- ScyllaDB NoSQL will provide scalable, resilient persistent storage required for building robust supply chain solutions over the distributed ledger technology (DLT).
- With data interoperability, scalable data stores, and permissionless feeless DLT, IOTA seeks to solve issues around cross-border trade and end-to-end supply chain traceability.
For years, the IOTA Foundation has been working on building robust and transparent supply chain solutions using distributed ledger technology (DLT). IOTA is now close to realizing this vision in East Africa amid the collaboration between the IOTA Foundation and TradeMark East Africa (TEMA).
At ScyllaDB Summit 2023, these two organizations joined hands to address the challenge surrounding the digitization of Kenya’s exporters, airliners, and freight forwarders. As per TMEA, an African entrepreneur completes a total of 200 communications, including 96 paper documents, just for a single transaction.
With IOTA in the picture, TMEA proposes moving the key trade documents on the IOTA Tangle ledger and then sharing them with customs in the destination countries. This would expedite the export process while making African companies competitive globally.
However, the digitization of the supply chain comes with its own technical challenges. José Manuel Cantera, Technical Analyst & Project Lead at IOTA Foundation, talked of the three most pressing challenges with supply chain digitization.
- First, verifying the identity of multiple actors and systems involved in the supply chain is crucial. This includes suppliers, OEMs, food processors, brands, recycling agents, consumers, ports, carriers, ground transporters, inspectors/authorities, freight forwarders, customs, dealers, repairers, and others.
- Second, there are various relationships between these actors, which often cross borders and lack a central anchor or single source of truth. These relationships include not only business-to-business and business-to-consumer, but also business-to-government and government-to-government.
- Third, there are different functional needs to ensure trust among the actors through verifiable data. Traceability plays a vital role in achieving this. It enables compliance, product authenticity, transparency, and provenance for various applications. For instance, traceability is essential for ethical sourcing, food safety, and effective recalls.
Solving Cross-Border Trade and End-to-End Supply Chain Traceability
Cantera explains that cross-border trade operations “is a multilayered domain, and there are many different problems that have to be solved in different places”. The key processes involved here are financial procedures, transportation procedures, trade procedures, and regulator procedures.
The IOTA Foundation has initiated some key measures to address the complexity involved with the multi-layered cross-border trade. Cantera explained:
We are allowing different actors, different government agencies and the private actors (traders) to share documents and to verify documents in one shot. Whenever a consignment moves between East Africa and Europe, all the trade certificates, all the documents can be verified in one shot by the different actors, and the authenticity and the provenance of the documents can be traced properly. And as a result, the agility of the trade processes is improved. It’s more efficient and more effective.
Another major use case of the IOTA’s solution is end-to-end supply chain traceability.
When it comes to cross-border trade, one challenge is tracing the origin and history of trade items, ensuring reliability in sustainability claims. Traceability means being able to track the history, distribution, location, and application of products to verify claims related to human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption.
Let’s consider a bag of potato chips as an example. To trace its history, we need to know details such as the origin of the potatoes, the fertilizer used in their growth, the source of oils used in processing, and other relevant information. Each step along the supply chain is a critical event with key data elements describing who, what, when, where, why, and how.
In summary, traceability involves following the entire journey of trade items, including their origins, production processes, and various components, to ensure transparency and verification of claims.
IOTA Foundation To Address the Top Technical Challenges
In order to address the technical challenges, the IOTA Foundation shall be applying core technologies such as data interoperability, scalable data resources, and Scalable, permissionless feeless distributed ledger technology.
- Data Interoperability: For effective data interchange among different actors in various industries, standardized syntax and reference vocabularies are necessary to ensure semantic interoperability. Technologies such as W3C with JSON-LD, GS1 with EPCIS 2.0, and UN/CEFACT provide the means for data standardization and extensibility.
IOTA also utilizes sectoral standards like DCSA, MOBI, and the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability to facilitate data interoperability. Notably, IOTA played a significant role in developing EPCIS 2.0, which enables stakeholders to share transactional information about objects using a JSON-based serialization format and REST APIs. - Scalable Data Stores with ScyllaDB NoSQL: Storing and managing vast amounts of data associated with each supply chain event posed a scalability challenge. ScyllaDB emerged as a solution, offering advantages in terms of data scalability and retention. It combines the benefits of NoSQL and SQL, providing robust schemas for trusted and reliable data.
- Scalable, permissionless feeless distributed ledger technology: IOTA’s scalable, permissionless, and feeless distributed ledger technology played a crucial role in the solution developed by the IOTA Foundation. By combining the IOTA distributed ledger with protected storages like IPFS, they enabled functionalities such as data and document verifiability, auditability, and immutability in peer-to-peer interactions.
The IOTA Foundation is working on digitizing supply chains in East Africa using open-source distributed ledger technology and ScyllaDB NoSQL. They aim to track and trace trade items through distributed ledgers, making processes more efficient and effective. Challenges include verifying the identity of actors, establishing relationships, and maintaining trust through traceability.
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