Citizen’s Reserve subsidiary, SUKU, a Silicon-Valley supply chain company, paired with Chilean Cencosud to build a blockchain-enabled app that will let customers see where their beef has been from farm to plate.
Wonky supply chains with unknown data points is one of the issues that blockchain is best able to solve. And as it so happens, we have an international supply chain problem, especially surrounding beef.
“You have a large group of consumers that want to buy sustainability, and want to buy transparent products from brands. But they don’t do it today – they don’t trust what the brands are saying. There’s a $1 trillion market sitting there for companies and brands to take if they can speak the same language as those consumers do,” said Yonathan Lapchik, SUKU’s CEO.
Two years after blockchain’s heyday, we should all be aware now that no one technology isn’t going to save the world. The craze of 2017 is long dead and dusted, and the blockchain companies that aren’t dead from exposure have been creeping out from their boltholes since Bitcoin’s recent run ended the crypto-winter.
So what did we learn from the crypto-winter, kids?
Maybe it’s when everyone starts parroting everyone else’s self-congratulatory mouth-noises, it’s time to exit-stage left. When even Vitalik Buterin, web developer and co-creator of blockchain platform Ethereum says that maybe blockchain may not be what everyone wanted it to be in 2017, maybe we should listen.
“I’m not claiming that this model is going to be viable in every industry. That’s clearly something that still needs much more time to be worked out before we can see (whether it) makes sense at scale,” said Buterin.
Now that the winter’s over and taken with it the weak, infirm and the terminally stupid, we can have a look around and see what’s left. In this case, it’s the use value of the blockchain technology, which is vastly different from what pundits were saying it was back in 2017.
For example, the supply chain for beef is the perfect place to explore blockchain’s feasibility as a technology, but plenty of companies have stepped up to the plate to hit that particular ball in the past year. Most struck out.
We reported on Graph Blockchain (GBLC.C) late last year for our sister site, Equity Guru, which signed data agreements with Lotte Communication Data to jump into bed with the Alberta government about their mad cow problem. That never happened.
There’s Beefchain, which got the nod from the FDA in April, 2019, then got bogged-down in lawsuit hell.
Let’s not forget about IBM Blockchain (IBM.NYSE), Walmart (WMT.NYSE) and Tyson Foods (TSN.NYSE), each of which are working with agri-food companies to adopt blockchain technology in its tracking systems. We’re still waiting on those to bear fruit.
So what does SUKU offer?
Details.
“Even the animals’ health and welfare are tracked, stored and then reviewable on the blockchain. Every time a producer says ‘I vaccinated all the animals, all the animals have their animal welfare certified,’ then the system automatically triggers an input to the party that needs to confirm it, and they will confirm ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and submit the certificate,” Lapchik said.
That’s some promise at least. As is typical for the blockchain space, failure to perform has nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with the greed and incompetence of those at the wheel. Now let’s see if this company can make a difference.
—Joseph Morton
