Traditional Supply Chain Challenges During COVID-19 Spur Innovation In Blockchain Applications

Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies were already exploring the promise of blockchain to modernize certain aspects of their supply chains. Traditional supply chains can be inefficient, data intensive and costly, often characterized by burdensome paperwork, conflicting records and delays resulting from manual reconciliation processes involving a series of transactions and document exchanges among multiple parties. Blockchain offers potentially substantial benefits in this context, including the secure and auditable validation of transactions, automated documentation to support legal and customs compliance, improved quality control, enhanced end-to-end transparency (e.g., for verifying sustainability or ethical sourcing standards), and overall improvements in efficiency and cost-control. Indeed, ever since news reports in 2018-19 that Walmart had successfully tested a blockchain platform for food traceability and accountability to track mangoes and other