IBM Completes Blockchain Trial Tracking a 28-Ton Shipment of Oranges (coindesk.com)

IBM recently completed a trial of blockchain technology to track a shipment of mandarin oranges from China to Singapore. From a report: Announced last week, 28 tons of mandarin oranges, or 3,000 cartons containing approximately 108,000 fruits, were delivered ahead of Chinese New Year celebration on Feb. 5 (mandarin oranges are a symbol of prosperity, IBM explained). The main shipping document, the bill of lading, was recorded on a blockchain. This document serves as a proof of ownership of goods, as a receipt of goods and a contract of the shipment, and normally it's mailed to all parties involved in the shipment, including banks providing trade financing.

For the pilot, IBM created an electronic bill of lading, or e-BL, which helped reduce and speed up administrative processes "to just one second" as the document flow is automated, the company claims -- while the standard paper-based procedure takes five to seven days. "By using the e-BL, we have seen how the entire shipment process can be simplified and made more transparent with considerable cost savings," Tay Khiam Back, the chairman and CEO of fruit importer Hupco, said in a press release.

Comments

Centralized blockchains === Data base

[goombah99]

block chains either have to go to a central authority or they have to be distributed among a limited set of nodes that that sync to maintain the longest chain.

If you want it to be secure then I think that you either have to use a very expensive hash and pay the Miner (like bit coin proof of work) or you have to limit this to a distributed set of miner nodes that use a shared secret.

one of the other has to be in place I think because otherwise anyone coutd forge the chain if it's free to hash and not a closed set of trustee nodes.

Since were talking oranges , individually, then you need the cheap method with a centrally authorized set of approver nodes.

But if you are going to have such a centralized authority. Why not a regular old fashioned database?

I just don't understand what is special here about the block chain.

It does have some robust aspects of syncronizing a distributed set of approver nodes by consensus (longest chain wins). But that isn't really special and can be done with databases that synchronize too.