Hyperledger Foundation Hyperledger Global Forum 2020, 9 Mar 2020

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From YouTube: Protecting Brand Trust with Nanotechnology and Blockchain Smart Contracts - Dan O'Prey & Pete Harris

Description

Protecting Brand Trust with Nanotechnology and Blockchain Smart Contracts - Dan O'Prey, Digital Asset & Pete Harris, Quantum Materials Corp.

It takes a significant investment to establish consumer trust in a global product brand, but an even greater one to protect it from the criminal activities of counterfeiters. Recent industry statistics suggest that the counterfeit marketplace is now a $1.8 Trillion endeavor spanning the entire globe.

In this talk, we will provide an overview of how the combination of cutting edge nanomaterials called quantum dots can be combined with blockchain and smart contracts to underpin the manufacture of provably authentic products and then track their supply chain provenance to retail point of sale.

We’ll then present a real-life anti-counterfeit response highlighting the unique integration of Quantum Material Corp’s configurable QDX Dots with DAML business logic running on a Hyperledger Sawtooth platform.

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A

Hi everyone thank you for coming to this session, which is title of protrait, protecting band brand trust with nanotechnology, blockchain and demo. My name's Pete Harris I work for a company called quantum materials corporation and I'll, be co-presenting with Dan apprai from digital asset, so because column materials is a public company. I have to show you this, and this basically says that I'm not here to try and get you to invest in the company. What I can tell you about the company is. It was founded in 2007.

A

It's a nanotechnology company. It's based in San Marcos Texas, based on the the star park, which is a facility owned by Texas, State, University and San. Marcos is about 30 miles south of Austin.

A

Today's presentation will cover a few things. We'll talk about about the global problem of counterfeit goods and counterfeit goods, undermine brand trust. We're going to talk a bit about how to physically link physical goods to the digital world like a blockchain will introduce some things called quantum dots, which is what quantum materials produce we'll talk about, how they can be used to actually prove work against counterfeit goods.

A

We'll talk a little bit about the tech stack for a platform we've built with digital asset and other companies and then down we'll talk more about the Dan'l smart contract language and how that's being used in it in the world of blockchain. So I've got quite a lot to cover I'm gonna present a little bit Dan's gonna present a little bit and I.

A

Think after that, we'll take some joint questions, so the world of counterfeit kids, at least 1.8 trillion dollars criminal business involving everyone from mom-and-pop shops up to the Mafia, it is say a massive business. It's growing. An awful lot of business is actually resulting from the rise in online e-commerce, like Amazon, eBay, etc.

A

That's a quite an old figure. It's really on the rise. In fact, yesterday there was a bipartisan bill introduced the US, House US House of Representatives I.

A

Think it's something called the shop safe act and the purpose of this act is to make platform companies like Amazon liable for selling counterfeit goods, so we'll see how that one goes to anyone here who thinks counterfeit goods is really all about expensive luxury, high margin items and and those being counterfeited, then, yes, they are certainly part of the Caliphate problem, but in actual fact, just about everything that you might buy is the target of counterfeiting and Kalla fitting impacts, financial results of companies it in impacts, therefore, sacks that they pay and the use of that tax in helping social programs, it certainly impacts quality of products.

A

It could impact safety of products. All of that under undermines brand reputation and brand trust. So a three quick horror stories about counterfeiting. They say it's much more than an expensive handbag being copied.

A

Aquafresh toothpaste, an awful all of that was counterfeited, found in a local market, contain toxic chemicals, probably not best to use that air bags for your Honda. If you've recently had an air bag fitted in your Honda motorcar, there's a good chance that might have been counterfeited and they don't work. So that's of a shame if you like Jameson's, Irish, whiskey and listen and live in Zimbabwe, don't drink it because you'll die.

A

So the list is frankly endless. The most traumatic story, I heard, was how there's a business of rampant business in counterfeiting garden tools. Would you believe it when I heard that I was so traumatized, I couldn't rake? My leaves for at least a month, but so literally everything that you think of could be counterfeited. It's not just type priced items and so looking at how how approaches to really fighting against counterfeit goods we've heard I think you know how blockchains being used very successfully in supply chain.

A

Applications in track and trace systems like the IBM Food Trust, is a great example of something working very well and typically for a track and trace kind of application. Really just tagging a product or tagging a package is really what you want to do, and so using stickers with UPC codes, QR codes, maybe using RFID tags that they that approach works pretty well for track and trace. Yeah, there's pros and cons to I that, but generally that's fine.

