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Exclusive: Liberal Society Comes with Friendly Crypto Regulations

Exclusive interview with Nathan Kaiser: Part 2

As a veteran lawyer in technology, Nathan Kaiser of Cardano Foundation shares his insights in identifying countries with friendly crypto jurisdictions. He also examined how different jurisdictions affect both on-chain and off-chain governance.

Which are some of the friendliest crypto jurisdictions worldwide, and how do the jurisdictions compare internationally?

Jurisdictions that do not welcome and encourage developments and those that nod to everything without dissection are the unfriendliest. These are simply irresponsible policy actions.

Friendly jurisdictions are those which try to analyze the merit of technological innovations, such as blockchain. The majority of countries in the world often fall in the middle of friendliness spectrum. For instance, developed nations have been assessing whether the existing laws can or cannot cope with the new tech phenomena. Each country will then have to analyze and assess the way they want to govern their societies and how the existing laws will interact with the emerging tech of blockchain.

Since every society can decide how they make these decisions, they can develop policies that fit the corresponding jurisdictions. Ultimately, a more liberal society will be a more friendly jurisdiction for any kind of development.

Which area in blockchain/FinTech lack cross-border regulations?

There is no unified body or even a unified set of laws governing cross-border, but rather specific aspects focusing on one item instead of a holistic overview. Egmont Group, for instance, has a broad international ambition towards anti-money laundering (AML) cross-border regulations.

The FATCA can be considered as a unilateral effort that goes beyond its own borders, as it is cross-border by nature.

How does regulation across different jurisdictions affect blockchain governance (both on-chain and off-chain)?

From a traditional lens, you will see different policy approaches from various jurisdictions concerning on-chain and off-chain governance. If you have illiberal approaches, they will not win the game.

At the same time, there is no such thing as the race to the bottom: meaning an “anything goes” approach is equally not a winning strategy. In jurisdictions which allow everything, that strategy will not be a winning argument for a given company or project. A low regulatory framework will rather provide a sense of “no governance,” whereas people want to have stability and security.

With Bitcoin recognized as virtual property with monetary value in China, what is your outlook on Chinese crypto regulation?

During my first semester when I was studying law, we were taught that buying illegal drugs and selling them, they are recognized as “property.” Although, these drugs are recognized as property by the court, it is also illegal! Being recognized as property does not make it easier to buy and sell illegal drugs.

This response by the Chinese authorities is very antiquated and standard. Of course, Bitcoin is property and it remains illegal. In my opinion, the fact that it was considered property did not move anything within the overall Chinese regulatory response.

The current identity management systems may have privacy and security problems. What are some ways that blockchain technology can solve these problems?

One of the primary uses of blockchain is for identity management. However, I also feel that there are a couple of players that are focusing in this area, and the tech has not caught up yet. On the cryptographic and tech side, it is still in an embryonic stage.

I believe that there is going to be a lot of development, and I am convinced that in the next five to 10 years, much of identity management will be handled through blockchain.

US FDA Calls Meeting on Blockchain, AI and the New Era of Smarter Food Safety

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will hold a meeting with stakeholders to discuss its plans to usher in “A New Era of Smarter Food Safety .” The meetingwill take place on October 21st, with the aim of gathering input and feedback to help shape an FDA blueprint for the initiative. The FDA will propose leveraging modern technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and IoT to improve transparency and decrease the risks of contamination in the food supply chain. The initiative is part of an ongoing effort by the FDA to implements the agency’s Food and Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) which was designed to shift the focus from responding to foodborne illness to preventing it. The meeting will include breakout sessions on key topics that include traceability, smarter tools for prevention, evolving business models and retail food safety, and food safety culture.

Food Tech Revolution In a recent interview, Frank Yiannas, Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy, FDA said, “We are in the midst of a new revolution in food technology. There will be more changes in the next 10 years than there have been in the past 20 years. Products will be reformulated; new food sources and production approaches will be realized, and the food system will become increasingly digitalized.”

