90% of Blockchain-Based Supply Chain Projects Are in Trouble (modernconsensus.com) 139
Ninety percent of blockchain-based supply chain projects are faltering because they cannot figure out important uses for the technology, research firm Gartner said this week. From a report: As a result of this inability to identify strong use cases, "blockchain fatigue" will begin setting in over the next five years, according to "Predicts 2019: Future of Supply Chain Operations," a survey of the wants and needs of more than 300 executives involved in blockchain projects worldwide. In large part, this is due to blockchain suppliers' inability to live up to the technology's hype, said Alex Pradhan, a senior principal research analyst at Gartner.
Despite the great amount of time and effort invested in pilot projects aiming to use distributed ledgers to verify authenticity, improve traceability, and build more trust into supply chain transactions, only 19% of respondents ranked blockchain as a very important technology for their business, the company said in a release. Only 9% have invested in it. Most of these projects "have remained pilot projects due to a combination of technology immaturity, lack of standards, overly ambitious scope, and a misunderstanding of how blockchain could, or should, actually help the supply chain," Pradhan said. "Inevitably, this is causing the market to experience blockchain fatigue."
Despite the great amount of time and effort invested in pilot projects aiming to use distributed ledgers to verify authenticity, improve traceability, and build more trust into supply chain transactions, only 19% of respondents ranked blockchain as a very important technology for their business, the company said in a release. Only 9% have invested in it. Most of these projects "have remained pilot projects due to a combination of technology immaturity, lack of standards, overly ambitious scope, and a misunderstanding of how blockchain could, or should, actually help the supply chain," Pradhan said. "Inevitably, this is causing the market to experience blockchain fatigue."
That's because... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because 100% of blockchain-based supply chain projects are a bad idea.
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Not really 100%, but most are. The problem is that as soon as real money is involved, traditional revision proof storage (as, for example used by banks to document transactions) solves the issue. These days, you can even get that as a cloud service and you do not have any of the risks or unknowns the blockchain brings with it using that.
It's only good for tracking virtual stuff (Score:2)
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Not 100%. There are some use cases. That said, it's a tool for a specific uses that has been pitched as a general tool.
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It could also be because 90% of supply chain projects are in trouble.
Never on time, never as promised, always over-budget...
Is that trouble or is that normal for most projects?
Re:That's because... (Score:4, Insightful)
More /. comments against crypto. Imagine that. What interests do you have against technology that makes you go out of your way to disparage an entire field that is up and coming and growing continuously world wide?
I'm guessing that the OP might have meant a couple of different things.
He may have meant that blockchain isn't well understood and ends up being used when/where it isn't appropriate, or he may have meant that it isn't well understood, and as a result it's implemented poorly. Or maybe both.
He might also have a dislike for blockchain tech for some other reason. Like I said, I'm guessing.
The place I just left is hot on blockchain stuff for medical billing transactions, and I think that may be a useful area for it.
At the same time I've heard people (mostly managers lol) tossing the buzzword around as a 'solution' for anything and everything. "Need to sort out your cafeteria lunch menu items? BLOCKCHAIN!!!!"
It seems like adding 'blockchain' to a product name or description also gets investors horny to throw cash at you, even when they have no idea what it's all about.
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Year ago at a law firm, the lead technology lawyer was trying to get the firm to buy into a document management system that his goofy nephew had designed.
I assigned a co-op to him to get both of them out of my way.
I overheard the lawyer tell the kid, "You have to motivate the users to adopt the new system!!!"
The kid asked, "How can I do that? They don't want the system."
Lawyer: "Get aggressive and use push technology!
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More inane rambling conflating cryptocurrency with blockchain. The GP said NOTHING about cryptocurrency, instead bashing the pathetic hype train of blockchain everything. I guess you're so obsessed with cryptocurrency that anything not-even-related is good enough for you to bust out your soapbox. Why don't you just stfu and go play off by yourself.
Captcha: unstable
yeh, that pretty much describes your entire obsession.