A

What what those approaches don't really do is is help with the the authenticity of authenticity of a product, because it's with the same with a UPC code, you can take them off you can you can put them on a different box? You can change them quite easily.

A

Rfid tags are actually quite expensive, they're quite difficult to manage the the installation of those so really we're kind of looking at different ways that we can Tsang a product or embed something in the product to actually prove its authenticity at the very beginning of the the supply chain and that quantum materials we've come up with the idea of using something called quantum dots.

A

What are quantum dots are there? Any chemists in the room is if there are I'm sunk, because you'll probably know more than me, they've been around for a while that the term quantum dot was first cleaned, 1986, I, think by a Russian scientist and an American scientist working together and what pundits are are extremely small, nano scale particles crystals.

A

What are they made of base elements and simple compounds and still relatively recently, various heavy metals we use like cadmium, but that's not used so much anymore, because it's very toxic and there's regulations really being enacted right now to actually stop their use. So more friendly elements like silicon carbon compounds, like sinks, zinc, sulfide, quite commonly used right now, what Quan dots are or the main characteristic of them is that when they are excited by some energy source like ultraviolet light, they themselves give off a light.

A

They emit electrons, make photons and- and you might say well, that's all very interesting- nice science experiment there. So so what what are they used for? Historically and when I say historically, this is actually a pretty new commercialization effort. They're used in a very expensive high-end is Blaz. They used in solar cells in in very powerful lighting using batteries they might in future be used in quantum computing memory.

A

They could be used as senses for things like for bioterror alerts, they've got a lot of potential uses, but how are they used in the world of anti-counterfeiting? Well, here's how so.

A

Quantum materials is actually sort of patented. A number of different processes for producing quantum dots, they've got about 50 patents, I believe and the patents not only cover things like sort of how to produce the con dots quickly and cheaply, but also how to produce them so that they can.

A

They can be designed in a lab to be specific sizes between, say, a thousand atoms, a hundred thousand items and that determines the frequency in the optical signature of the energy they produce when they are excited and what qmc can do is actually fine-tune the quantum dots that they produce. So they give off very specific optical signatures and there and frankly, that the different kinds of opposite optical signatures is pretty limitless. I think it's in the billions so using using quantum dots, especially those produced by by quantum materials.

A

We can actually develop materials to embed in a in a product which provide an optic optical signature. They can be embedded in a product in a few different ways.

A

The early the early examples of the pocs being run will be things like very specialist inks, thin film methods, but also actually embedding them in the physical manufacture is entirely possible and, and that will become a little later eat, not not just solid products, but even in liquids and yes, there have been some tests done, putting quantum dots into oil, for instance, with which there's quite a lot of in Texas, so using a combination of of quantum dots, yeah manufacturing them to very specific in very specific ways to give off optical signatures.

A

Embedding them into products provides that product with a physical obstacle signature and what quantum materials have done is to combine that manufacturing process of quantum dots with blockchain technology, so at manufactured tsiyon column dots can be produced, they can be essentially scanned and digitized.

A

They can be then serialized onto a blockchain based system which, which holds their unique digital twin of the physical obstacle obstacle signature and which can then be tracked and traced through a supply train. So this is the kind of sort of device that might typically be used in in that track and trace scenario.

A

Even something a device like a fairly new model, smartphone or tablet, can be used to actually scan for the existence of column dots and can actually determine the signature being produced and matched that against the original stored in a blockchain. So the the kind of POC is that I think yeah, we're looking at with with running with column, with quantum materials, will probably begin in the general apparel market and then broaden out from there got a couple in in very different areas and we're looking for more PA SES.

A

So the what quantum materials is produced is something they call. The qdx platform and part of that is a dupe. There's a handheld device and application running on a smartphone and the rest of it is really a blockchain based distributed ledger the kind of technology that we are using in that ledger. Qdx ledger involves a few names you're going to be very familiar with. We are using the digital asset, modern language from digital asset. We're using that for a few reasons.

A

One is because we we think it's a great language to write our business logic in we like the fact it really future proofs us in terms of the blockchain platform that we use it. Also, it's very true in the world of supply chain. We know we're going to have to integrate with many other block chains. Will that be and IBM fabric or a version of etherium or recorder.

A

So we we just know these block chains are deployed out there in the field, and sooner than later, probably sooner we're going to be asked to connect in with systems such as ERP systems as apply to in control towers, and how the tractor e systems to actually bring our anti-counterfeiting into other people's tracked traces tracked rates architectures, so the use of demo is very important to us.

