon-neutral products and services, consumers are also demanding granular insights into how a product has been sourced and how the product found its way throughout the supply chain.

The past decade has been characterised by a series of ground-breaking digital innovations which are capable of providing supply chain participants with the much-desired data that consumers are looking for. HydroLink’s technological infrastructure leverages the transparency and immutability of blockchain technology with the scalability and connectivity of the Internet-of-Things. The HydroLink decentralized application (dApp) boasts the first and only blockchain-secure certification of origin for green-hydrogen.