For hundreds of thousands of years, humans have been engaging in different forms of trade. At first, it was barter, when one exchanges one good for another. This soon evolved into the valuing of precious metals like gold or silver, resulting in the creation of payment, and ultimately coins, cash, and different forms of currency. Ever since trade has been a possibility, trust has been an issue. How do I as the client know that You are charging me a fair price? How do I know that what you say is the purest of gold actually is? Questions like this have always been an issue. As a result, we’ve devised methods to counteract this, enter The Ledger. 

A Ledger is the concept of bookkeeping, writing down every step of the way in terms of a supply chain. Who picked this flower? How was it Packaged? When did it ship? Where did it stop? When was all of this done? All of these questions are answered with different complexity ledgers. Today most shipping still depends on the same basic principle, the difference is that we can now be updated in seconds of what happens and keep track of things more efficiently, but still the main problem of trust exists, as altered records and hacking are a major problem. Additionally, this ledger system now depends on individual validation of every step of the line, which is not an effective way of doing things. 

What if there was a way to unite all of the supply chain? What if an end consumer of a product could know who did everything related to the product they bought, and ensure quality in the process? Not only would a system like this drive up quality standards and efficiency, but it could be the solution to our trust problem. BlockChain provides this solution. In a nutshell, BlockChain is a method of decentralizing information to get rid of the trust model. The most current and well-known example is Bitcoin. The way it works is that every node on the network (user) has a copy of this ledger, every block of the ledger (a transaction) has information of its origin, its destination, it’s amount, and a reference to the elements in front of it, and behind it (see Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin), this means that no one block can be altered, because, at the time of showing the ledger to a different computer, a quick check would show that it differs from everyone else’s, screaming fraud. Blockchain technology will forever change the way we trade. Augmented Reality headsets displaying information on every package that gets off a ship, Virtual reality headsets helping monitor the overall path of every container for logistics managers, and mobile applications showing the consumer a guarantee of everything they’re paying for, This is the way of the future.