Luxury fashion brand Alyx intends to use Iota’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) for supply chain tracking, cryptocurrency news outlet The Block reports on May 15. Per the report, Iota’s system will be implemented in partnership with global manufacturing company Avery Dennison to allow Alyx’s customers to have full insight into their supply chain. By scanning QR codes with an app, it will reportedly be possible to track the course traveled by the item from its creation to the point of sale. The Block claims that data concerning the apparel’s production location, date and raw materials will be stored on Iota’s …

Kaleido has launched a new business-to-business (B2B) tech stack with a view to helping companies “reinvent their core payment systems and supply chains,” according to a news release obtained by Cointelegraph on May 15. The ConsenSys-backed company said the stack brings together the necessary tools and technologies that businesses need to build modern networks delivering operational improvements and new revenue streams. According to Kaleido, businesses that use its platform will easily be able to digitize assets by issuing custom tokens. Other features, including an asset registry, document store and app-to-app messenger, are “plug and play” — and the company says …

American blockchain startup Data Gumbo Corp. has raised $6 million from major energy companies, including the venture wing of Saudi Arabian national petroleum and natural gas company Saudi Aramco. The news was published by energy-focused news outlet Worldoil on May 8. In a Series A equity funding round, Data Gumbo ostensibly raised $6 million from companies such as Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, the venture subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, and Equinor Technology Ventures, the venture subsidiary of Equinor, a Norwegian multinational energy operator. The new investment purportedly brings Data Gumbo’s total funding up to $9.3 million. The funds will be used …

The Ecuador-based Sustainable Shrimp Partnership (SSP) is joining IBM's Food Trust Ecosystem, using IBM’s blockchain technology to ensure the quality of SSP shrimp products, according to a press release on May 6. By joining the Food Trust Ecosystem, retailers and consumers will have access to production and development data on the SSP shrimp products. Director of SSP Pamela Nath said: “Our aim is to have SSP premium quality shrimp in supermarkets and on menus where the consumer can scan the QR code and find out which farm it is from, how it was farmed, and key indicators on its food …

Researchers have re-engineered the Hyperledger Fabric to support almost seven times more transactions per second (TPS), according to a May 2 news release from Canada’s University of Waterloo. A new series of optimizations increased the volume of data that the blockchain — used by financial institutions, IT giants and engineering companies — can process. Where it formerly maxed out around 3,000 TPS, the researchers claim they managed to achieve 20,000 TPS. The university’s work focused on improving “end-to-end transaction throughput” by redesigning Fabric’s ordering service, transaction service and data management layer. This means that the blockchain is more practical for …

Blockchain-powered agricultural project GrainChain has partnered with the Mexican state of Tamaulipas to expand its grain tracking service in the country, Forbes reports May 2. According to the report, the Tamaulipas government is now using GrainChain’s software for tracking major grains such as sorghum, soybean and corn. Implementing GrainChain’s blockchain-enabled tracking tools is expected to bring more transparency in the grain supply chain by automating data records and providing more clarity to the way grain is traced from the field to the end marketplace. GrainChain's software can purportedly verify the authenticity of the grain and identify its source. Combined with …

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has teamed up with over 100 global supply chain and logistics leaders to standardize blockchain apps in the industry, the organization announced on May 1. The WEF, a Switzerland-based organization whose motto is commitment to “improving the state of the world,” has announced a new project called “Redesigning Trust: Blockchain for Supply Chains.” The project aims to form a broad multi-stakeholder community to co-develop interoperable blockchain applications in the logistics industry and to leverage an open-source toolkit to deploy blockchain responsibly, eliminating the hype around the technology. According to the press release, over 20 governments, …

Rob Carter, the chief information officer of American delivery services company FedEx, has called for uniform standards in the blockchain industry, tech-focused media outlet Computerworld reported on April 25. Speaking at the Blockchain Global Revolution Conference, Carter argued that mandated standards would help create uniformity for blockchains used in supply chains. He also noted the technology’s ability to improve the tracking of a good’s provenance and streamline the shipping process: "There is an incredible amount of information moving with an international package. An incredible amount of paperwork [such as] certificates of origin, and certain commodities require specific licenses. That information …

International tobacco company Philip Morris is considering blockchain use in tracking tax stamps on cigarette boxes, the firm’s spokesperson confirmed to Cointelegraph on April 26. Philip Morris International is looking to implement emerging technologies such as blockchain in order to improve the efficiency, transparency and cost effectiveness of its business, the company’s representative said in an email to Cointelegraph. Specifically, Nitin Manoharan, Philip Morris’ global head of architecture and tech innovation, has recently estimated that Philip Morris alone could save up to $20 million by reducing tax stamp paperwork and fraud with blockchain, according to crypto industry news outlet CoinDesk. …

Iota and internet of things (IoT) firm Evrythng announced a partnership to combine and apply their distributed ledger and IoT technologies to provide greater transparency for consumer goods supply chains. The news was revealed in a press release on April 17. According to the press release, Evrythng’s focus is to implement IoT and DLT technology to create unique, interactive and trackable identities for consumer products, with the aim of fostering greater transparency for both supply chain stakeholders and consumers. The partnership will reportedly see Evrythng’s Blockchain Integration Hub expand to include integrations with Iota’s distributed ledger protocol, known as Tangle. …

Portland State University (PSU) researchers have made a blockchain protocol to prevent counterfeit pharmaceuticals from filling the market, according to a press release published on April 15. PSU researcher and professor of computer science at the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Nirupama Bulusu, in collaboration with PSU computer science doctoral student Naif Alzahrani published a work dubbed "A new product anti-counterfeiting blockchain using a truly decentralized dynamic consensus protocol." In the paper, the researchers described a new blockchain-based method to record transactions geared to facilitate the fight against fake pharmaceuticals by product checking and decentralization. The proposed solution …

Swiss food technology giant Bühler introduced two food safety products that can potentially integrate blockchain at the Microsoft booth at the Hannover Messe industrial event in Germany on April 1. The company reported the news in a press release published the same day. The so-called “blockchain-ready” products presented by the company are a tool aiming to reduce microbial contamination in dry goods, dubbed Laatu, and Tubex Pro, a scale system that self-optimizes and produces a constant flow of production data. Both solutions are connected to the Bühler Insights Internet of Things service, hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. The …