Dappros is happy to demonstrate some of the products we build including TracyChain decentralized assets tracking system and some of the features of Dappros Platform. Please check the Youtube video for the live demo.
Text version:
Welcome to a video demonstration of TracyChain asset tracking application powered by distributed ledger technology.
You can access this demo by navigating to tracychain.com/demo
This is a technical demonstration showing user interfaces, API calls and blockchain transactions.
For more information on the topic and for justification of blockchain technology in logistics and supply chain use cases you may want to check our Medium report: https://medium.com/taras-filatov/blockchain-in-logistics-2018-c5c737d46dc9 or our website https://www.dappros.com/ for latest updates on the topic.
Our demonstration deals with an imaginary supply chain example where a shipment of cheesecakes is produced in Boston, moved to a storage in Bridgeport and then over to a shop in New York.
1. First, we create an asset via API call or user interface which creates an asset both in centralised DB and on blockchain.
2. The asset is created and now we can create a first record of its status and location, which we call a “Trace”.
In our case we want to let everybody in our supply chain know that the shipment has left the Boston factory.
We click “Add” button here which initiates an API call to store a new status in centralised database and on blockchain.
Our status stores shipment ID, date and time as well as any arbitrary information, for example we may agree as part of our process to log GPS coordinates and temperature of the container.
3. The trace record has been created successfully and we can also see the green status dot indicating it is on blockchain.
This project uses Dappros Platform for hosting, which means we also get a nice blockchain Explorer integration here.
4. Clicking this link we open the Transactions Explorer which confirms our transaction is among other blockchain transactions. This means any supply chain partner, any end user can check and verify the transaction.
We can also click on the specific transaction to open its details.
One of the key advantages of blockchain technology is the level of transparency it provides and the concept of verified trust it introduces. In our case we assume it is a private enterprise blockchain used by some mini consortium of partners operating a supply chain for said cheesecakes.
Any partner in the consortium can open these interfaces of Explorer, Dashboard and verify this immutable data ledger. This is a decentralised storage and it is not owned or controlled by a single party. Instead, this is owned and controlled by all participants of the supply chain.
6. Back to our user facing TracyChain application, we can keep adding traces as our shipment keeps moving and updates its statuses.
In real-world scenario of course these statuses get updated in a secure way to ensure correct ground truth data is added onto blockchain in the first place.
For this you would have integrations with existing ERP systems, GPS trackers etc.
Another valuable aspect of the system is that each user and agent has a cryptographic key-pair, an Ethereum blockchain identity, which is used to sign the transaction. So at this point for example to confirm shipment arriving to warehouse, you may have multiple signatures to confirm the fact. You may have one trace record signed by a delivery truck driver, another by warehouse operator, and a sequence of traces signed by a GPS tracker which can all independently verify each other.
7. Similarly we keep adding cryptographically signed trace records along the way of the shipment, so here we say we have left the warehouse and on our way to retail spot in New York.
8. Now, as your data is on blockchain you can query the latest status any time from your web application to show the relevant trace records.
For this we click “Track” button which shows us the provenance of the item recorded at our distributed ledger.
9. As a final step, we add the trace record of safely arriving to the shop, but of course in real-life applications you could modify the supply chain and user interfaces according to your needs.
This is it, we hope you enjoy our enterprise blockchain technology updates and please stay tuned for more interesting videos on this topic in our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRvrXwMOU0WBkRZyFlU7V_g
