Authenticated provenance
Despite all its problem-solving promise, blockchain still doesn’t have an answer to this question: “How do you know what you are tracking on the blockchain is real to begin with”? As Gartner analysts Avivah Litan and Svetlana Sicular write in this section of the report, “The problem is made worse because on the blockchain, garbage in means garbage forever, since it can never be modified or deleted due to the immutable ledger.” This challenge has to be solved before blockchain can be used to track food or drugs.
Gartner predicts that provenance authentication solutions will be in more demand in the coming years, as companies who adopt blockchain for provenance applications see the need to digitally certify the onboarding of the goods or content being tracked on the blockchain. Currently, that certification relies on manual audits or human trust, neither of which are scalable.
The analysts recommend that companies and other organizations work with peers and industry groups to build collective solutions to combat fake goods and content. This technology is in the embryonic stage and two sample vendors are IBM and ThinkIQ.
