b'HANDLING PRIVACY OVERHAULING BUSINESS PROCESSESDe Bruin also mentioned that privacy and confidentiality areAccording to de Bruin, there is no need to overhaul the regu-a very important topic. Just like on the internet, it is not onlylar business processes. The business process and systems of yourself that is using the information and your customers, butrecord that an organization and its customers already have are possibly also your competitors. And you absolutely want to benot replaced by blockchain. Just like the internet did not erase sure that the data that you share with others is kept confidential.all the information that was available, it just connected them all In this context it is evident that cryptography is an essentialtogether. Blockchain is the way to tie it all together and to have part of blockchain technology, to keep the data confidential.standards by which you share these data and so that you are The owner can then decide when somebody can get access toabsolutely sure that the information you get is the right infor-the data, which may already be on the customers computer, butmation. And it is instantaneously available.cannot be read without the right key. With the key, the otherAnother interesting aspect of blockchain it that one can see party can unlock, and verify that the information is correct.who is waiting for information, why that person is waiting for that The beauty of blockchain is that there is an enormous sim- information, and who is not doing the task that they should be plification in networks. But this requires standards, and coop- doing. It is a very disciplined form of working together. Blockchain eration between parties. Comparing this to bitcoin, there is onetakes away time, in the same way that the internet took away dis-major difference, which is in the amount of energy that is con- tance. It removes a lot of administrative work out of the business sumed. With bitcoin, the consensus mechanism is carried outprocesses that organizations are using at this moment.at large data centres and it is the data centres that consumeThere are some very pertinent reasons why blockchain is enormous amounts of electricity. With the type of blockchainbeing used. One of them came in the wake of the romaine lettuce described here, this is not necessary. At IBM, and with theirE. coli scare in the U.S., where Walmart demanded from its sup-customers and partners, they use a different type of consensuspliers to use blockchain technology, to better track leafy greens. mechanism, the so-called hyper ledger fabric and there is aAnother example here in Europe is how Carrefour is joining with special consensus algorithm for that.Food Trust, together with the supplier of Mousline (a type of potato mash), to find out what type of potato is being used in the BLOCKCHAIN EXAMPLES FROM THE FOOD CHAIN actual product, and what happened all along the chain. These Many people think that blockchain is limited to cryptocurren- are some very concrete examples of what has been happening cies like bitcoin and cerium etc. shared de Bruin. But there arealready, apart from many others. many more real-life uses of blockchain in very different indus-tries, e.g. in crime reduction, trade finance, logistics, container transportation, but also in food safety, which is what is closest to the activities of Euroseeds and its members. The IBM Food Trust approach is probably the most interesting example. This is not a blockchain that is totally evolved, but it is operational,TO KNOW WHERE A FOOD and being used, but also open for new developments.PRODUCT CAME FROM,This approach provides a shared replicated ledger across theWHO HARVESTED OR PACKAGED IT, food supply chain, with the main aim of creating food trust for all the parties involved. This can be done with the help of producers recordsIN THE PAST TOOK WEEKS,and retailers records which often can be shared across the blockchain.NOW WITH BLOCKCHAIN IT ISIn the past, if a customer wanted to know where a certainA MATTER OF SECONDS.package of food came from, who harvested and packaged the prod-uct etc. it would take 2-3 weeks of forensics to find out what exactly happened to that package. It would require research of all the steps between the grower and the supermarket. With blockchain, this whole process has been reduced to a number of seconds. On the voyage towards Food Trust, his company startedHe added that it is only the start and at the moment only a with partners like Walmart and Carrefour, which are major forcesfew hundred of parties are involved. But as a company, IBM is in the food chain and can drive these sorts of new standards. Atvery ambitious and aims to connect all the 570 million growers the moment they work on projects such as tracing mango in theto the 2.7 billion customers, and all parties in between, in this U.S., pork in China, poultry in Spain, and especially leafy greensFood Trust blockchain. in America. WISE ADVICEBUYING BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY There are certainly a few lessons that he has learned on the He also mentioned that at the moment in IBM Food Trust therevarious blockchain projects he participated in. First of all, it is are three operational modules that people could buy off theimportant to understand the ecosystem governance from the shelf, if they wanted to use them. One of them is Trace andstart. And with ecosystem, he meant the people who you are Recall, when it is very important that a party can instantane- going to work with, such as suppliers, customers, and perhaps ously find out where the products are coming from and if nec- competitors, and how this blockchain is going to be governed. essary, can do a very fast recall, if there is anything wrong withIt is important to know how the rules are being agreed upon, the product. Other modules are the Data Entry and Access orwhich is not that simple. the Certificate Management modules. In the latter one, peopleSecondly it is important to realize that it is not the tech-can know which certificate exactly is issued so there can be nonology that is driving the process, but the business issues that fraud. With blockchain parties can check that the certificate isyou have. The blockchain technology is available, and has been the actual certificate that people were allowed to use and canaround for quite a while, so it is crucial to focus on the business. be used to certify that the product is exactly what it says it is.And thirdly, the parties need to be very clear on the value These are the first three modules that are being used, andthat it brings you as an organization, and other organizations other modules are being developed.and why should people work together on this.EUROPEAN-SEED.COMIEUROPEAN SEED I 25'