essDOCS CEO, Alex Goulandris, recently joined a TPM 2017 panel session in California with Daniel James (IHS Markit), Brigid Mcdermott (IBM) and David Albert (Libra) to discuss whether Blockchain for Freight was “hype, or the coming revolution”. The session was sponsored by GT Nexus. 

The panelists provided an overview of blockchain and discussed several of the recent, successful POCs, including Maersk’s blockchain bill of lading test for a shipment of containerized flowers into the Netherlands, Wal-Mart’s food-safety blockchain pilot in the US/China to track and remove recalled produce, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and HSBC’s blockchain letter of credit POC in Singapore and more. They also discussed challenges to adoption, covering legal, regulatory and interoperability concerns.

In order to provide some focus, the panel also outlined some killer user cases are typically found around ecosystems. Specific examples that were discussed for the shipping and logistics industries included:

• Accelerating approvals of invoice, and invoice dispute resolution
• Cargo Provenance and Tracking
• Bills of Lading

essDOCS also announced that it is working on a blockchain module for CargoDocs, which will allow data relating to original electronic bills of lading (or warehouse warrants) to be held on a distributed ledger. The update to the legal agreement (DSUA) and platform to ensure the legal and security integrity of the CargoDocs Solution are currently underway and the blockchain module should be launched before the end of the year.

The conclusion to the Panel was that despite the significant hype, blockchain will certainly be part of the digital revolution of the logistics and shipping industries.