Blockchain Product Provenance Tracking System
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems fail to provide comprehensive and verifiable provenance information for products, leading to concerns about authenticity, quality, and origin, particularly in the food industry, where consumers lack confidence in the history and handling of perishable goods due to limited tracking and certification methods.
Innovation Solution
A method and system using blockchain technology and anti-counterfeiting devices with unique identifiers to track and verify the origin, handling, and quality of products through a computer system that generates and stores unique identifiers, associates them with product characteristics, and allows for queries to retrieve provenance information, ensuring the authenticity and traceability of products along the supply chain.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional tracking systems are used, then implementation cost and complexity are reduced, but provenance information reliability and verifiability are insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses blockchain technology to create an immutable digital copy of product provenance information. Instead of relying on physical tracking documents that can be altered or lost, the system creates a distributed digital ledger that permanently records product history, origin, and handling information. This digital copying mechanism ensures reliability while distributing the complexity across the network rather than concentrating it in a single centralized system.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a blockchain intermediary layer between product handlers and consumers. This intermediary provides a trusted, verifiable record of provenance information without requiring direct trust between all supply chain participants. The blockchain acts as a mediator that validates and records information, enabling consumers to verify product history without needing to audit each handler directly, thus improving reliability while managing system complexity through centralized verification.
2Measurement precision
If comprehensive tracking of all product characteristics is implemented, then provenance verification capability is improved, but data storage and processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments provenance information into discrete, verifiable characteristics (origin, handling conditions, quality parameters, etc.) that can be independently recorded on the blockchain. Each product or batch receives a unique identifier linked to specific characteristic data. This segmentation allows comprehensive tracking of multiple characteristics without requiring a single monolithic database, as each characteristic can be stored, queried, and verified independently, managing data storage requirements while maintaining high measurement precision.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions from traditional two-dimensional database storage to a multi-dimensional blockchain structure that includes temporal, spatial, and verification dimensions. Product provenance is recorded not just as static data but as a chronological sequence of events with timestamps, locations, and verification hashes. This dimensional expansion allows the system to store comprehensive characteristic data while enabling efficient querying and verification through the blockchain's inherent structural organization, reducing the practical data storage burden despite comprehensive tracking.
3Reliability
If anti-counterfeiting devices with unique identifiers are applied to all products, then product authenticity verification is improved, but device application complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs universal anti-counterfeiting devices with unique identifiers that serve multiple functions: product identification, authentication, provenance tracking, and quality verification. Rather than requiring separate systems for each function, the unique identifier and its blockchain-linked data provide a multi-functional verification mechanism. This universality simplifies device application by using a single technology platform that addresses multiple reliability concerns, making the implementation more manageable despite the enhanced verification capabilities.
Data Source
AI summary
Described is a method for managing and providing provenance of a product using blockchain technology. There is disclosure of the association to the product of a unique product identifier as well as the optional association to the product of an anti-counterfeiting device also having a unique identifier as the product moves along the supply chain from its source phase, through the transformation phase and undergoes the transportation phase. There may be more than one product identifier or anti-counterfeiting device as the product is sometimes joined, sometimes partitioned and sometimes packaged. To manage and facilitate the generation and association of identifiers as the product moves along the supply chain there is a data memory device for storage of the unique identifier for the product and association by the server in the data memory device of the unique identifier for the product with the unique identifier of the anti-counterfeit device and other associations. The server is also adapted to receive and store in the data memory device one or more characteristics of the product existing or created as the product moves along the supply chain. Receipt by the processor of the unique identifier of a product or anti-counterfeit device with a query for the provenance of the product, makes available at least one characteristic associated with that product. The use of blockchain permits the creation of a block for each recorded characteristic and the retrieval of the record associated with a block and to verify that the recorded characteristic is the same as that retrieved from the block in the blockchain uniquely associated with the particular product.