Blockchain‐Enabled Data Sharing in Supply Chains: Model, Operationalization, and Tutorial

TLDR

Data sharing between upstream and downstream entities is essential for supply‑chain success, yet distrust, privacy concerns, misuse, and asymmetric valuation often impede it. The authors aim to create a secure, efficient, fair, and trustworthy data‑sharing mechanism. They design and implement a blockchain‑enabled data‑sharing marketplace and provide a step‑by‑step tutorial using Hashgraph. They demonstrate that blockchain can overcome these impediments, enabling trustworthy data sharing in supply chains.

Abstract

Data sharing between upstream and downstream entities is vital for the success of a supply chain. However, distrust, privacy concerns, data misuse, and the asymmetric valuation of shared data between entities often hinder data sharing. This problem calls for a secure, efficient, fair, and trustworthy data‐sharing mechanism. The key to such a successful system hinges on how to trace the data usage, determine the value of the seller’s data to the buyer and then compensate the seller accordingly. To this end, we design and implement a blockchain‐enabled data‐sharing marketplace for a stylized supply chain. We demonstrate how a blockchain can be used to overcome these impediments in supply‐chain data sharing and provide a detailed tutorial with a step‐by‐step implementation for how to set up such a data exchange prototype using Hashgraph.