A

We decided our selves to go with hyper little. Sawtooth is our blockchain platform technical reasons. There just be like the openness we like the scalability of of the platform, but again using demo means that if we decide sometime down the road, if new blockchain comes along, that's better, we can switch throughout. We switch that with relative ease.

A

We we decided also that we that we really that, while the providing a software-as-a-service.

A

Application hosting it right now on Microsoft Microsoft Azure. We really did not want to get involved in the entire deployment complexities, the management of that and say we turned to a platform called sextant from blockchain technology partners and and they're the ones who essentially host the host the high politics or tooth platform and host damn all smart contracts running on on the Sawtooth platform on top of his earth. So we don't don't have to worry about sort of that sort of things at all.

A

We just get on and write our business logic, so I've got a great set of technology partners we're working with and we ourselves are focusing on the business logic to build an anti-counterfeiting and with that I think we got to turn it over to Dan. Who will talk a bit more about Dan'l and and what its capabilities are and then I think we'll take some joint Q&A and.

B

There we go a good home, you know cool Thank, You Pete, so I'm by no means a supply chain, expert whatsoever, but I always sort of struggle with the notion of a blog chain or a block chains are just data structures. It's garbage in garbage out and when you're dealing with something like a bare ass head or a dematerialized financial instrument that actually lives on the chain. I can completely understand how that would be governed by the rules of the chain and programmed in something like a mall, but with supply chain.

B

I've always missed that link to the physical world as peoples. Talking about those QR codes, it seemed too easy to be able to get around some of these approaches, so I think the quantum dots approach of actually embedding a physical piece in the product is really fascinating.

B

So here to talk a bit about Gamal, which is a relatively new smart contract language. We've been developing at a digital asset for about four or four and a half years, or so now we open sourced it last April, and you know, rather than just sort of pitch to you, damn all as there's there's a technology. You also want to talk about. You know more about the design decisions behind it. Why we have done what we've done.

B

It is very different from most more contract alternatives out there and look a bit about you, know the futures or challenges within the blockchain space and how we are thinking about those and how we're designing them all and technologies around it to address those as well. So what is Dan'l? It's a next generation small contract language designed specifically for distributed multi-party applications or smart contracts. It is really built from the ground up for that purpose, working with your major clients on mission-critical replacement systems, which I'll touch them a little bit.

B

We came across a lot of challenges trying to do that with conventional technologies or conventional technologies that are reapplied so early on. We realized that, just even for our own internal use, we needed to create a new language which was actually fit for purpose and designed for this case. So a high-level for other sort of properties. Here are it's it's very concise. So, as Pete was talking about one of our goals really, is you just focus on what actually matters to your business? You all right the the business logic of your application.

B

You don't want to have to deal with the infrastructure. You don't want to have to manage how data is distributed or who gets to see what or which trip graphic hash functions, you're using where it's running so Dom or really our goal that it is to abstract away hide away as much of that complexity as possible. So you just write what is valuable to your business and to your customers and Dam all and the infrastructure below it automatically will take care of everything else fit for purpose so touched on this.

B

You know this bit is actually designed for this we've seen. You know over the course of new technologies when the web first came. For example, people tried to repurpose Java and they had Java applets. If anyone remembers that horrible experience of growing Java applets on the web, Java was designed for desktop computing, so they need to create new language and JavaScript was born to solve the specific problem of web-based applications.

B

Now we're doing the same sort of thing, we're trying to use web-based technologies, desktop technologies, server-side technologies and apply them to an application domain which is distributed in nature and fundamentally different from the way applications are architected previously. So Tamil is really designed from the ground up with this problem domain in hand, and there are a lot of consequences of that decision. So portable pete touched on this a bit with a with a future proofing, one of our goal.

B

This is when we're talking to clients, though they want to prove the business value of their particular use case. They want to get a POC up and running that they can show internally that they can actually test. Is this even something we want to? Do? That's the first thing they want to do it's not which technology should we choose? You know you don't when you're building a new application, you don't start with. You know which cloud provider should I pick before I, even build my MVP and show it to people. You wouldn't start on.

B

You know just like with web web technologies. I want a quick and dirty. You know: high-level MVP I, then I will choose the correct technologies behind the scenes had that meet their needs once I prove and proven that business value, so a client sort of got a little, not stuck, but it was a challenge to actually get started with that because you have to build a full-fledged network or you have to actually have specialties in the particular underlying technologies.

