Blockchain-of-Custody

Fresh in my mind were the concepts I collided in this project when I decided this use case is completely viable.

The chain of custody can be an absolute hassle for a digital forensics investigator. Keep highly detailed notes on the whereabouts of any evidence that makes a difference in court. Slip up in the slightest and the defense will guarantee that your exhibits are thrown out of court. Invalidating good evidence cripples out justice system. Therefore, why not take advantage of the futuristic technologies that we as technologists have access to today? The immutable nature of the blockchain enables investigators to circumvent the possibility of their un-tampered evidence being misrepresented.

This Idea came to me almost primarily as a wonderful opportunity for word play, but also as an interesting way to innovate while taking advantage of disruptive technology. I did all my building in the web-based solidity IDE Remix, which is what's used by my professor during lecture for real-time demos.

At the beginning of the hackathon, I was very enthusiastic to build and develop with the unique hardware that companies brought. Use cases and realistic applicability were out of the question, I was just curious. Soon, my team disillusioned me as I started understanding the barriers that I could not personally overcome to start developing in a meaningful way.

We chose a new project, and frankly I was even more lost with the technologies and tools they were employing. I decided to go solo half way through the event and regroup to design and implement a smart contract for the chain of custody. Though I do understand them, this is indeed my first time developing my own contract from scratch.

As I worked, what I learned is that the intricacy of smart contracts lies in creating security only from the tools you're given. Moreover, having never interacted with an authentic chain of custody and instead did research to derive processes from individual pieces of information. Finally, deriving real security problems and solving them all on my own continues to serve as the largest barrier between me and the most completed version of this smart contract.

What I learned more resoundingly than anything else in this, my second hackathon, is that being dynamic and adaptable from ideation to execution makes all the difference. I thought I knew my project three times before hammering this out.

Built With

• ethereum
• remix
• solidity