ChainGuards: Verification of Sensed Data using Permissioned Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Sensor technologies have evolved to a point where it is now practical to monitor products along the supply chain. The collected data can be stored in a decentralized way using blockchain technology. However, ensuring the reliability of the sensed data is a critical challenge. In other words, we need to trust the data that we write to the blockchain. In this work, we propose ChainGuards, a decentralized system that uses product-specific rules to verify data collected across the supply chain, with particular focus on sensor-derived information, issuing warnings and triggering audits when anomalies are detected. We evaluated ChainGuards using data from a real cherry supply chain deployment. The result shows that the implemented solution provides reliable verification of supply chain data with low performance overhead, able to correctly detect data discrepancies and inconsistencies.

Figures (16)

• Figure 1: FoodSteps software architecture overview.
• Figure 2: ChainGuards object model (UML)
• Figure 3: Example of Journey, Step, and Point objects
• Figure 4: ChainGuards execution sequence
• Figure 5: Supply chain of Fundão Cherry