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Cryptocurrency was always a terrible idea. But at least it brought us a constant stream of comedies as libertarian after libertarian lost the shirts off their back backing an idea whos only usecase was ponzi schemes and buying heroin on the sly
Re:That's because... (Score:5, Informative)
Au contraire. The problem is that the blockchain hype makes a lot of people believe it does solve a new problem (for supply management, it does not) or that it is fundamentally superior (again, for supply management that is unclear and traditional solutions that do work are available).
That said, the other main use, namely crypto-currencies (no, it is not "crypto", that is an abbreviation for "cryptography", despite what some morons think), is in pretty big trouble. No stability, theft and fraud left and right, criminal use is rampart, anonymity not nearly as good as advertised, etc. This may eventually become usable as the idea has some real merit, but at the moment it is an unmitigated disaster.
Re:That's because... (Score:5, Insightful)
What interests do you have against technology that makes you go out of your way to disparage an entire field that is up and coming and growing continuously world wide?
Well, for one, it's really, really bad for the environment [theguardian.com]. For another, because it concentrates wealth in the hands of a very few early adopters. And for thirds, because, well, it's nearly useless. Bitcoin is ten years old, yet there is not a single widely used (or useful) application of blockchain in the world: even Bitcoin only has a few million wallets (and it's telling that even Bitcoin had to turn to off-chain technologies like the Lightning network to become even possibly widely useable). Myspace has more monthly users than that. This isn't because no one has tried to develop a good use for blockchain: it's one of the most widely studied technologies of the past decade. It's because it turns out a slow, energy inefficient, and (deliberately) computationally expensive distributed database just isn't that useful. It's a solution seeking a problem, and those rarely turn out to be much use. It may find some niche application in something like voter validation, but outside that it's highly doubtful it'll ever produce anything of much note.
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Most of them are a PoS.
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There was a little hyperbole license taken for symmetry purposes in my statement, which should have been obvious. But not much. Because almost every usage case for blockchain is something that can be done faster, more easily, and far more safely with traditional methods. The cloud will not save you. The cloud will not just keep your data for you.
More /. comments against crypto
I have nothing against encryption. We rely on it every day. I personally have some very strong whole-disk-encryption for my computer. Using blockchain for su
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Re: That's because... (Score:2)
The answer to blockchain's vulnerability is to stuff it behind a firewall? So all the public verification/non-repudiation becomes simply "trust us, our blockchain says this is legit". How is that any different from, say, a database.
So either you have it out in public for all to see and where it's perpetually one questionable crypto primitive away from total collapse, or its behind a protective firewall where you strip away anything interesting from the tech and where literally every other solution is easi
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It's not hate for the tech, it's hate for the hype. it's thrown around like it's a major solution for certain problems.
I've worked in supply chain and logistics almost my entire career. The problems thrown around about blockchain are not problems experienced in supply chain at all. It's just hype. Traceability has existed for decades. Transaction speed was solved with ERP software solutions 30 years ago. I've literally had an electronic plan make a requisition, which generated a PO, which wrote direct
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It's nothing more than a new way to handle data across a distributed network of nodes
Yet another example of how people don't understand it. A block chain is a log database that can be validated to not have had any alterations relative to a trusted hash, assuming the hashing algorithm can be trusted. We hate on it the same way we hate on the war on drugs. We mostly agree blockchains are a cool tool, but we also agree that it's a freaking buzzword used for political/business advantage to sell snake-oil.
Crypto-mining for digital currency is an ingenious strange use of a log database.
I don't believe it! (Score:1)
Blockchain is an *immature* *untested* technology?
However could that be?!?
Re:I don't believe it! (Score:4, Insightful)
The only 'blockchain' asset tracking solutions that aren't in trouble are those (like offered by IBM) that use the 'Blockchain' branding in name only, but use bog-standard asset tracking software (along with perhaps some cryptographic signing).
