Blockchain Can Show What Happened To A Product Without Exposing Who Did It
A supply chain works better when products tell the key facts of their journey, showing what actually happened along the way while protecting people’s privacy.
The Gist
Privacy and transparency are crucial for reliable supply chains, as highlighted by Nikhil Varma.
- Consumers need to know product handling details without exposing personal data of workers.
- Transparency involves sharing what happened in the supply chain rather than who was involved.
- Implementing data tracking technologies can help achieve this balance effectively.
We hear a lot about privacy these days. Mobile apps want all kinds of permissions, though you have the option to allow or deny them. Websites also leave behind tracking cookies, but you can outsmart them by using certain browsers. In fact, there are laws that tell companies what data they can or cannot collect.
There’s another world where privacy concerns seem to cause more inconvenience — the supply chain of goods.
It's essential to maintain the integrity of a supply chain so that fake or substandard articles do not enter the system.
For that to happen, everyone involved in it needs to fully disclose how well they did their part and whether they followed all the rules.
But the only problem with this arrangement is that sharing every bit of that information could violate someone's privacy.
After all, a farmer shouldn’t have to reveal personal information to prove their crops were grown the right way. Similarly, a manufacturing facility shouldn’t need to hand over its trade secrets to show it followed safety rules. And a transporter shouldn’t have to reveal vehicle or route details to prove a shipment was delivered on time.
So how do you share information without revealing too much?
It sounds impossible. But only until you realise the real problem isn’t the amount of data being shared, but what kind of data is being shared.
Need For Openness
For example, when we buy a bar of chocolate, we check the wrapper and the manufacturing and expiry dates. The problem is that it’s easy to fudge these things.
For a customer to know whether it is genuine and made with the right ingredients, all the parties handling the supply chain should disclose what happened at their end.
If chemicals were used to clean the cocoa plant, someone needs to know. If the factory stored the chocolate at the wrong temperature, it needs to be disclosed. If the delivery was delayed because of which the transport vehicle sat in the heat for a few hours, that also needs to be put on the record.
So how do you strike a balance between privacy concerns and the need for openness?
In a recent conversation with The Core, Nikhil Varma of Algorand made a crucial point about the supply chain.
He said the supply chain becomes unreliable not because people hide everything, but because they are scared of sharing the wrong things. Everyone holds onto personal or sensitive information, so even basic facts get lost.
Varma’s point is that transparency is more about proving what happened rather than exposing people or compromising their trade secrets.
Why Privacy Still Matters
That doesn’t mean we forget privacy. You don’t need the farmer’s name to check if the soil was healthy. You don’t need the factory worker’s identity to confirm the cooling machine worked. You don’t need the driver’s details to prove the truck arrived on time.
You need information about the product, not the person.
This is why privacy laws and transparency requirements are not adversaries. They’re actually trying to fix the same thing: unnecessary exposure.
Privacy keeps people safe, while transparency helps establish a product’s authenticity or the lack of it.
Finding the Middle Path
So how do we balance the two? By using information that describes what happened, instead of who did it.
A machine can record the roasting time of cocoa, while a sensor can record the temperature of a truck. Similarly, a digital log can record when a shipment reached the warehouse.
None of this reveals any personal details of individuals, but all of it helps to know the truth about a product.
This is the middle path Varma argues for — a supply chain where we can check the story of a product without exposing the people behind it.
And when you get this balance right, the whole chain becomes far more trustworthy.
This series is brought to you in partnership with Algorand.
