good morning everyone my name is Steve
Scheffer I'm an engineer at provenance
we're software company maybe some of you
heard of us already or a base in London
in the UK and basically just summing up
the kind of division behind provenance
is that every great product should come
with provenance and what that means is
towards trustworthy information and
accessible information about the origin
and the journey and the impact of that
product and basically the way that we
deliver on this vision is that we
provide a platform for businesses to be
more transparent and share data across
the supply chain and as well as with
consumers so that's both an access for
businesses to share it also a consumer
app that consumer can access to learn
more about the supply chain and the
great products that are being made so
one aspect of this platform has to do
with storytelling because we believe
that just disclosing how you make your
products and and the craft that's put
into them is already a good going the
right direction in terms of transparency
but obviously what I'm going to be
presenting today is more of a verifiable
aspects of what we what the platform
allows so we almost everything we do at
provenance around that is linked to the
country the concept a verifiable claim
so I'm sure many of you are familiar
with the
the concept of an identity framework so
there's been a few presentation at Def
Con already on that and there are many
initiatives going on the concept that
individuals could control their identity
and once they control the identity make
claims about themselves and then have
those claims being verified by third
parties or different verification
methods so for example you could want to
prove that you are over a certain age to
access a particular service and then you
can have that verified by let's say a
bank or or a peer-to-peer verification
method the important point here is that
a claim and a verification are two
different things and that and what we do
try to keep the verification method as
generic as possible so that people can
integrate their own verification methods
with the system and as you can see what
we are trying to do is taking this
concept of verifiable claims on
individuals and bring that to the supply
chain I means two businesses and there
are products
so first let's let's look at businesses
what what type of claims could a
business a business make so one example
that you could have is that as a
business you want to claim that you're
independent or that you're a
family-owned and in this case the way to
verify that could be for example to link
to your business registration that's
exposed by the government especially in
the UK there's companies house that
exposes this information and that can
act as a verification that you are for
example not owned by another bigger
company you could have other
verification methods that could be
linked that could be based on consumers
vetting for the businesses that they
know in the same way in a same kind of
way that TripAdvisor or Yelp functions
of course not all verification methods
are equal and they provide different
levels of trust and different levels of
confidence on
city of the claim another type of claim
that that's that's really common in
supply chains as that of certification
and in this field what we what we did is
working with the Sioux Association which
is the first which is the biggest
organic search fire in the UK and
working with them to bring their
certification to the digital age so what
what what does that mean what I think we
needed a bit of context around what a
certification process looks like today
for a sustainability certification so
basically as a business if you want to
be certified organic you're going to
apply for a certification
obviously pay a fee which can be quite
expensive sometimes for small businesses
then you're going to be audited by an
independent auditor and if if all goes
well you are going to be awarded a
certification what that means in terms
of data is that it's just another record
in solar association database that keeps
track of all certifications and the way
as a business you are going to be able
to prove that is through PDF that is
sent to you it's basically a certificate
of organic so when you're going to be
transacting with your business partners
you need to prove to them that you're
certified organic you end up moving back
and forth PDFs in a supply chain from
the point of view of the consumer the
interaction that the consumer would have
with a sustainability certification most
of the time is either through just a
logo unpack or it's going to be a static
JPEG on on a website for example so
that's where we saw some opportunities
to make that better and make it more
interactive and and and interoperable so
what we did is connecting the solar
Association certification database to
the ethereum blockchain so that directly
on the theory on blockchain you could
check the status of any certification
for any licensee of the Soil Association
creating a kind of a digital version of
that certification the outcome of this
project was that we created material
both for point of sale so in the form of
connected labels that you that consumers
can can scan either by NFC or QR codes
and we're very excited that NFC is now
being supported by by the new version of
iOS so that consumers can access
directly is to this information at the
point of sale and when it comes to
digital space we created embeds that
brands that were certified organic can
integrate in their online store so that
consumers again can access and verify
the status of the certification on top
of that the fact that we provided those
tools to kind of augment the
certification allowed to raise awareness
on what the certification actually means
and what it stands for
because we believe that just just just a
logo unpack it's not enough to convey
what the audit process was and and what
actually the compliance look looks like
so moving from businesses what we're
trying to do is also to have verifiable
claims on products so when when you
think about a product one verifiable
claim that you could have is for example
that it's free of a particular allergen
and a way to verify that could be either
by normal audits but also increasingly
and and and it's getting cheaper through
things like DNA testing if we're also
looking at but in this context we saw
that a very useful tool to prove claims
about products was that of a tracking
system along the supply chain that's
