Crypto-anchors - adding trust and efficiency to supply chains

Today security is the top-priority issue for companies of different industries and even countries. Fraud costs the global economy over $600 billion a year. Being under the risk of huge monetary losses, they are struggling to find solutions that will allow to successfully fight against illegal practices.

In some countries, 70% of certain life-saving pharmaceuticals are counterfeit. The problem lies in complex and non transparent supply chains. In large operations, they include more than 200 intermediary steps and dozens of suppliers in different countries.

As a result, to trace the entire process that goods/products pass during their way from the production to the customer’s hands, is pretty difficult, even impossible. Blockchain technology reveals a new era of security in a time when the integration of innovative security models is critically needed.

Although blockchain can add trust and efficiency to supply chains across a wide range of applications, it can’t make everything alone, for example, provide the authenticity of physical goods.

Crypto-anchors, named one of five main technology trends in a recent research by IBM, can become a solution to this issue. Consisting of cryptographic mechanisms, they provide a high-security level and can add value across many industries.

Within the next five years, crypto-anchors like ink dots or tiny computers (smaller than a grain of salt) will be built in multiple physical goods and even everyday devices and objects.

They can be integrated into an edible shade of magnetic ink, which can be used to dye a malaria pill. Crypto-anchors will be used together with blockchain to ensure an object’s authenticity from its origin to the time it reaches the end point.

Gina-Diana