Re: I don't believe it! (Score:2)
Re: I don't believe it! (Score:4, Informative)
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I had never heard of a "51% attack" either, but it appears to be a real thing.
https://www.investopedia.com/t... [investopedia.com]
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Yes - chains without much utility don't attract many users which don't attract many miners which don't put much hash power into securing the chain.
Ten thousand bucks each to Amazon can disrupt a significant portion of the longtail of PoW blockchains. Some crazies are threatening to go postal on most of them.
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There are certain areas where use might be beneficial, say tracking free-range poultry from a verified farm all the way to the grocer (provided people actually want to verify that and are willing to pay for it).
Re: I don't believe it! (Score:2)
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Yep, the hard part of these systems is the physical to virtual connection. That's RFID or cellular tracking or something like it. Blockchain did absolutely nothing to help with the hardest part about cradle to grave tracking and yet it's the first thing people use to claim it has a use case for some reason.
There is literally nothing a blockchain provides that PWC, Jack Henry, Symantec or Comodo couldn't already provide, as far as a supply chain or business are concerned.
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People will want to verity but the lack the will to try.
Most of us will just want a blue ribbon stamped in saying this is good, certified free-range. Tracking all the items is really too much for us to handle.
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I know nothing about farming, but I'd imagine simply issuing each "certified" farm fancy hologram stickers with something like "Free-Range {Chicken | Cow | Goat} Farm ID# Certified by [Certification Authority]" to put on the packaging of their goods would be the simplest solution. Kinda like a root certification authority for food, with some sort of revocation process if the stickers are stolen or resold or some such.
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... blockchain has been tested for over a decade ...
What I just said^
Re:I don't believe it! (Score:5, Interesting)
That and it is overkill for what may normally be needed. There are some old mainframe COBOL programs used in business are just superior to what is new out today. Mostly because these COBOL programs were programed custom for the business that wanted it, so the Application just fit their workflow, and developers applied the changes when needed. Much of the newer stuff with newer technologies, may not work as well, mostly because people will go towards more canned solutions, so you get a compromise that kinda matches your business process. Even though there is decades of technology advancements upgrading your software is taking a step back, just to get fancy graphics for the most part.
Most Blockchain project are trying to solve a problem, that the company really doesn't have, as the standard methods of dealing with it are more then efficient enough, without the complexity.
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Can we use blockchain, to remove, excess commas, from Internet comments?
Well... (Score:2)
Thank you captain obvious. For once slashdotters were right all along!
blockchain - selling a hyperword (Score:5, Interesting)
Blockchain is a bad solution for most business needs. We've had verified authenticated transactions for decades without it...and we'll go the next few decades the same way.
so some people butthurt their hyperword plan for riches aren't panning out. that's normal for most startups, ventures, etc. most fail, just like blockchain is
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That is the wrong aspect. What you need is revision-proof storage to provide non-repudiation. But there are solutions for that as well and have been for a long time.
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except in business many revisions and/or deletions are mandatory by law. blockchain in general unsuitable for business needs
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The blockchain is just for the audit-trails and the contracts. These must be archived.
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The irony here is that Gartner hypes the hell out of these new technologies. I was at one of their conferences where they predicted how COMPLETELY blockchain was going to change EVERYTHING. Now they are reporting on how it's not. The same thing happened with IoT.
They dispense strategic advice for a living and then report on it when it doesn't pan out. Do they get sued regularly or are they just so slippery that it never happens? I mean people pay them big bucks for strategic vision. You could just pos
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I remember being at a Gartner conference more than a decade ago where the presenter spent an entire session talking up second life. How it will change everything, how we all (and companies too!) will have virtual goods or property, while living in virtual reality, mediated through the PC.
Sounds like a great revenue stream (Score:2)
for Oracle to get paid, and then never actually deliver anything, other than repeated delays and excuses.
It's like it was a management fad (Score:3)
PHB projects rarely work out.
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Wasn't Bitcoin more of a Millennial fad? It was the college students mining Bitcoin and Litecoin on their video cards back in 2011 to 2014 and then buying drugs with them who really got the crypto bubble started, quickly followed by basically the same people mining second gen crypto like Ethereum in 2015 to mid 2018.
