Designing an efficient consensus protocol for supply chain

Abstract

Blockchain is being a game-changer for digital supply chain systems to enable traceability and immutability. The consensus mechanism is the key technology that powers the immutability of data stored in the blockchain. As blockchain and its consensus mechanisms are primarily designed for cryptocurrency, the existing consensus mechanisms are not efficient and directly applicable to supply chain systems. Therefore, it is extremely important to design a consortium consensus mechanism that is suitable for supply chain systems. In general, a supply chain system is a consortium of multiple stakeholders offering different services. Also, the supply chain is a complex process and requires fast consensus for avoiding any delay in the operations. This chapter presents a new consensus mechanism for blockchain-based supply chain management systems to provide the solutions to data security and establish trust among different supply chain participants. Different from the existing consensus approaches, our method introduces a novel consortium consensus mechanism for supply chain systems by leveraging multisignature technology. The proposed consensus mechanism offers a less complicated implementation of the distributed ledger and ensures higher efficiency and scalability for achieving consensus.