Tamper-Proof Volume Tracking in Supply Chains with Smart Contracts

Complex supply chains involve many different stakeholders such as producers, traders, manufacturers, and consumers. These entities comprise companies and other stakeholders spanning different countries or continents. Depending on the involved goods, the origin and the responsible harvesting of these elements are essential. Due to their high complexity, these systems enable the introduction of resources with forged identity, tricking the participants of the supply chain into believing that they acquire goods with specific properties, e.g., environmentally friendly wood or resources which are not the result of child labor. We derive requirements from the global world trade of timber and timer-based products, in which the origin of a large portion of certified wood cannot be verified. A set of smart contracts deployed within the Ethereum platform allows for a transparent supply chain with validated sources. The platform enables the tracking of variations of the original good, tracing not only the raw material but also the resulting products. The proposed solution introduces a novel exchange contract and ensures a correct overall volume of assets managed in the supply chain.