An Empirical Analysis of Implementing Enterprise Blockchain Protocols in Supply Chain Anti-Counterfeiting and Traceability
This research provides an empirical analysis for supply chain managers and developers considering decentralized anti-counterfeiting and traceability solutions, highlighting both their benefits and potential drawbacks.
The paper analyzes the effectiveness and limitations of decentralized solutions, including their proposed Decentralized NFC-Enabled Anti-Counterfeiting System (dNAS), for supply chain anti-counterfeiting and traceability. It finds that while these solutions offer advantages in data provenance and anti-counterfeiting, they also introduce implications for security, privacy, and confidentiality.
A variety of innovative software solutions, addressing product anti-counterfeiting and record provenance of the wider supply chain industry, have been implemented. However, these solutions have been developed with centralized system architecture which could be susceptible to malicious modifications on states of product records and various potential security attacks leading to system failure and downtime. Blockchain technology has been enabling decentralized trust with a network of distributed peer nodes to maintain consistent shared states via a decentralized consensus reached, with which an idea of developing decentralized and reliable solutions has been basing on. A Decentralized NFC-Enabled Anti-Counterfeiting System (dNAS) was therefore proposed and developed, decentralizing a legacy anti-counterfeiting system of supply chain industry utilizing enterprise blockchain protocols and enterprise consortium, to facilitate trustworthy data provenance retrieval, verification and management, as well as strengthening capability of product anti-counterfeiting and traceability in supply chain industry. The adoption of enterprise blockchain protocols and implementations has been surging in supply chain industry given its advantages in scalability, governance and compatibility with existing supply chain systems and networks, but development and adoption of decentralized solutions could also impose additional implications to supply chain integrity, in terms of security, privacy and confidentiality. In this research, an empirical analysis performed against decentralized solutions, including dNAS, summarizes the effectiveness, limitations and future opportunities of developing decentralized solutions built around existing enterprise blockchain protocols and implementations for supply chain anti-counterfeiting and traceability.