The Most Exciting Use of Blockchain I've Ever Seen

People who work on Wall Street generally feel uncomfortable around me because they can’t understand what guides my actions. I'm not in favour of speculating on financial products or commodities for the sake of capital gains because, in the end, it harms society (harm is bad, in case anyone from Wall Street is reading this).

So, you'll forgive me for not having been all that excited about innovations that use blockchain technology. They've almost all been games at the casino, attracting gamblers who dream of transferring wealth to themselves. Yeah, cryptocurrencies.

What's New?

However, I came across an article this morning about a new project that genuinely got me excited several hours before lunchtime! My body doesn't work that way, so this is special.

WWF in Australia and New Zealand have collaborated with American software firm ConsenSys, Fijian systems integrator and service provider TraSeable Solutions and a fishing and seafood processing company called Sea Quest Fiji to track the entire supply chain of tuna using blockchain.

If you want to know if your fish was ethically and sustainably sourced, then this is the best way to achieve it.

Fish Tracking and Human Trafficking

There's another benefit to having this level of transparency in the fishing industry - it can help to combat human trafficking. I have another blog which is focused on human rights (mainly trafficking in persons) and my mind began racing as to how much good this could do.

In case you weren't already aware, labour trafficking is a growing problem in many countries. Sectors that are badly affected include textiles/apparel, automotive and the fishing industry.

I Couldn't Help Myself

Without missing a beat, I immediately got in touch with Ken Katafono, the CEO of TraSeable Solutions. I asked him how long ago he became involved with the project.

My involvement started in September 2017 when the beta project commenced in Fiji. It just so happened that I had returned home to Fiji after living abroad and started a seafood traceability tech startup, TraSeable Solutions, when I was approached to implement this. It fit in well with what we were doing.

I wanted to know if there was more to it than giving transparency on the seafood supply chain. Apart from cheap sushi (I hate the expensive stuff), I'm not a big fish eater, so I was curious to know how Ken's work might affect my own consumption.

Certainly looking at addressing the human trafficking aspect for fisheries. The other area we're looking at going into is agriculture but more on the provenance and supply chain transparency of agriculture products.

TraSeable is integrating its own traceability platform with the Viant platform by ConsenSys, providing it as a service to Sea Quest Fiji. Ken explained why ethical players in the fishing industry want this kind of solution.

Much of the data collection for seafood traceability is still on paper or in databases that aren't linked and we provide a unified platform for all that data.

Renewed Hope

I took a serious interest in human trafficking in 2011 and have had meetings with major manufacturers to discuss their CSR activities. They all lamented the difficulty and cost of tracking the entire supply chain, but could this be what we've all been waiting for?

I want to understand more about the mechanics, so I'm going to have to ask more questions.

Over the last ten years, I've seen nothing like this being done using blockchain. However, I had a look at WWF Australia's website today and found a press release about a hackathon whose joint winners both used blockchain to reward households who reduce their energy consumption.

Maybe I'm just the last person to have heard about these things, but I'm just ecstatic that this is happening. I know that Steemit is the right community to ask, so please let me know what other exciting initiatives for social good are being done using blockchain.