Before joining the FDA, Yiannis was a champion of blockchain in the private sector and claims he has been “chasing the holy grail of food traceability for years”. He believes that chase is at an end with the emergence of new technologies and specifically blockchain. Yiannis said, “Because of its distributed and decentralized nature that aligns more closely with a decentralized and distributed food system, has enabled food system stakeholders to imagine being able to have full end-to-end traceability. An ability to deliver accurate, real-time information about food, how it’s produced, and how it flows from farm to table is a game-changer for food safety.”

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Coca-Cola Bottlers Acquires SAP’s Blockchain Technology to Streamline Soda Supply Chain Processes

The supply chain is one of the systems where blockchain technology has the greatest potential to make a difference.

Part of the reason is that the supply chain system is a multi-party network of manufacturing, shipping, logistics, and retail businesses coordinating with each other to take a product from manufacturer to all the way through the supply chain to the end-user or consumer.

Sadly, the multi-party network of the supply chain appears to bring about opportunities to commit fraud and some cases of inefficiencies. Blockchain promises to function as a protocol, which can provide a layer of interoperability across such disparate systems.

Since blockchain is normally tamper-resistant and immutable, it can help to minimize the occurrence of fraud and increase transparency across each point within the supply chain.

According to Business Insider, Coca-Cola bottlers has joined the list of major corporations that identify the benefits of blockchain.

Let’s look at how the company uses blockchain today,

Collaborative Technologies

Coke One North America (CONA) is a firm, which manages the North America IT operations of Coca-Cola’s bottlers. While it operates the digital platform that handles the cola supply chain, the Coca-Cola company owns the recipes and does the budgeting and marketing. Integrate this with numerous private bottlers across the United States that frequently trade with one another result in a complex supply chain.

CONA has acquired SAP’s blockchain technology to streamline the supply chain processes between the 70 franchised bottling companies. With SAP’s blockchain, CONA has increased efficiency and transparency in its complex production line.

Secure and Clear Records

CONA senior manager – Andrei Semenov – told Business Insider that there are a number of cross-companies and multiparty transactions, which are inefficient. These transactions go through intermediaries and are very slow. He mentioned that as a company, they could have improved this and saved money.

With SAP’s solution, inventory information is immutably stored in a single platform. This, therefore, facilitates clear stock records and rapid and reliable filling of orders. The platform helps to minimize reconciliation time as CONA expects to see the typical 50 days operations reduced to under a week.

CONA manufactures and ships almost 160,000 orders daily from Coca-Cola, thus making it difficult for the firm to get visibility into their supply chains. CONA expects its blockchain program to increase efficiencies for its bottlers and minimize costs.

Pilot Study

A pilot project was initially trialed with two bottler franchises, C.C. Clark and Coca-Cola United. After the pilot’s success, now the solution is being rolled out to the entire 70 franchises. The supply chain operations value at $21 billion in annual revenue. This thus implies that even a small increase in efficiency could save the firms millions.

SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain

Torsten Zube – the Head of the SAP Innovation Center Network – mentioned that what they have accomplished with blockchain in Coca-Cola bottlers’ case use is developing a document flow in the supply chain. SAP – a software company – is reputed for providing one of the best Enterprise Resource Planning solutions in the industry. It has also made it’s big-name known as a blockchain provider.

Takeaway

Blockchain’s contributions are practical solutions with several firms finding ways to immediately adopt the technology.

Coca-Cola bottlers is now applying blockchain technology to make production processes safer by using the distributed ledger to redefine the soda supply chain.

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PwC Singapore's Venture Hub, on the Investment Sentiment of Blockchain Startups

November has been a busy month for FinTech and the blockchain industry in Singapore. The Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) and the Singapore Week of Innovation and TeCHnology (SWITCH) held 11 – 15 Nov gathered over 60,000 participants from 140 countries to foster the development of FinTech in Singapore. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) also announced key initiatives such as the joint development of FinTech Research Platform connecting investors and FinTech startups.

We arranged an interview with Lim Shu Ning, Director in PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub specializing in Blockchain during the SFF, which Shu Ning shared with us the investment sentiment of Singaporean blockchain startups and the state of enterprise blockchain adoption in Singapore.

Can you give us an overview of the Blockchain team in PwC Venture Hub? What is the scope of services that the team provides?

PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub adopts a one-stop shop approach to providing solutions, services and collaborating with motivated entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, incubators and accelerators within the venture ecosystem to help them expand into their key markets.

Our team focuses on fast-growing Tech startups including blockchain companies, using our expertise and experience to help founders grow their businesses. We work closely with the companies on areas such as fundraising, strategy, branding and M&A, IPO/ICO advisory to audit & regulatory compliance, legal & tax services and governance advisory.

What are the key pain points faced by blockchain startups in Singapore? What are some of the best advice you can give to these startups?

Blockchain is clearly a large part of what the Singapore Government sees to be an important and innovation-filled future for Singapore’s financial sector. Despite being a potential game-changer, there are also clear emerging doubts.

One particular concern is cost and efficiency. Given that the amount of resources and money spent, some perceive that substantial progress has not yet been achieved. Of the various use cases we see in the market, a large number may be still at the ideation stage, some might be in the developmental stage but not many are widely adopted or see the widespread application.

This leads to another pain-point which is to identify the right ecosystem partners. The value of blockchain is maximized when partners in the ecosystems work together and operating on a common chain. Currently, we see different organizations in the same industry sector developing many different chains and this is detrimental to the growth of blockchain. That being said, we do see potential interoperability across different blockchain solutions which help to harness efficiency for the ecosystems.

Blockchain companies should focus on creating solutions to solve real business problems through the trust that the blockchain brings, to ensure their products are viable and scalable. Blockchain technology is not the solution to everything, the right application to the right problem statement is the key.

Are there challenges to find the right talent for the fintech/ blockchain industry? What initiatives have been done to tackle talent shortages?

As with any new technology, blockchain is relatively new and will continue to evolve. At the moment, we note that there is indeed a limited supply of people with developed skills in this space. On the other hand, the demand for qualified talent is increasing and costly. And this is particularly challenging here due to Singapore’s relatively small population size.

Singapore has the potential to become an Asian Blockchain Hub with its blockchain-friendly regulations and government support in nurturing blockchain development. With the government’s support, we believe that Singapore will continue to attract and groom the right talent in the near future.

How would you describe the enterprise blockchain adoption in Singapore and what are the interesting use cases in blockchain there?

In PwC’s Global Blockchain Survey 2018, we noted that 46% of enterprise blockchain adoption resides in the Financial Services industry, 12% in the Industrial products and manufacturing, 12% in Energy and utilities, 11% in Healthcare. Other segments include government, retail and consumer sectors. This trend is quite in line with what we observe in Singapore as well.

Some of the interesting blockchain use cases we see include (just to name a few):

– Digital identity: Blockchain to create an auditable source of personal identity information shared and verified across multiple organizations. This also empowers users (like us) to have control over our digital identity and personal information.

– Supply Chain visibility: Blockchain eases the existing pain points of buyers, sellers and various parties across the supply chain. Some of the track & trace blockchain solutions we have seen allow traditional businesses to digitize their traditional products include food products into traceable digital assets to tackle some of the key issues in global trade including food safety and wastage.

– Record keeping: Blockchain provides a method for collectively recording and notarizing any type of data. This could include education records and certificates, healthcare records and more.

– Provenance: Blockchain offers an immutable and irreversible source of information that tracks true ownership as well as the authenticity of a product. We see more relevance for this application in the retail luxury products sector and high-value collectibles.

How would you describe the market sentiment on investing in Singaporean blockchain startups in terms of M&A deals and fundraising?

Market sentiment into investing in Singaporean blockchain startups is picking up. Previously investment was mainly in the form of token sales which are more speculative in nature. However as the market matures, sophisticated investors, as well as corporates, entered the fray seeing the potential of adding blockchain technology to traditional business or seeing the potential blockchain technology brought to different industries. Investment is now into the equity of the startup itself rather via a token sale.

Through our partnership with Tribe accelerator, we have seen first hand the kind of solutions that corporates are on the look-out for and that they have invested in. While most investments in startups are focused on taking a stake, we may see a growing number of M&A buyouts as these startups grow and as their solutions become more concrete.

