Blockchain-Powered Smart Contracts for Transparent and Fraud-Free Supply Chains

Abstract

Due to these problems in globalization, such as lack of transparency, fraud, inefficiency, and relying on numerous intermediaries, the supply chain industry has resulted in both increased costs and counterfeit goods as well as subsequent delays for global supply chains. That makes these issues particularly acute in food, pharmaceutical and luxury industries where an executed authenticity and traceability is inherent. Conventional centralized systems do not present a secure, transparent or efficient means of tracking products from production to end of products’ lives rendering them susceptible to manipulation and fraudulent activities. To overcome these issues, this work presents a decentralized blockchain based framework of smart contracts to guarantee the system in which the supply chain management is performed by means of transparent and automatic and fraud free supply chain management. With the framework, stakeholders can get end-to-end visibility of every transaction made on the immutable ledger, have real time tracking of the goods in motion and eliminate intermediaries and reduce operational costs. The major benefit of smart contracts is to replace humans in the process of payments and verifications, so that if you make a promise, there will be no further action until the conditions specified in the contract are met, thus avoiding human errors or fraudulent activities. The solution serves to secure, trust, and be more efficient across the supply chain leveraging the decentralized nature that blockchain provides. Finally, the proposed system advocates for a sustainable solution that could change the supply chain industry by enforcing transparency, reducing fraud and improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of the system as a whole It is going to help to maintain long term sustainability in the supply chain industry.