Enabling Electronic Bills of Lading by Using a Private Blockchain

The bill of lading (B/L) is one of the most important documents in international trade. Current advances started to adopt public blockchain technology for digitization but lacking privacy. We raise the research question, if a private blockchain is suitable to solve this shortcoming. To answer this research question, we followed the design science research methodology. We designed an architecture and evaluated it via implementation, using Hyperledger Fabric. First results show general feasibility and privacy enhancement but reveal a high complexity and difficult extendibility of Hyperledger Fabric. Preliminary results of a focus group shows that the approach peaked interested by practitioners.