Timber Token

Screenshot from application

Inspiration

Getting an overview of supply, demand, history, and reality of the forest-based supply chain can be very challenging for authorities, NGOs and companies, and different organizations. Not having a good picture of the supply chain might let illegal wood-based products get into the supply chain or provide unstainable harvest permits in many countries.

Blockchain might the solution for increasing the traceability and transparency of this industry which prevents illegal trading and help the legal, certificating, other stakeholders and the general public to understand the whole life cycle of the products. The main challenges when implementing blockchain technology in forest-based products are that there is no space for CITES members to provide certification into the blockchain as well as tools for legal and quality control entities to check the history and certification on physical products.

In Europe, there are two main certification schemes for sustainable forest management developed by Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). We are eager to bring these certifications to the world of blockchain and enable legal enforcement forces, companies, and the public to follow the whole life cycle on the physical forestry products.

Many advanced IoT and other technologies including RFID, chips, just to name a few, had inspired us about the way we can embed cryo-token into the actual logs, wood products through the chain of raw material suppliers, processing plants, distributors, retailers, and final customers.

What it does

We provide the interface to issue crypto tokens for quality certification (FSC, PEFC) from CITES members (or whoever in charge of it) through QR codes. Other stakeholders of the chain can issue subproducts codes from parents' codes to embed/glue/label them to physical wood products. You can view the data related to the code and ancestry of the products by scanning the QR codes. Other technologies like RFID can be applied in the process also in order to create efficiency and anti-counterfeit scheme of the supply chain.

How we built it

It is a basic React App, nothing is too fancy at this moment. Please check the repo README for more information. We used yarn also if you insist to know.

Challenges we ran into

Due to the limit of time. We just built the simple interface to issue a limited amount of QR codes.
Without accessibility to other instruments like RFID, timber DNA or chips, we can't attempt to create prototype for these technologies.
In order to have test gas/coin for issuing crypto-token, the application might take from 8 hours to 3 days.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Petri created a top-notch demo application. We adore you, Petri.

What we learned

A lot of technologies that could be potentially embedded into the token.
Tigers are awesome and calm.
Leopards can be a butthole sometimes.

What's next for Timber Token

Get involved with relevant authorities and companies to understand the legal side of the certification.
Get in contact with tech companies to develop APIs for tracking technologies, with academia organizations to understand about forestry markets and different wood species and products.
Apply to get test coin/gas to increase the compatibility of currently available blockchain technologies.
Implement backend.
Change UI.