We also note that investors are more keen to invest in blockchain startups with specific industry-focused solutions and where they are combining with other technologies such as IoT and AI; rather than blockchain developer companies.

How Can Blockchain Be Used to Save $31 Billion in Costs in the Food Industry?

Blockchain, along with the internet of things (IoT) trackers and sensors, could reduce costs for retailers. New data from Juniper research showed that blockchain will be essential to $31 billion in “food fraud savings” by 2024 by tracking food across the supply chain.

In the “Blockchain: Key Vertical Opportunities, Trends & Challenges 2019-2030″ report, the research showed that through the streamlining of supply chains, efficient food recall processes and regulatory compliance would help drive down the costs.

Juniper Research said in a statement that the internet of things and blockchain would add “significant value” to those involved in the supply chain, including farmers, retailers, and consumers.

Morgane Kimmich, the research author said: “Today, transparency and efficiency in the food supply chain are limited by opaque data forcing each company to rely on intermediaries and paper-based records.”

“Blockchain and the IoT provide an immutable, shared platform for all actors in the supply chain to track and trace assets; saving time, resources and reducing fraud,” explained Kimmich.

The leading players in the food provenance space using blockchain and IoT solutions include IBM’s Food Trust, SAP’s Track and Trace, Oracle’s Track and Trace and IoT solutions.

Consumers today are more aware of where their food comes from and where it was sourced or produced. Trust has been a big issue when it comes to supply chains.

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Consol Freight CEO talks crypto, fiat investments and protestors at Malta AI and Blockchain Summit

Ernesto Vila, CEO of Consol Freight, presented at the November 2019 Malta AI and Blockchain Summit.

Vila was tasked with commenting on the startup investor landscape and questioned if the blockchain sector was different from traditional tech.

“For sure, there are two different aspects to crypto versus traditional fintech,” he said. “Crypto investors are used to buying tokens in crowdfunding operations. They do not own part of the company, they do not have voting rights and projects can go very fast and then some.”

“But with the ICOs pretty much out of play and STOs more commonplace this is changing the face of investing as now the companies and projects are giving away equity as well – and that creates a stronger partnership with the target company.”

“On the flip side, it also means that early startup investors can actually get involved in projects that they like. It’s a very positive thing as the market matures. There is a lot of money out there now that the craziness has abated.”

Vila was asked how he would describe his ideal investor and he was very sure of his answer. He responded, “An ideal investor is someone who brings more than money to the table. Good investments are a bit like a marriage – you have to work hard to make it successful and so an ideal investor would bring experience, networks, advice and mentoring.”

He admitted the early startup investors can be more aggressive but reasonably pointed out that after all, they are punting on an idea rather than a formed business so the risk is higher.

Another panelist from Hong Kong suggested that his Asian location was a great gateway for Chinese investors. Vila was asked if protestors might be an issue for Hong Kong but he pointed out that Spain has protestors too.

“Protestors are everywhere. People are more connected and that is the beauty of technical advances. More protesting but also more connected too.”

Vila was also joined by fellow startups Jay Liang and Claude Waelchli and spoke at the Malta AI and Blockchain Summit 2019.

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How Can IBM’s Blockchain Network Support $2 Trillion in Product Logistics by 2023?

IBM Blockchain has been around for several years, delivering on blockchain projects for enterprises in areas such as trade finance, securities, payments and supply chain traceability, as well as establishing new platforms for businesses and improving efficiencies in existing industries.

Alan Lim, one of the initial members of the IBM Worldwide Blockchain team, heads IBM Blockchain Labs in the Asia Pacific. Lim kicked off his journey in blockchain as he was curious about how blockchain was being used in solving some real-world challenges. “I realized that blockchain was a new approach to solve the issues around trust, to look at how we can reimagine or change the way transactions are processed, and how we can establish a single point of view across different parties,” said Lim.

Lim believes that blockchain is an interesting new approach for cross-border transactions that involve multiple parties. “When I look at it from an architectural perspective, it became even more interesting as I dug deeper into it. I started to see that it’s not just about the technologies, there’s the economics behind it as well.”

