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Surely legally speaking they have to do a minimum amount of vetting for their suppliers. They also probably need to negotiate prices and quantities at the very

by simias 8y ago

Surely legally speaking they have to do a minimum amount of vetting for their suppliers. They also probably need to negotiate prices and quantities at the very least. Sending the supplier a certificate in the process doesn't seem particularly complex (especially since it's easily fully automated and no more complicated than setting up a blockchain "account", however that works). I mean what are you proposing exactly, that anybody can stuff a bunch of Lettuce in a truck, send it to Wallmart while generating a wallet address on WallmartCoin? Where's the traceability there exactly? What stops me from lying about the quality of my product or even who I am? What if I just wait for a farmer in my area to send a delivery of lettuce and impersonate them on the blockchain, how can it resolve the issue and figure out who did what? What if I buy cheap product from abroad and resell it as organic locally grown lettuce? >Bitcoin demonstrated that a large number of unknown parties can successfully store and transfer value. No, a large number of unknown parties can successfully transfer purely digital goods. As long as lettuce doesn't grow on the blockchain you'll need some kind of third party oracle to actually keep track of physical goods.

Spooky23 8y ago
The digital good is the chain of custody and timeline associated with the physical good. Money has always been a proxy for physical goods -- if you look at the Best Buy annual report, they don't tell you how many TVs are in stock, they tell you the value of inventory. I know nothing about what is actually happening here, I'm speaking to a high-level process. It seems logical that a workflow might look like this: - All parties must have a supported application. - Supplier scans carton labels as they are palletized and loaded into the truck. (you have a singed attestation that pallet x was loaded on truck y at location z) - Truck is scanned on arrival at cross-dock. - Cartons are scanned as they are loaded into various trucks for delivery. (you know how long the cold-chain was broken for perishables and who supplied what store) - Cartons are scanned on arrival and scanned when shelved. - Cartons are scanned when pulled and stocked. The problem that you are solving is that at every step of the process, the process is at least partially out of Wal-Mart's control and every contractor has an incentive to either not track things or lie. If there is an e. coli outbreak, WalMart may destroy $5M of lettuce from Arizona where in reality they only needed to destroy $500k of lettuce from farmer X. Is it the best solution? I have no idea.

by simias 8y ago

Spooky23 8y ago

The digital good is the chain of custody and timeline associated with the physical good. Money has always been a proxy for physical goods -- if you look at the Best Buy annual report, they don't tell you how many TVs are in stock, they tell you the value of inventory. I know nothing about what is actually happening here, I'm speaking to a high-level process. It seems logical that a workflow might look like this: - All parties must have a supported application. - Supplier scans carton labels as they are palletized and loaded into the truck. (you have a singed attestation that pallet x was loaded on truck y at location z) - Truck is scanned on arrival at cross-dock. - Cartons are scanned as they are loaded into various trucks for delivery. (you know how long the cold-chain was broken for perishables and who supplied what store) - Cartons are scanned on arrival and scanned when shelved. - Cartons are scanned when pulled and stocked. The problem that you are solving is that at every step of the process, the process is at least partially out of Wal-Mart's control and every contractor has an incentive to either not track things or lie. If there is an e. coli outbreak, WalMart may destroy $5M of lettuce from Arizona where in reality they only needed to destroy $500k of lettuce from farmer X. Is it the best solution? I have no idea.