Supply Scan

Supply chain

Inspiration

Counterfeit products pose a significant challenge globally, causing economic losses and potential harm to public health. The current product supply chain is very risky to be operated and faces various issues like tampering, reducing quantity on paper, switching genuine parts for fake parts, etc. The worst is the ledger book system, which gives rise to corruption inside corporate sectors; anyone can tamper with them and get away with stealing products.

What it does

We propose an irreproducible and complete product anti-counterfeiting system based on Blockchain. It helps to track the products by maintaining the product supply chain. It is a decentralized application (DApp) that is implemented using the Ethereum Network as the leading blockchain for keeping all the records and managing the transactions regarding the products of the companies listed on DApp. The complete path of the product from the manufacturer to the customer is transparent. The user can use the functions provided by the system to immediately perform vendor-side verification, and track the history of the product using a QR code. The manufacturer adds the product to the blockchain and generates its QR. The manufacturer distributes the products to different retailers by entering unique retailer IDs to verify to which retailer they want to send the products. Retailer updates the state of the product on receiving the products. Customers just need to upload the QR pasted on the product and search with the extracted product id. The system displays the whole supply chain history. for the scenario where a fraudster copies the QR and pastes it to a fake product, the customer can scan the QR and verify the location of the retailer. The location of the fraud retailer would not be present in the system. Hence they can verify if the counterfeit is been circulated or not.

How we built it

We first researched the already existing system and its methodology. Then we started with implementing smart contracts for the supply chain system. We tested the smart contract by creating scenarios where we can detect the counterfeit. Then we integrated our smart contract with the front end of the project. We also needed the authentication for logging into the system. We used JWT tokens for authentication. End-user details are stored in the MongoDB database.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge was writing the smart contract and retrieving the data from the blockchain. We stored the product details in the form of a structure in the blockchain and mapped that product structure with the unsigned integer. As the product structure was complex, we were not able to return the whole structure in react.js but could retrieve the product while testing the smart contract. This was a very difficult part to tackle as we were not able to find what is the issue with the product. We then tried to return each and every information of the product by creating a getter function.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The System detects the counterfeit products have been circulated or not. It also provides functionalities to manufacturers as we have provide with checks for the count of products he/she have left and the search functionality for manufacture to keep transparency of products sent to different retailer.

What we learned

We learned how to build smart contracts and how to integrate the smart contract with the react.js using hardhat.

What's next for Supply Scan

The next step for the supply scan would be implementing this system to on permissioned blockchain i.e Hyper Ledger fabric. Hyper Ledger fabric is an open source framework. Fabric networks are permissioned, meaning all participating member’s identities are known and authenticated. Hyper ledger fabric enables the user to have access controlled according to his or her role, therefore increasing the security and confidentiality of data.