Well sure (Score:2)
Think about how many of the early websites failed. Because most of them were really bloody stupid.
Funny (Score:5, Funny)
The last one I saw in the wild was a bioplastic fabrication and distribution project that was going to use smart contracts to assure transparency of their supply chain. They hadn't even bought a facility to actually make the bioplastic yet; even their bioplastic process was "proprietary." But they were going to get the whole project off the ground with their token sales.
Re:Funny (Score:5, Funny)
My favorite is the company that changed their name from "Long Island Iced Tea" to "Long Blockchain Corp." and their stock price closed at %183 the next day.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/2... [cnbc.com]
All this company does it make non-alcoholic tea (which I guess makes their original name of "Long Island Iced Tea" bogus as well).
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They're located in Farmingdale, NY, that is on Long Island (which is an actual island). Yes, I know a "Long Island Iced Tea" is an alcoholic drink, but I guess they were the Long Island - - Iced Tea company (i.e., putting a sufficient pause between "Island" and "Tea").
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Piet Hein said it well (Score:4, Insightful)
From his collection of poems called "Grooks":
"Solutions to problems are easy to find,
The problem's a great contribution.
What is truly an art is to wring from your mind
A problem to fit a solution."
Can't think of a good use. (Score:4, Interesting)
My day job is in supply chain tech, specifically retail distribution. In a very over-generalizing sense, authenticity is handled via AS2 (or for legacy applications, just FTP + hoping your trading partner's credentials aren't compromised), traceability means very different things for different players in the supply chain, but in general the SSCC-18 (at the carton or pallet level), the VICS BOL number traces the contents of a shipment, the PRO number handles carrier tracking. These are transmitted between interested parties (in America) using X12 documents, again typically using AS2.
As for trust, in the event of a dispute about inconsistency of this data, there is already authoritative answer: the documents that were transmitted between trading partners. If you do not fully trust your trading partner not to lie about the documents they sent/received, you can just reject any unsigned documents (AS2 supports signed documents but doesn't require it), and only transmit signed documents. If your trading partner can't handle that, then there's NO goddamn hope they're going to implement a blockchain thing instead.
What I'm saying is that blockchain reinvents the wheel for the purposes it's trying to be used for, at least as far as I can tell.
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That doesn't stop a truck driver opening a beer keg and pissing in it.
[fiddles with earpiece] I'm just hearing that blockchain doesn't do that either! Now over to the sports desk.
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Indeed. But I remember arguing with someone in a previous blockchain-hype story who seemed to think it would, a bit like this guy.
Blockchain advocacy = lack of technical ability (Score:3, Interesting)
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Horse's mouth (Score:2, Informative)
Hello, I'm the lead author of ERC-721, the standard for tracking physical assets on blockchain. Also, I closely study asset tokenization and in-progress use cases regarding supply chain and am the founder of Chain 76, a forum for discussing these things.
Here are some notes on the subject you can use to draw your own opinions.
- 10% success rate for blockchain projects would be wonderful.
- EY (Ernst & Young) has announced work with SAP to deploy blockchain supply chain applications. EY does not need hype
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Yawn. Wake me up when Walmart cares.
Also, what's the value proposition over ripping out existing AS2 integrations? Authentication can be handled with signed messages between trading partners, which already exists. A shared ledger of authentic products is not "the" solution to authentication, it's "a" solution, and one that assumes that everyone will want to share all of their product data with everyone else who needs to authenticate anything.
Re:Horse's mouth (Score:5, Funny)
I honestly cannot tell if this is serious shit or clever buzzword satire.
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EY does not need hype or investments to succeed.
That cannot be serious, at least.
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The part I thought was funny was:
"10% success rate for blockchain projects would be wonderful."
On what planet is a 10% success rate considered "wonderful"?
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99.9% of Thomas Edison's experiments did not produce usable lightbulbs.
If 10% of Thomas Edison's experiments produced lightbulbs then holy shit we would have many more types of lightbulbs. That might be "wonderful". Or, at a minimum, full of wonder.