B

They weren't sure which one was the best one to choose: there's no standards or certification behind each of these technologies that they can actually trust and point to from a from a neutral vendor or neutral organization. They don't know which ones gotta win. Large technology companies are coming into the space we've seen IBM early Microsoft VMware many others Amazon. Now there may be a new. You know a new system that comes out the year.

B

From now two years from- and you don't have to scrap everything, you've done and rebuild it for that specific platform and, lastly, interoperability. So big topic, a lot to unpack means a lot of different things to different people, but we as I'll talk about a little bit more we're creating all these different networks. Currently, there's no like tried and tested way to stitch them all together and very much one of the design.

B

Yours of damn all is to allow you to do atomic transactions across Stanwell apps, not just running on different networks but running on different platform technology stacks across different networks, so who's using it today. So you heard from Pete about quantum materials Corp using it in supply chain, one of the largest projects that we we've been working on for the last four years, or so it's with the Australian Securities Exchange, a top ten exchange in the world, Stock Exchange by volume.

B

They are, you know, not building a greenfield or testing or doing a POC on the side. They're decommissioning a 24 year old, core piece of their infrastructure and replacing it with the demo based application for clearing and settling all stocks in Australia, so, regardless of which Australian trade you stock, you trade.

B

Ultimately, that is going to be processed through dermal on a blockchain in the back end in production next year, so massive use case real a big first major production replacement project at scale, that's actually going into production using demo, the is de the international derivative standards organization, our have a think with a common domain model. This is a common standards over how derivatives are process throughout their lifecycle that are used across the market by all the major financial institutions. They chose Donnell to be the small contract implementation to represent derivatives processing.

B

It was part of the industry standard CDM we have projects, would change healthcare and in the healthcare space or and claims adjudication processing broadridge around US Treasury repo, which is a trillion dollar market hkx, connecting hong kong stocks with mainland china, stocks and UBS, and multiple other banks and healthcare companies as well. So you know this is something that's been tried and tested. I got some serious projects underway and we're looking forward to to these major projects going to production over the next year and two.

B

So where does it run right now? We have well we work with partners and they integrate them all into other platforms, and then they commercially support them for their customers. So Pete mentioned hyper ledger Sawtooth. We also have an integration with PayPal edge of fabric and that will have more information on coming soon. The last week we announced commercial support for Amazon QLD, be there cryptographic database within a mutable log, a centralized database, but with some additional cryptography to prove that you haven't tampered with it.

B

I have through blockchain technology partners, Amazon Arora, traditional Postgres as a service database. Our threes quarter, digital asset, have a project called project dabble which I'm trying to come up with a new name for because I don't love. But this is a cloud service that really is a I. Don't want to worry about any infrastructure I, don't even you know care which blockchain it's on I just want it to work. You know like a platform as a service service type environment, where you can just write your business logic in thermal upload.

B

It and it runs, are then a major partnership that we've been working on for a couple of years is with VMware around VMware blockchain, where Dan'l will be integrated into VMware, blockchain and commercially supported by VMware, who have see a massive massive infrastructure provider and there's a question mark here, because this morning, along with BTP, we announced the availability and commercial support through BTP of hyper ledger Basel. So this is the first aetherium client that donal has been integrated with. It means that we've got no three of the main hyper ledger frameworks.

B

So I was chair of the marketing committee, a hyper ledger for about three years or so, and one of the biggest questions we got from people new to the space who didn't understand. The technology was, how do I write a hyper ledger app and there is no way to write a hyper ledger out, hopefully as a umbrella organization of multiple different technologies, and you have to choose your framework and then you write your app for that framework.

B

At least now, there's an option with Dan'l that you can write your app and amyl and then deploy it to you. Each of these three frameworks, and as mentioned so four of these platforms are commercially supported through our partner blockchain technology partners, who are here today. If you want to talk to them afterwards, through their product called sextant for demo, that quantum materials corpora are using.

B

That's a Sexton for Damo allows you to deploy your demo applications on any of these four platforms and it will take care of the deployment and management and the operations of actually running your application. So I highly recommend checking that out afterwards.

B

So some of the challenges that we're facing as an industry and that we're trying to design for as a company I'm not going to explain the value of blockchain here to you replacing siloed databases with expensive messaging and api's and Reconciliation around that. But just this slides really just to point out that we're in danger of recreating these kind of silos just at a slightly larger scale.

B

So while we might be synchronizing across- and you know a few people in the supply chain network on one platform, a few people in trade finance on another and other equities markets on another, the size of the silos will be bigger, but there's a chance. They'll still be siloed across different technologies. That can't talk to each other, and that is not the result that yeah I got into this space to tour in achieve. So we really needs for a true cross chain. Interoperability, a way to actually enable all of these I.

