Abstract
An interesting research problem in the supply chain industry is evaluating and determining the provenance of physical goods—demonstrating the authenticity of luxury goods such as bottled wine. However, many supply chain systems and networks have been built and implemented with centralized system architecture, relying on centralized authorities or any form of intermediary, and leading to issues such as single-point processing, storage and failure, which could be susceptible to malicious modifications to product records or various potential attacks to system components by dishonest participant nodes traversing along the supply chain. Blockchain technology has evolved from merely being a decentralized, distributed and immutable ledger of cryptocurrency transactions to a programmable interactive environment for building decentralized and reliable applications addressing different use-cases and existing problems in the world. In this research, with a chosen research method of proof-by-demonstration, the Decentralized NFC-Enabled Anti-Counterfeiting System (dNAS) is proposed and developed, decentralizing a legacy anti-counterfeiting system of the supply-chain industry using Blockchain technology to facilitate trustworthy data provenance retrieval, verification and management, as well as strengthening the capability of the product’s anti-counterfeiting and traceability qualities in the wine industry, with the capacity to further extend this to the supply chain industry as a whole. The proposed dNAS utilizes a decentralized blockchain network with a consensus protocol compatible with the concept of enterprise blockchain, programmable smart contracts and a distributed file storage system to develop a secure and immutable scientific-data provenance tracking and management platform on which provenance records, providing compelling properties of the data integrity of luxurious goods, are recorded, verified and validated automatically.
Highlights
The motivation of this research, and a list of research questions with the research methodology, are pinpointed and explained by going through the growing challenges of improving counterfeit product trading
Following the advantages brought by the blockchain technology, a variety of current blockchain implementations applied to different categories of the supply chain industry are mentioned, with reasons why the proposed Decentralized near-field communication (NFC)-Enabled Anti-Counterfeiting System (dNAS) could be a novel and feasible innovation to improve product counterfeiting as a primary motive for developing and implementing dNAS
With the current challenges in the anti-counterfeiting of the supply chain industry, the research was performed based on an implementation-driven research technique, with the main question and individual sub-questions listed in the research objectives and addressed in sections describing the system design, system implementation and the actual development steps detailed in this research
Summary
The motivation of this research, and a list of research questions with the research methodology, are pinpointed and explained by going through the growing challenges of improving counterfeit product trading. The current solutions, which have already been implemented in the supply chain industry against the challenges, along with the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of current solutions against counterfeit product trading, are discussed to better address the need for more innovative and decentralized solutions, such as dNAS, which is proposed in this research alongside a set of research objectives. The problem of counterfeit product trading, such as luxurious goods or pharmaceutical products, has been one of the major challenges the supply chain industry has been facing in an innovation-driven global economy. Following the advantages brought by the blockchain technology, a variety of current blockchain implementations applied to different categories of the supply chain industry are mentioned, with reasons why the proposed dNAS could be a novel and feasible innovation to improve product counterfeiting as a primary motive for developing and implementing dNAS. The idea of developing decentralized applications, acting as a contribution of this research, which the development of dNAS is based on, will further be elaborated
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
