Agenda – SCOBC 2021

Attaining “Common Knowledge” is essential in the formation of deals & agreements, but is hard to achieve over point-to-point communication networks such as the Internet. While blockchain technologies provide a helpful mechanism in the form of technical consensus (TC), little does it address impediments to proper contract formation that have to do with the quality of exogenous data, asymmetry of information, or even its suitability (the colloquial garbage-in/garbage-out problem). In the face of the limitations of TC, we explore how TC’s strengths can be utilised by introducing another dimension of consensus – what we have called social consensus – which directly addresses the formation of true (if retrospective) Common Knowledge essential to arms-length agreement between multiple actors.

Contemporary supply chain applications typically employ a centralized data sharing technology such as a publish-subscribe broker, which is controlled and managed by a single stakeholder belonging to a single organization. However, supply chain applications naturally involve multiple organizations. Under such an operational model, the data sharing platform is managed by one of the organizations within the given supply chain ecosystem or off-loaded to a third party. However, such an operational model is susceptible to central points of failure, meaning the entity that runs the platform may not be transparent. This talk will introduce Trinity, a Byzantine fault-tolerant and distributed publish-subscribe broker based on blockchain for reliable data sharing in a multi-stakeholder setting.

Blockchain has proven to be a disruptive technology for solving transparency, provenance, and auditability in supply chains. However, it brings forth many challenges such as complex trade communications, scalability, data reliability, governance, and privacy continue to grow. Our work involves using blockchain technology for traceability, trust and provenance in supply chains. Provenance and traceability are addressed using consortium and permissioned blockchains with efficient network models. In addition, we propose a trust management layer to incentivise the traders to contribute honest data into blockchain systems. Our privacy preserving solutions allow traders to control their identities or return computations on data without revealing the actual data.

We will talk you through a real life case study of an asset backed Crypto Currency. We will share how we: 1. Grouped unique assets. 2. Deployed and ERC20 on the Main Chain. 3. Deployed ERC721 on a Side Chain. 4. Built a Resource Explorer that if you hold the ERC20 token you can use the Smart Trade Networks Asset explorer to see the assets backing the trade-able thing. These are all key mechanisms for stable adoption of future crypto things.

Central banks and governments around the globe are considering how they can make constructive improvements to digital forms of fiat currency, or even attempt a transition to a sovereign Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). As a CBDC is expected to utilise attributes which have their origins in cryptocurrency, the way the Australian Government regulates cryptocurrency and legal currency may reveal how CBDC is to be regulated, when a functional system begins implementation. Evident in regulation of both Australia’s legal tender and cryptocurrency – and the advantages and obstacles demonstrated by foreign jurisdictions’ CBDC development – lessons can be learnt which will improve the design, development and implementation of an Australian CBDC.

Sharing digital identity credentials could raise privacy concerns. For digital credentials to be widely accepted, there is a need for an end-to-end system that provides (i) secure verification of the participant identities and credentials to increase trust, and (ii) a data minimisation mechanism to reduce the risk of oversharing the credential data. In this talk, we will introduce CredChain and its potential application to supply chain scenarios. CredChain is a blockchain-based Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) platform architecture that allows secure creation, sharing and verification of credentials. Beyond the verification of identities and credentials, the self-sovereign identity architecture allows users to have full control over their credential data using a digital wallet, including the ability to selectively disclose part of credential data as necessary.

Supply Chain logistics is being tracked on logistics blockchains and separately financing of the supply chains is occurring on finance blockchains. The participants of these two blockchains are typically different. Financiers don’t want to be on the logistics blockchain (and the shipping companies don’t want them there) and visa-versa. There are however common participants who want shipping events on the logistics blockchain to be synchronised with payments on the finance blockchain
The General Purpose Atomic Crosschain Transaction(GPACT) protocol allows business logic to be split across blockchains. In trade-finance, it allows payments to be triggered by shipping events, and this to happen atomically. That is, if the payment doesn’t go through, the shipping event will not be registered.

This talk demonstrates how the adoption of blockchain adoption will turbo-charge African economies across all stakeholder domains, from policy, to government, private sector, public interests, etc through the implementation of the landmark Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) developmental policy framework.

One of the biggest challenges to meaningful blockchain adoption in supply chains is being able to trust the input data. This talk will cover the various challenges around trusting supply chain data inputs on blockchain such as reliance human inputs (and therefore error and fraud) and limitations in access to technology and internet by upstream supply chain players. It then describes how to adapt to these challenges through cross-sector collaboration and supplementary technologies such as IoT and satellite data.

The conscious Jewellery consumer wants to know the origins of their products and cares about the journey their products have been on. This is supported by increasing awareness among luxury brands that they need to demonstrate the positive impact their products have made, both on the environment and on the communities where they originate. We talk about the unique opportunities and challenges we have encountered in demonstrating physical traceability across a disconnected supply chain and how Tracr is addressing these using Blockchain, IOT and AI to create a truly integrated industry solution.