For several years, the international shipping community has been
abuzz with talk about how distributed ledger “blockchain” technology could be used to
expedite and simplify the movement of goods through many different
hands and regulatory regimes.
Many maritime industry insiders believed the shipping blockchain
platform developed by IBM and Maersk, TradeLens, would be the
panacea to many logistical issues related to supply chain
documentation and transparency. However, after the early excitement
related to the collaboration wore off, TradeLens initially
struggled to pick up major shipping collaborators, partly due to
the way the venture was set up. However, after announcing a restructured partnership, Maersk/IBM finally
recruited two major marine cargo carriers, Mediterranean Shipping
Company (MSC) and CMA-CGM and momentum has been moving full steam
ever since with “more than 100 participants on the platform . . .
[and the platform] processing over ten million discrete