Lim’s work at IBM has been based on working on blockchain from an enterprise perspective. “What we have seen for the last couple of years, is the maturing understanding of blockchain and its uses for enterprises,” stated Lim. He commented that his journey has geared towards trying to understand the requirements and capabilities of the technology in order to be fully realized from an enterprise perspective. “I’m still very excited about the potential, the technologies and what it can do across a range of different industries beyond the financial services sector. Hopefully, we will see more adoption, as some of these use cases and networks are moving towards the production kind of deployment.”

IBM TYS: The ‘Digital Passport’ to Streamline Supply Chain Processes

IBM and blockchain consultancy firm, Chainyard announced a new collaboration on Aug. 5 regarding a new blockchain network called Trust Your Supplier (TYS), which was designed to improve supplier qualification, validation, onboarding, and life cycle information management. Other founding members of the network include Anheuser-Busch InBev, Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Nokia, Schneider Electric and Vodafone.

The TYS network aims to solve issues around manual processes that make it difficult to verify identities and track documents such as bank account information, tax certifications and certificates of insurance throughout the lifecycle of a supplier. Technology research firm Garner Inc. mentioned that by 2023, blockchain will support the global movement and tracking of $2 trillion of goods and services annually.

“We identified a problem, that the current procurement process is a very long time to onboard a new supplier to a company. The company needs to go through the due diligence process to make sure that the given suppliers are compliant as necessary credentials to be able to support the buyer’s needs,” said Lim.

Lim explained that this is a reoccurring process, across different organizations, therefore he pointed out that the process should be simplified. “To streamline the whole process, we would enable a ‘digital passport’, then different organizations and suppliers would secure their necessary credentials and would make it easier for the supplier to enter into a new relationship with the purchase and vice versa.” IBM is currently working with different parts of the ecosystem to empower a more efficient onboarding process.

IBM Blockchain in Action: What are the Benefits?

In first and second parts of our interview with Alan Lim, the Program Director of IBM Blockchain Lab in the Asia Pacific, we explored the idea of data standards to improve the supply chain industry, as well as the IBM Food Trust, a food provenance network that allows food products to be traced and tracked. Digging deeper into IBM Blockchain, what else has the company been working on?

Encouraging blockchain developers to come onboard

IBM has recently released an extension to the Visual Studio (VS) Code, known as the IBM Blockchain Platform Visual Studio Code extension, which provides an environment within the Visual Studio Code to develop, package, test smart contracts. “We’re trying to make this as easy as possible for developers to come on board, to start developing their own smart contracts; that’s the idea behind the VS Code extension.” The VS Code can be used to connect into a preconfigured instance of Hyperledger Fabric, or on an IBM blockchain platform. “That’s what we’re trying to do, to make a companion make it easier for developers to get started on writing smart contracts and be able to publish and test out some of these smart contracts they have written,” explained Lim.

IBM’s techniques to ensure privacy

On the issue of privacy, Lim said, “One of the things we are looking to establish is how we respect the privacy of the information shared on the need-to-know basis, and the various techniques to ensure privacy. Whether it’s the encryption of data or being selective in terms of where data is shared on the ledger, on a mutual basis only for the parties involved in those transactions, different features are put in to tackle these challenges.” He added that these features are added through channel design, private data collection and other features within Hyperledger Fabric, which are one of the protocols as well as the other projects that IBM is involved in.

How do you determine the ROI on deploying IBM blockchain?

IBM created a Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) report for companies to be able to identify the cost, benefits, flexibilities and risk factors of working with IBM Blockchain. “I think it’s important to understand that companies are not implementing blockchain for blockchain’s sake, you need to be driven through benefit,” answered Lim.

To trace the origin of a particular food product, would historically take days or weeks to be able to track down. “I think that’s the benefit in terms of efficiency – to be able to track down a food product in a matter of seconds or minutes. A lot of these processes are very paper-based, and a lot of time is spent just resolving disputes between all the counterparties.” Overall, the benefits include time savings, cost savings, and efficiency through the time it takes to establish the right view between the different parties in the event of billing, collections, and reconciliation.

What’s next for enterprise blockchain adoption?

