By
Silvia Ivanova
November 5, 2019
4 Min Read
Since 2017, when the entire world was gripped by decentralization hype, the word “Blockchain” has developed a negative connotation to some. Many still associate it only with cryptocurrencies, others with ICO projects that never delivered… Now that the hype has resided, we saw a lot of companies in the space quiet down, or even disappear. However, some are still here, for good, and delivering actual blockchain projects that bring value to businesses.
The truth is, as with every new technology, people are still in the process of understanding it and finding its actual value. However, we see actual examples that are not widely spoken about, proving that the technology is approaching the breakthrough that many have been conjuring up for years.
We decided to spare some time and pay the necessary attention to the ones that have been working hard and have actually delivered. Below are a few real-life examples of projects that use practical blockchain & DLT and why the technology behind them matters:
Daimler – fast and secure international trade transactions
Daimler is among the first companies to actually do a transaction on the blockchain-based Marco Polo trade finance network. The transaction was related to an order Daimler made and the involved processing of the data required an exchange of payments with Dürr – an engineering firm and parts builder.
Usually, such a transaction takes days but with the Marco Polo transaction platform, it took only a few minutes! In this case, the technology brings security, speed, and reliability among all, thus increasing business process efficiency exponentially. This project demonstrates the potential for more efficient digital trade finance processes with the help of Blockchain and DLT.
Marco Polo is one of the main initiatives by R3 and TradeIX. Its network consists of financial institutions and enterprises from all over the world that aim to drive innovation in trade and working capital finance.
LimeChain is an official partner of R3. R3 is the company behind Corda, an open-source platform that enables businesses to transact directly and in strict privacy. Read more about the partnership.
Panalpina – digitizing traditionally paper-based documents for the freight business
Panalpina, a Swiss freight forwarder (and one of the top ten in the world), recently acquired by DSV – Global Transport and Logistics provides and manages supply chain solutions for thousands of companies every day – their clients vary from small family run business to the large global corporations. They have built a PoC that digitizes documents related to the shipping of goods (bills of landing, packing lists, etc.) between two continents – Europe and Asia. Currently, the system is running along with Panalpina’s existing systems so that they can compare both and analyze and evaluate the actual benefits of using Blockchain, related to time and cost optimizations.
With this PoC, Panalpina aims to prove the practical use cases of Blockchain that could actually be adopted by a large number of other companies in the field. They are also part of the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA), a group whose aim is to drive emerging technologies adoption into the field.
Arxum – process optimization for the manufacturing industry
In contrast with the two examples above, Arxum is a blockchain-native company. From its inception, their idea is to build a Blockchain-based platform that solves common challenges in the manufacturing industry. Built, on EOS, a next-generation, open-source blockchain protocol with industry-leading transaction speed and flexible utility, the Arxum platform offers different solutions tailored to a specific business. One example is the order automation of custom beer coasters, using Blockchain and IoT. The solution connects end-users directly to the machines and allows them to track machines’ availability and order progress. All this human-free. It stands as a great example of process and costs optimization.
Another example of what Arxum is doing is a project that encourages plastic recycling. Here Blockchain is combined with AI so that upon returning a specific plastic item, the AI recognizes it and gives back a certain amount of tokens to the user, based on the type of plastic. Arxum is currently expanding its platform with plans to offer even cooler solutions to different manufacturers – if you would like to keep an eye on them, here is Arxum’s website.
LimeChain is proud to be the official technical partner of Arxum. If you are curious to find other use cases of Blockchain in the manufacturing industry, you can check our Use cases page.
Walmart – supply chain transparency for the retail industry
Walmart decided to improve their Supply Chain Management by introducing a new Blockchain-based solution to track events on the food supply ecosystem. Together with their partner, IBM, they built two PoCs based on Hyperledger Fabric. The first project is about tracking mangos sold in Walmart stores across the USA. The second project focuses on tracing pork meat sold across China. The solutions allow end-users and participants in the supply chain to check the product provenance, related certificates, and dates of certain events that happened throughout the supply chain.
By using Blockchain, Walmart and its customers can now track the provenance of those products for less than 3 seconds, while before it took… 7 days! Currently, Walmart is using such a tracing system for about 25 products from 5 different suppliers and plans to introduce this concept to their other products, too.
Learn how LimeChain used HyperLedger to optimize the Claim Management process of P&G.
SteelTrace – a Blockchain-native platform to automatically trace steel quality from origin to end product
SteelTrace is a Blockchain native company with a mission to make fraud with steel and metals a thing of the past. They do that by introducing a platform on which all companies in the steel supply chain steel can manage all certificate related product data safely and irrefutably. LimeChain is a proud partner of SteelTrace, helping them design their Blockchain and Smart Contracts architecture in a secure and scalable way. They have already onboarded companies like Total, Inox Tech S.p.A, Van Leeuwen and others to test the platform and help them build a product that meets the actual needs of the business.
Here is more information about the SteelTrace project.
Propy – selling and buying of property online
Propy is the first of its kind Blockchain-based platform where you could actually sell or buy a property online, with all required documentation signed digitally. The platform streamlines the property selling process for agents, brokerages, and clients by providing an all-in-one platform where you could actually go through all processes and paperwork involved in buying property online. All this is based on Blockchain, making the platform highly secure and transparent for all involved parties.
LimeChain is proud to have worked with Propy in their endeavor to transform the real estate industry. More about our partnership could be found on our Clients pages.
AdEx – a platform to connect publishers and advertisers without intermediaries
AdEx is another brilliant Blockchain-native company. They built a platform based on Ethereum, that directly connects advertisers with publishers. By using the platform, users have access to real-time reporting and benefit from payments per impression with no withdrawal threshold for publishers. AdEx platform is a real breakthrough for the advertising industry since advertisers pay for real traffic only while publishers earn more revenue for their ad space. Even more excitingly, AdEx platform does not store any user data.
Find out more about AdEx and its platform directly on their website.
We will be looking to turn this into a series of articles, with more real-life Blockchain projects. Information on a project that got your attention is always welcome.
In case you do have a project in mind that you would like to get our help on, drop us a line at hi@limechain.tech.
