Two-Factor Blockchain for Traceability Cacao Supply Chain

The primary aim of food traceability is to increase food safety but traceability systems can also bring other benefits to production systems and supply chains. Technology has helped supply chain distribution to be successful and more competitive in the global market by improving their customers satisfaction level and providing more reasonable prices compared to their competitors. However, nowadays supply chains are long and complex and include many different actors, beginning with the farmers, followed by collectors, traders, manufacturers. At the end, the processed products are difficult to trace back to their origins in a trusted way. Best way so far is the continuous medial or legal documentation of the chain of transactions, available only to a limited circle of persons. The recent efforts toward blockchain-based trust management open a new perspective here. Here, we propose a solution to link legal documentation and blockchain technology within a traceability system, with the specific application case of cacao and chocolate production in mind. For improved data security, the common blockchain concept is extended to a two-factor blockchain, where both blockchains are connected via digital watermarking of the documentation media, one blockchain traces the documentation steps, the other the watermarking embedding. By a unique reading-verification approach, the integrity of their relatedness can be proven, thus improving also reliability of the whole product tracing.