Lim said that there could be optimizations from the perspective of how a claim could be performed, although savings could come in various forms. “There could be optimizations from that perspective, whether we could do this on a more recurring basis and a less intrusive basis. I think the savings from that angle could be combined with other technologies, whether it is IoT, whether it is AI, etc.” He added that financial savings could be realized if the industry becomes more efficient.

Lim believes that enterprise blockchain has been maturing in the past few years, with a high potential in Asia. “Whether it’s across the financial services sector, supply chain, and other industries, we’re starting to see some of the early adopters, leading the charge, going to production. I think you’re going to see fast followers catching up, networks scaling and growing.” He expressed his excitement to see how things pan out, “Hopefully we see more use cases in production, spreading across different industries as well.”

EY Ops Chain: Bringing Transparency and Accountability to Public Finance Management

Exclusive interview with Jimmy Ong, Ernst & Young: Part 1

Governments utilize enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools to track public finance nowadays, however, how can we ensure the tracking of public funds is transparent and accountable to the general public?

Ernst & Young (EY) has been the leader in using blockchain to track public finance. Its flagship product, EY Ops Chain made its debut in 2017 which has been widely adopted across the areas of public finance and supply chain management. In Apr 2018, EY brought blockchain into its audit business with the EY Blockchain Analyzer, which helps auditors to interrogate the data and perform analysis of transactions, reconcile and identify transaction outliers.

Blockchain.News sat down with Jimmy Ong, EY Asia-Pacific Blockchain Leader to take a deep dive in EY Ops Chain and EY Blockchain Analyzer. In particular, we explore how EY Ops Chain facilitates a more transparent public finance tracking. Ong also shared an interesting use case when EY Ops Chain enables the tracking of blood in Canada.

What would you say is the main impetus behind the formation of the EY blockchain team and when did EY first begin experimenting with the technology?

At EY, we are constantly evaluating and innovating with new technologies to ensure we understand how these solutions can solve real-world problems for our clients. Our mission is to build a better working world and bring digital transformation to the forefront. This includes experimenting with and using emerging technologies – like blockchain – when applicable. We see blockchains as universal business infrastructure that will integrate business ecosystems.

On the website of EY, the immediate quote is that “blockchains will do for networks of enterprises and business ecosystems what enterprise resource planning (ERP) did for the single company”. Could you expand on this core concept for our readers?

EY has a clear vision and strategy for how blockchain is digitalizing and integrating supply chains by knitting together business operations and finance at the ecosystem level. Blockchain does that through tokens and smart contracts.

Blockchains allow for a level of digital collaboration previously thought unfeasible. Using blockchain, we now have a technology-based business infrastructure that enables enterprises to transact between each other using shared business logic and shared business data.

We see blockchain playing a very important role enabling enterprises to complete the purchase-to-pay (P2P) lifecycle – from contracting, ordering, fulfilling, invoicing to handling payments in a more accurate, efficient and more secure manner.

EY OpsChain: Use Cases

Which areas of blockchain applications are the focus of the EY blockchain team? Can you share some examples with us?

At EY, we focus on two blockchain platforms: EY Ops Chain and EY Blockchain Analyzer. EY Ops Chain helps organizations conduct business on private and public blockchains. EY Blockchain Analyzer helps organizations get insights into what happened on the blockchain. We see these two platforms as complementary as the first enables enterprises to conduct business transactions on the blockchain while the latter allows for enterprises to analyze them.

EY OpsChain

Using EY Ops Chain traceability, we have enabled our clients to track numerous assets along the value chain such as wine, chicken, and animal vaccines. Earlier this year, we brought EY Ops Chain traceability to one of the world’s most important services: blood service operations. We worked with the Canadian Blood Services (CBS) to track blood from ‘vein to vein.’

The blood registry had a desire to augment the donor base and utilize emerging tech to optimize the management of Canada’s blood product supply and inventory. Implementing EY Ops Chain traceability would help reinforce the partnership in Canada between donors, hospitals, patients, ministries and CBS employees by bringing them all on one platform.

For tracing blood from ‘vein to vein,’ the solution starts with the donor where the bag of blood is scanned and tagged, monitored along the logistic journey, tracked as it’s processed into additional products including plasma, cells and platelets. Once the blood product is ready for recipient use, the bag is then scanned for the final time closing the loop.