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The part I thought was funny was:
"10% success rate for blockchain projects would be wonderful."
On what planet is a 10% success rate considered "wonderful"?
Startups. At least, that's the commonly quoted metric. "90% of startups fail." Evidently the real world failure rate has been 79% in recent history, so that 90% guess is a bit high, but the general case applies: nearly all new human endeavors fail the first time.
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EY (and predecessors) date back to at least 1849. They are a private firm.
So yes, they don't need investments to survive. Also, they are a top accounting firm, so hype is not required.
Therefore the statement is fully justified.
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It's both. Extracting mountains of cash from clueless executives using buzzword soup is both satire and serious shit.
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I am not a clueless executive. I am an independent person that is helping to explain a few points. I am not raising any money. Also I have a 6-digit Slashdot user id. If you are here to increase your own understanding I'm happy to provide information until I get bored of trolls here.
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Thanks for your kind words, but this was not meant to be clever.
If you are seeking more specific clarifications, I'm happy to address. This is not satire.
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Thanks for the question. The additional verification is tracking authenticity of drugs while in transit and preventing foul play from vendors.
First let's address the master list part. If drug brand ABC serialized every drug, posted the master list at abcd.com/.well-known/authorized-products.csv, signed it with their well-known digital signature, and allowed anybody in physical possession of the drug to scan a code to mark the drug as "distributed", and then you require pharmacies to do this marking-as-distr
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- "Brand protection" (prevent drug diversion, authenticate legit drugs) is a top priority for Pharma right now. The solution is a shared ledger of authentic products. European data hub (European Falsified Medicines Directive) and serialization (USA Drug Supply Chain Security Act) codify this and demand implementation in the next few years. Blockchain or any other asset ledger nearly solves this problem.
I'm truly curious here, so please elaborate more. I struggle to see how a distributed ledger solves these problems any better than a central trusted database.
There must be centralized trusted databases that already track the supply chain, so when product gets to a final destination, and the recipient complains, you just look at the database to see who all touched the product? Is the issue that there are no 3rd parties with databases like this whom we can trust? Is that really a major part of the fraud that
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A more complete answer is at https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] but thank you for the questions and I'll summarize.
A central trusted (or validated with well-known digital signatures) database will solve most problems. Presently centralized databases are not being used. Legislation in the US and EU make this mandatory for many kinds of drugs & touch points by 2024.
High tech fraud where an individual trucker diverts drugs and swaps in generics is rare. Most often they swap in bricks. The fake drugs are usu
Solution is obvious... (Score:2)
You need AI to manage your blockchain.
Problem solved.
You're welcome.
Re:Solution is obvious... (Score:5, Funny)
The blocks also need to be 3-D printed out of carbon nanotubes.
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Wow... are you need now is a Augmented Reality smartwatch app that posts stupid memes to Snapchat, and you'll be rolling in VC money!
Yeah (Score:2)
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The more I think about it, the more apt the analogy seems.
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Blockchain and the Standard Model of Physics (Score:5, Funny)
Dissociated Press (DP) — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Physicists identify new fundamental particle
May herald a new particle family and restructuring of the Standard Model
Geneva, Switzerland — August 2018
Keywords: hypino, shinyon, blockchain
High energy particle physicists at the CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nullité) facility have confirmed the existence of the long-conjectured hypino (hy-PEE-no). It is thought to be the first member of a new class of particles known as shinyons (SHY-nee-ons), distinct from bosons and fermions.
Unlike other subatomic particles, hypinos carry no charge, and have neither rest nor relativistic mass. Their only defining quantum property is spin. Hypinos are thought to be the fundamental unit of marketing hyperbole. To date, hypinos are the only known members of the proposed class of shinyons, which are of especial interest to tech investors and holders of the MBA degree. Dr. Martin Waugh, of the Institute for Advanced Squander, further posits that the hypino may be the carrier of the so-called “weak-minded force”, a mutual repulsion between fools and their money. It is theorized that, upon sufficiently accelerated spin, hypinos transform into super-excited hyperinos, detectable only by Chief Information Officers.
