A pitch for a supply chain you can check.

Three minutes of pitch footage from an Africa Web3 event in Ethiopia, one presenter at the front of the room with a supply chain product and a short list of things he wants from the people watching.

He names it in the first breath. “So I’m introducing Trustchain. Trustchain is a blockchain-based supply chain management system.” The problem he puts under it is the distance between a product and anything you can check about it: “there is a high lack of transparency in the supply chain industry where companies have to track their product from the start to the end user”, and what follows from that is “poor traceability of products, where each product that have been produced are not being traced in the right way.” He turns it on the room and the things in it. “if you can see whatever products you see, the details of the product aren’t that verifiable.”

The part he presses hardest is who loses. “the producers are being exploited, such as farmers is the initial raw material producers aren’t being compensated for the product or for the service they provide”, he says, and the same gap shows up at the other end of the chain, since it “pushes into the lack of quality control, especially in Africa and Ethiopia.”

The fix he describes is a tag and a record. Trustchain would give “secure product traceability based on blockchain”, with every product tagged and “that detail will be available on the smart contracts available on the blockchain”, read through “QR codes that can easily be used to verify the product’s details, quality as well.” The ask is modest and specific: “getting the technical support from you and getting the honest feedback on the project build.” The scope is narrow on purpose, “the scope will focus on the Ethiopian market and especially Ethiopian companies as well.”

The last stretch is a build list. Origin and quality information on every item, “every transaction and every payment will be verifiable on blockchain as well”, and by the end of what he calls this residence, real time monitoring and tracking per product, verification for users, and payments through a smart contract that “will be traced back to its producers, and fair compensation will be provided as well.” Then transaction history, multi language support, and a platform where companies register their own products so anyone can check them. He thanks the room and steps off.