why--that's we we developed a way to
track assets along the supply chain and
tested that in different pilots so maybe
someone in the room so our
peace on toon a supply chain we
basically studied tunas to play a
sustainable tuna supply chain over in
Indonesia and basically the setup was
that there there's there was a
certification over in Indonesia
according to sustainability practices
that was certifying specific fishermen
that could that like that could produce
tuna that was certified so that was
going great but the the problem with
this was that when looking at the supply
chain there were there was way more fish
being sold at the end of supply chain
with the certification then there was
certifications being issued at the start
so basically what we were trying to
solve with and in this particular
project was the double spending of
certificate of sustainability
certification claims on tuna so what we
built for that was an interface for
fishermen to register their catch
yeah batch of tuna using SMS services
because in the environment we were
operating in there was even no
smartphone to use so it had to go
through SMS those catches would be
linked to the certification that the
fishermen had been awarded before and
then they were able to transfer
ownership of this these batches down the
supply chain and at each step a transfer
would be a handshake between this sender
and the receiver agreeing on the details
about the fish so that can be the size
of the batch in vitro certification
itself and so on another project that we
that we did in supply chains was with
co-op which is the fifth biggest
supermarket chain over in the UK and for
that we extended our our system our
tracking system to support more features
and such as supporting different units
using ipfs method
data on the SS more data on the assets
as well as batching splitting of batches
transformation from one asset to another
to have to allow for more flexibility in
supply chains so what we did with co-op
is and what is interesting in comparison
with the previous example is that we
were focusing on claims of proof of
origin so we were trying to prove that
some products that were sold by a co-op
were actually made in the UK so that was
that was a claim we were going for and
for that we went in co-op supply chain
and and and obviously it was a more it
has some degree of digitalization so
compared to the previous one where was
just normal phones they have air peas
they have systems in supply chain so
kind of the challenge and the learnings
that we had through this experience is
how to integrate with those with their
systems and the result of that was was
that we created an interface for
consumers to access the journey of those
products so in this case it was about
flowers but we also considered other
products and we integrated that in to
the coop consumer app so that consumer
can directly discover this and explore
the the journey of the products that
were being sold so the next the next
question that we asked was how how we
can incentivize good behavior in this
system is I'm sure most of you recognize
that it's it's not a completely trust
the system and and and they can be
breeches and and and and honest players
and what we recognize is that linking
this infrastructure for trusts with the
incentives of supply chain especially
financial incentives could be a way to
incentivize good behavior so kind of the
MVP version of that that we developed
recently was in the frame
a collaboration that we did with a Dutch
NGO called Fairfield so in this case we
were focusing on coconut supply chains
in Indonesia so again Indonesia and the
claim that we were trying to prove was
the fair payments to the farmer at the
first stage of the of the chain so I'm
sure you're familiar with the concept of
fair trade but in this case we're trying
to do it in a completely real-time way
improved on chain so the way it happened
is that we provided again an interface
through SMS services because again
people didn't have access to smart
phones where we were operating and we
were enabling farmers to register the
coconuts that they had harvested and as
as a batch and then some of the
handshakes in the supply chain needed a
proof of payment to actually happen and
the way that happened in practice is
that whenever the next actor in the
chain so that was the trader that came
just after the farmer that harvested
requested ownership of a particular
asset the the farmer would get an SMS
asking them if they got a particular
amount that verse that they were
supposed to have got because it's
supposed to be basically an exchange and
depending on the answer that the farmer
would provide to this question the
transfer would complete or be rejected
so in terms of the amount that was in
this message the amount was determined
by fair food which was this NGO based on
a standard of living income so it
dependent on different parameters
including the size of the batch of
coconuts obviously and what was quite
interesting in this case is that we were
trying to see if we could have some
impact on the supply chain itself and
actually among
the set of farmers that we considered a
few of them actually answer no to the
question from the SMS and when we when
we investigated it appeared that some of
the farmers were actually only being
paid a small deposit on their own their
harvest and actually the fact that the
system was in place and and that the the
transfer couldn't be completed led to
the actual payment to be to be made in
info so it was it was the first sign
that we can have an impact on how supply
chains operate so I will see that's
that's still kind of a first first
iteration on how we could connect this
set of claims to fire to to incentives
and supply chains and what we are
starting to also look at now as a next
iteration of that is how we can connect
our system with trade finance and
insurance so that as a business any
transparency that any transparency and
claims that you make that make your
product more transparent should be
rewarded in terms of better access to
capital or cheaper access to insurance
and so on so we're going to be starting
some projects on that and we'll sure
have some announcement and announcements
to make on on that soon so yeah that was
that was pretty much what we've going
what we've been doing in in in the past
month and yeah please reach out to me
thank you very much for your attention
[Applause]
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