Hyperledger Global Forum on March 3-6 was one of the few conferences we planned to attend that wasn’t canceled this year. Despite the possibility of cancelation, hundreds of attendees from around the world did eventually make their way to Phoenix, Arizona, and discussed the latest developments in Hyperledger technology, use cases, and deployments. As you might guess, the specter of COVID-19 hung over the conference as shown by a lower than planned attendance and the obvious presence of hand sanitizers and safety instructions made available all across the venue.
Toward that end, there were even behavioral policies introduced such as “elbow bumps” in place of handshakes and other efforts meant to make attendees feel safe and able to just make the most of the conference while hoping that people could even go as far as having some fun.
As a real, tangible application of blockchain technology in the supply chain space that also clearly demonstrates the business value for our client, Unilever, we have been happy to have opportunities to share details around this project and it was well-received in Phoenix. A lot of post-presentation questions, including those regarding implementation, reflected that discussions in the blockchain community are slowly moving away from technological debates towards more business-oriented topics. What is the value the customer is getting from the solution? What was the business case behind it? These questions reflect that we’re moving beyond proofs of concept and into operational solutions with blockchain.
For instance, Honeywell presented updates on their solution for airplane parts traceability using blockchain. According to the latest reports, that solution is now tracking over 1 billion USD worth of parts. Circulor and Oracle also presented their implementation with Volvo for sustainable supply chain tracking of car batteries.
As it turns out, supply chain traceability was the leading topic of the conference. Subjects such as challenges for scalability in consortia, developing standards for data sharing, and more were all complementary to the use cases presented, including our own use case with Knorr in Vietnam. When it was all said and done, the Hyperledger Global Forum gave us affirmation that our investment in new technology, namely blockchain, has been worthwhile. Being able to get updates on the latest deployments and exchanging ideas with other companies using Hyperledger is a welcome experience for our team so what else can we say other than we’re looking forward to the next Hyperledger Global Forum.
A full video of Ricardo’s talk is available here and his presentation slides are here.