B

Don't think everyone's going to go to a single network right. Everyone could just agree to use the etherion main net. You know tomorrow, it's not going to happen for various reasons, and it's also single threading. Through your one blockchain platform, there are going to be multiple networks. They are going to be predominantly permissioned, but those permission networks can be connected together, meshed together to create a larger permission network and that's really the sort of driving vision of what we're trying to achieve to the big property.

B

You know write once run anywhere right now again for the one durable this sawtooth application. You have to download one. The sawtooth SDK is pick your favorite language and build it for sawtooth. You have to know a bit about how sawtooth works, design your application, with the actual platform infrastructure in mind same with BOSU, you know build a solidity. App needs to be very bespoke to the the etherium variants or flavors of appliance that are out there fabric and chain code.

B

Similarly, you really actually have to have an understanding of what fabric does, how it does it, how you should interact with it, and your your applications become actually sort of locked into the technology choice. There might be multiple vendors that support that technology. Choice which is great but you're, still locked into that particular technology.

B

You know if it if a better one comes along and if that one disappears, if your partner is using a different one, and you need to use that for some reason it you essentially have to rewrite the vast majority of your application in a new bespoke language, a new bespoke platform.

B

So, with tamil how applications become common across platforms, you write the damn OLAP, you deployed the Sawtooth to baizhu to fabric to Corder to uld, be if you want to change, you move it across. We recently had a very large client who'd, been building out a serious use case and they did decide to switch and they moved the Domino application across as a marketing guy, I'd love to say there was zero tweaks. There was slight tweaks, but largely it was.

B

You know, 90% unchanged, and that will go up so already been done on a you know, a huge application with a nothing, a hundred thousand lines of code or so minimal minimal, have to rewrite soror edits to get that working on a completely different platform.

B

So it really gives you the future proofing, the application portability that don't you know as a business. You know thinking about risk and thinking about what technology I choose today and what technology will be available in the market in the future. It's good to know that you've got optionality and then, lastly, the you know true cross platform interoperability. So these different networks were creating. Can't talk to each other if you're using the same technology stacks as as people in your network, then you might be able to talk together to each other.

B

In some cases you can't they're still, even if you know it's platform a and the other person's running platform, a they're not necessarily able to connect, you can do application level interoperability, where you're coordinating things across two different networks. You can't say necessarily do an atomic transaction where there's a to pass or fail transactions on each network problems. Obviously much worse. When you're talking about different technology stacks, it becomes that much harder.

B

What we are getting close to and we'll be talking more about later this year, is damn all applications actually, regardless of the infrastructure. Not only can they be ported across these different platforms, but they'll all be able to seamlessly connect, and you know and actually have true atomic transactions across all platforms.

B

So that's what we've been working towards daemul is open. Source Apache to the SDK is free and available at dermal comm. If you'd like to learn more about Dan'l or digital asset, you can email me at down at damn all or talk to me afterwards. If there's not a huge rush and learn more about quantum materials, corp, a quantum to Oscorp comm, anything, you wanna add I've.

A

Nothing from me, I think, if you are interested in a proof of concept, my colleague John Harley guns, the guy that ought to because I'll just agree to everything and John John probably went either but I'd love to see if you got any questions about what we're doing with Tamil or what the brain map for demolition here to answer them or you can grab this after. It's.

A

A

The short answer is it's pretty limitless. The long answer is, it really does depend. You've really got to manufacture, quorum, dots on a sort of pretty much kind of case-by-case basis. There are kind of different recipes if you like so, and different Quan dots made from different things. Artwork better was embedding in some materials and others.

A

So the the short answer is pretty much it's possible and the longer answer is it's an experiment, and especially right now that we're beginning, but but what the the company plans to essentially over the next sort of months build up a catalogue of recipes that are good for different kind of products in our ESA furniture I would say, is one one that yeah it sounds like that should shouldn't be a big issue.

A

That's a very good question and the answer truthfully is that it's still in experimental stage there have been studies done that show you that they are very significant, but again it becomes down to a case of manufacturing them and putting them through that trial period. So that's probably not the answer you what you wanted, but it depends, is the answer.

B

So pezoo is an aetherium compatible client, so that is the first yeah. Our first theorem integration and quorum is entirely possible as well to do yeah.

B

I think we're pretty much a time anyhow right, no more questions. Thank.

A

You thank you, come see us off this yeah.