Diamonds are some of the world’s most valued gemstones, and the global diamond industry has managed to remain afloat despite being partially eclipsed by the emergence of modern stocks and novel virtual assets. The diamond industry, however, appears to be undergoing a paradigm shift in recent times — incorporating modern technology such as blockchain to improve diamond production, tracking and ultimate sales. Leanne Kemp, CEO of independent technology company EverLedger, stressed the need for blockchain integration in the industry to improve the tracking of a stone’s provenance. Speaking on the issue of data manipulation concerning a diamond’s provenance four years …

Global diamond mining firm De Beers has launched a proprietary blockchain-powered platform to manage its diamond production and distribution. The firm has long been at work on a blockchain system to trace, record and manage its diamond mining, production and distribution across the globe. The Tracr platform was first piloted and tested back in 2018, and the company has finally released the platform at scale to serve the wider diamond mining industry. De Beers has already incorporated the system into its global operations and estimates that 25% of its diamond production by value is registered on Tracr for 2022’s first …

“Cryptocurrency is just one use case for blockchain,” Karen Ottoni, director of ecosystem at Hyperledger, told Cointelegraph in an interview during Paris Blockchain Week. The list of blockchain-applicable ideas is numerous and growing, including “supply chain and trade, finance and capital markets, tokenizing green bonds and tokenizing real estate.” Hyperledger Foundation's bread and butter is to support the development and deployment of its open-source enterprise-grade blockchain technologies for projects such as “managing food, fish, diamonds, minerals — the supply chain,” Ottoni told Cointelegraph. While Hyperledger works in every industry, its impact on climate change and climate action is what most …

Some of the most prominent organizations in the gold industry have joined forces to launch a new “integrity program” that utilizes blockchain technology for supply chain management — a move that’s intended to help market participants verify the authenticity of their bullion. London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and the World Gold Council (WGC) announced Monday that they are collaborating to develop an “international system of gold bar integrity, chain of custody and provenance” that’s based on blockchain technology developed by companies aXedras and Peer Ledger. The ledger will be used to register and track gold bars at each stage of …

The global supply chain continues to struggle to get back on track following a tumultuous three years that have witnessed clogged shipping ports and a breakdown of the just-in-time delivery system. One blockchain project looking to help solve some of these issues while also facilitating the transition to Web3 is OriginTrail (TRAC), a logistics and supply chain management-focused blockchain protocol aiming to become the world’s first decentralized knowledge graph (DKG). Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of TRAC has increased 162% in the past week, going from a low of $0.36 on March 15 to …

Cocoa product startup Koa launched a blockchain-based program this week that improves the transparency of its cocoa supply chain and ensures its Ghanaian farmers are being paid properly. The program is supported by partnerships with German supply chain company Seedtrace and South African telecoms company MTN Group. Koa said it hopes to “improve transparency and accountability” by ending what it calls “scandals and cocoa farmer poverty.” Corporations such as Oreo and Chips Ahoy producer Mondelez have been accused of paying farmers a rate below a living wage by the Conseil du Cafe-Cacao which regulates cocoa production in Ivory Coast and …

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions can be quite expensive, especially for smaller companies. While ERP giants like SAP try their hands at blockchain-based solutions, a relatively small team now aims to provide an alternative that delivers similar functions using decentralized apps (DApps). In a Cointelegraph interview, William Pete, the CEO of Energy Ledger explained that by integrating blockchain technology, their team was able to develop applications that allow tracking and tracing supply chain logistics for products like crude oil. “Major oil and gas producers have been looking at blockchain technology for years but their internal think-tanks have failed to create …

Cryptocurrencies and the food industry might not seem like the most intuitive pairing — one based in the digital realm and the other firmly rooted in the physical. But going back to the earliest days of crypto, the very first real-world use case for Bitcoin (BTC) was food-related. On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz enacted the first documented commercial BTC transaction, buying two Papa John’s pizzas for the princely sum of 10,000 BTC. That day is now enshrined in the crypto calendar as Bitcoin Pizza Day. By itself, the event has ended up becoming an annual celebration with restaurant chains …

Nonfungible tokens (NFT) may be disrupting the trillion-dollar fashion industry, but NFTs are just one piece of a much larger puzzle that is revolutionizing this sector. Rather, blockchain technology as a whole continues to be a game-changer for the fashion industry. While blockchain-based supply chains served as some of the earliest use cases of how the technology could help detect fraudulent items, digital wearables being built on blockchain networks are now coming to play. Megan Kaspar, co-founder and managing director of Magnetic — a privately held crypto and blockchain investment and incubation firm — told Cointelegraph that digital fashion is …

The global supply chain has become an area of intense focus over the past couple of years and pressures from the pandemic and backlogged ports have led to a massive range of shortages for everyday items. One protocol that is focusing on optimizing supply chain management and building strength based on data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro is Morpheus.Network (MNW), a supply chain software-as-a-service middleware provider designed to integrate legacy systems with emerging technologies. According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, market conditions for MNW have been favorable for some time. The VORTECS™ Score, which is exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an …

Enterprise blockchain started to take shape in 2016, a time when companies like IBM began to leverage private networks for supply chain management. It was also during 2016 that author Don Tapscott wrote and published Blockchain Revolution, a book that examines the way that blockchain will transform a number of industries. Following the release of Blockchain Revolution, Tapscott — who is also co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute — published Supply Chain Revolution in August 2020. Given the timing of the book’s publication, Supply Chain Revolution detailed the way the COVID-19 pandemic exposed glitches throughout supply chains across the world, …

Supply chain tracking network VeChain has just upgraded its consensus mechanism to what it claims is the “world’s greenest” method of verifying blocks on the chain. On Nov. 16, VeChain reached a milestone in its six-year history by upgrading its VeChainThor mainnet to the first phase of the Proof of Authority (PoA) 2.0 SURFACE consensus algorithm. VeChain is a supply chain tracking system that launched in 2015 and combines physical tracking with blockchain record keeping. PoA and Proof of Stake (PoS) differ from Proof of Work (PoW) in that they do not require mining to reach network consensus. PoA achieves …