The discovery of the hypino is recounted by Drs. Robert Crawford and Robert Jensen as follows:
“It was a Friday afternoon, and we and our colleagues were returning from a long lunch. Maintenance on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was scheduled to start Saturday morning, and the apparatus would be unavailable for two months. We were in a ‘what the hell’ kind of mood, so we thought we'd take a fantasy shot, just for grins and giggles.
“We had a few leftover Higgs Bosons from 2012 on the shelf, so our lowly lab technician, Garth Dennis, breech-loaded them into the beast , set up a blockchain for the target, positioned the extremely sensitive Swindleometer at the intended point of collision, energized the superconducting electromagnets, and let it rip. Upon collision, the blockchain shattered into a shower of the elusive hypinos. Examination of the debris field revealed that the blockchain and all of our cash were gone! Apparently the hypinos were entangled with our funding.”
There may be natural sources of hypinos. The strongest natural emitters appear to be located in Redmond, Washington, and Armonk, New York.
First create a need, then fill it. (Score:2)
History repeats itself (Score:5, Informative)
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do learn from history are doomed to watch everyone else repeat it.
Every time some new geewhizbang technology comes out, everyone tries to turn it into some kind of magic bullet, thinking they can somehow shoehorn it into everything from software to shoes to breakfast cereal.
And every. single. time. They fail miserably, wasting millions if not billions of dollars in the process.
Blockchain is a good technology that can solve some very specific use cases. But those use cases are very specific and trying to apply blockchain to other use cases is dubious at best.
Same thing happened when Hadoop came out. ZOMG I have, like, megabytes of database data! Maybe even gigabytes! I need a hadoop-backed data lake to manage it all! No... you don't. And the effort you will spend just getting the thing set up properly (key word there: properly) will cost you 100x or 1000x what that data is actually worth.
I remember when XML first came out. People would actually ask, "Does Product Blah use XML?" even when XML isn't even relevant to what the software is doing. Cloud is another great one. "Does your product use the cloud?" ".... yes. Yes it does."
And while this is all fantastic opportunities for businesses that do this kind of work, they're also fantastic opportunities for shysters who take advantage of people's technological ignorance to peddle garbage software with extortionate consulting fees.
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Same as it ever was.
99% of development projects fail.... (Score:2)
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But if 90% of companies that used Ruby now use something else, that does mean Ruby is a bit of a failure, which it is.
Bubble bursts for blockchain boom (Score:2)
So what is block chain... (Score:2)
A source of trust, backed by distributed computing power.
How does that benefit any private system, where there are cheaper, simpler trust models already available?
Sturgeon's Law in action (Score:2)
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Does it mean that 10% of everything is great? Or should it say "At least 90% of everything is crap" for less ambiguity? For example, one might argue that 100% of feces is crap.
Furthermore, imagine a headline "Is 90% of everything crap?" The ensuing Betteridge-Sturgeon paradox would be left hovering in the air, much as the cat with a buttered toast on its back.
No surprise here (Score:2)
Blockchain-based supply chain management is an inherently flawed idea:
https://blog.smartdec.net/you-... [smartdec.net]
Next up on the chopping block ... (Score:3)
... artificial intelligence.
It's a wonderful buzzword but it ain't here until a computer says, "Not tonight. I have a headache."
That's because they tout "blockchain" but mean... (Score:1)
That's because bullshitters throw out the word "blockchain" for effect, but in reality they're simply talking about distributed databases and digital signatures. The real value of a project is not BECAUSE it uses these well-known technologies (which btw predate Bitcoin), but because of HOW it uses them to solve real problems... Most of these projects just throw the "blockchain" word out without having any interesting functionality to present for it, hoping they'll get followers.
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E-gold provided a cheap way to pay people across the world long before Bitcoin/Ethereum. When you're (temporarily) allowed to ignore most regulations it's easy.