The results were improved transparency and donor engagement, enhanced end-to-end management along with the key process steps from collection, CBS transport, production/testing, storage, hospital transport and storage, leveraging data and technology to support research and seek improved patient outcomes.

EY Blockchain Analyzer

EY Blockchain Analyzer is all about linking the blockchain with enterprise transactions and real-world assets. The platform can integrate with a multitude of sources and provides useful tools to perform blockchain analytics, audits, and tax processes. We use the EY Blockchain Analyzer for our audit engagements where the enterprise has transactions on the public blockchains such as Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic and Litecoin. EY Blockchain Analyzer helps with transaction monitoring, tax calculation, token and smart contract testing. The technology can also support zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) private transactions and connect with private Ethereum, Quorum, and Hyperledger blockchains.

EY OpsChain: Public Finance Manager

In Oct 2019, EY has launched the OpsChain Public Finance Manager (PFM) in tracking public funds. Can you share with us the pilot testing result in Toronto?

EY Ops Chain Public Finance Manager helps governments allocate taxpayers more effectively. The solution’s aim is to drive transparency, eliminate reconciliation and enhance the decision-making ability of governments for the financial management of public funds. EY first implemented our solution for the City of Toronto and it is now being piloted worldwide. The city’s financial management transformation efforts lead to the blockchain-based solution for better managing reconciliations and interdivisional fund transfers between different agencies.

Results are being measured on an ongoing basis but early signs point to a more accurate availability of reporting measures for management decision-making. Decision-making authority has a consolidated view of funds along the chain in real-time. Administrators now have synchronized transactional and reporting data across participants. The product has reduced administrative costs and allowed for the reallocation of resources to high-value-add activities.

It is claimed that the PFM can track government fund movement through different state agencies, which also means different state agencies need to share their own data to the blockchain for transparency. What are the challenges to gather public fund data from different state agencies?

Governments, municipalities, and the many agencies related perform the essential public services to empower the communities of which they serve. That being said, the IT landscape and digital maturity of authorities can differ drastically among them.

Our solution makes it easy to integrate with a wide range of ERP and other financial reporting systems to help alleviate the siloed and out-of-sync data problems that plaque most governments and enterprises alike.

Blockchain Startup Agriledger Launches Ecosystem of Transparency and Opportunity For Haitian Farmers

UK Tech Startup, Agriledger has launched a blockchain ecosystem for Haitian farmers to add transparency to the supply chain and create fairer product pricing for suppliers and retailers.

As reported by Spring Wise on Feb. 28, Agriledger’s system offers farmers in Haiti access to global markets and banks. The system fosters trust on both sides of the transaction, leading to fairer payments for farmers and piece of mind for consumers.

Benefits of a Blockchain Ecosystem

Leveraging blockchain technology, registered Haitian farmers are provided with a unique digital identification number, which makes the farmers key players in the supply chain, and gives them access to financial services, logistics, insurance and other services.

The farmers are also able to tokenize their products using Agriledger’s service, further enhancing their access to peer-to-peer dealings.

Blockchain features make the data on the platform inherently trustworthy, enhance the overall traceability and transparency of the supply chain and automates data reconciliation.The system, which includes a digital wallet for fast network payments, makes it is easier for farmers to get loans and access financial services.

Agriledger has announced plans to create a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enabled marketplace. The planned service would include communications and an order management platform to ease transactions between food suppliers and retailers.

Haitians are also Trading Waste for Digital Tokens

While tokenizing can provide Haitian farmers with enhanced access to peer-to-peer finance, it is also being implemented in Haiti to encourage people to incorporate more environmentally friendly measures. The initiative offers tokenized compensation for disposing of waste in the right manner.

As reported by Blockchain.News, a Canadian company called Plastic Bank in operation in Haiti and Peru utilizes a blockchain solution to reduce the ecological damage caused by plastic waste.

The company has strategically located recycling centers where people take their waste, such as empty plastic water bottles, cups, and bags in exchange for digital tokens secured via a blockchain platform and can be redeemed for food or charging phones. All the plastic collected is then sold to a buyer for recycling purposes.

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