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BLOCKCHAIN-BASED GLOBAL RICE TRADING PLATFORM
Distributed system for food product exchanges and commercialization
Blockchain empowered real-time global rice trading platform
It is a sophisticated online marketplace that connects rice exporters, importers, and inspection companies in one place to trade and commercialize rice in a more effective, secure, transparent, and effective manner.
We have previously delivered several smaller blockchain-related solutions to the client, and they decided to build a decentralized rice trading marketplace with us.
Business context
Since there was no common platform that would put all the rice market participants under one umbrella, the idea was to build a holistic ledger platform that would become the preferred place for market participants to trade rice.
Our principle is to define the right approach, right technologies and right architecture based on the issues, or pain points, we need to solve. So, we outlined the key pain points that the solution needed to solve.
Business challenges to overcome
Time loss
A lot of time-consuming manual work is everywhere: finding a suitable supplier, filling out all necessary documents, etc. Moreover, physical travel of the documents around the world generates significant time delays.
Money loss
It's hard for market participants to monitor how reasonable the price of a particular supplier is and find cost-effective deals. In addition, documents need to be checked and matched manually which can lead to a high cost of human mistakes.
High risks
Rice market participants send documents all over the world by courier increasing the risk of document loss. At the same time, there is a risk of doing business with an unfair partner that may cost a pretty penny.
The blockchain-inspired solution for rice trading market
Before
After
Before
Market Players (Sellers, Buyers, Inspectors)
After
Digital entities that market players use to interoperate
Before
Certificates, contracts, agreements etc.
After
Digital interfaces and sequences that mimic the process, including PDF contracts generator
Before
Written and verbal communication
After
Blockchain based digital system that immutably stores all the information and interactions or transactions history
Before
Offline signatures
After
Digital keys issued by Certificates of Authority
Before
Bank transfers
After
Tokens [ability to quickly process transactions]
Before
Deals and contracts
After
Blockchain smart contracts
Offline Chaos 
Digital platform that connects sellers and buyers, adding up transparency, reliability, speed, and insightful analytics that helps participants to easily find best prices, best partners, and best conditions.
Technological challenges for Unicsoft team
To bring the idea to life in the best possible way, we faced the following challenges
Pioneering Hyperledger
The most suitable and promising technology for the case was Hyperledger. However, it has been a relatively new technology so we needed to be prepared for unexpected issues as pioneers
Azure VS Hyperledger
The cloud infrastructure was required to be built using Azure cloud. We needed to deal with the lack of smooth native integration between Hyperledger and Azure
Trust & Transparency VS Security
We needed to combine the transparency offered by DLT and the need in security to prevent fraud and misuse of the platform
Stability and Accessibility
The system needed to be completely stable and fault-tolerant by being accessible globally, and being able to process numerous transactions simultaneously
Seamless Digital Transformation
We needed to design and develop UX/UI that would seamlessly cover all the offline use cases for key market players. It needed to be intuitive, informative, and aligned with the client’s branding
The Solution
Digital platform that connects sellers and buyers, adding up transparency, reliability, speed, and insightful analytics that helps participants to easily find best prices, best partners, and best conditions.
Transparency, Security, Stability
To ensure transparency along with security, we’ve built the private permissioned blockchain based architecture with the ability for participants to host their own blockchain nodes. Such an approach ensures 2 key outcomes:
- No irrelevant participants;
- Immutability of the system.
To ensure the stability of the platform from the architecture perspective, we’ve chosen to leverage Azure’s cluster configuration with load balancer.
The UX/UI
As mentioned above, the key players are Sellers, Buyers, and Inspection Companies. The main features and key use cases for Sellers and Buyers are the following:
Register on the platform and get the necessary assets for further digital trading
Create private deals (with specific partners) and public deals (for the whole community)
Digitally communicate with counterparties
Digitally close deals (digital signature/key)
Upload and manage documents for each individual deal (such as bill of lading, invoice)
Monitor existing opportunities (deals created by Buyers/Sellers)
Monitor performance indicators and key metrics like revenue, prices, active deals
Registering and generating a digital signature
During the registration process, each user gets the digital key issued by the Certificate of Authority. This key process is the fundamental piece of the puzzle that gives the grounding for the further user identification, blockchain records storage and providing total transparency and trustworthiness tracking.
Creating a public/private deal
As any other marketplace, the rice trading one is also circulate around deals. So, we’ve developed the functionality to create different types of deals and operate with them. We’ve deeply examined patterns and sequences that are typical for rice trading deals and developed interfaces that cover the common use cases.
Trade boards
Users can monitor trades using 2 tabs:
- Exchange — the place where all the selling and buying interests created by user are organized.
- Trade requests — the place where user can search for buying and selling requests for further participation. Private and public trades can be found here in the according tabs: My Requests, Outbound and Inbound.
All important updates and changes are accompanied with notifications.
Trade management
Rice trading process is tricky, as any other deal management:
- Case specific documents;
- Series of sequences of approvals and signatures;
- Iterative nature of the process.
After a thorough examination of patterns that are typical for the particular market, we’ve built the straight-forward process and easy-to-use interface to make sure that the transition to digital trading is seamless and effortless
The rules and sequences of the deal management are coded under the hood
Each participant knows what to do next to close a deal with additional help of notifications
Every interaction and transaction is written in blockchain
Communication process is realized in the form of comments to documents and files, and chat that is automatically created for each trade
Information and files related to each stepin the deal closure process are stored in the dedicated sections and comfortably organized in corresponding tabs
Dashboard
One of the biggest positive outcomes of digital transformation is the ability to easily monitor key processes performance indicators in real time, and the whole new reporting abilities.
So, we’ve created an informative and easy-to-use dashboard to monitor key metrics, updates, and control all the vital processes.
Technology Stack
Go
ReactJS
Hyperledger Fabric
MongoDB
Azure
Postgres
Kafka Zookeeper
Results
As a result of our collaboration, our client received a solid, secure blockchain-based trading platform that helps reach their main project goal: to provide a global rice trading marketplace that is transparent, secure, and flexible, satisfying the worldwide demand for rice while building confidence for all market participants.
We significantly increased the speed of interoperations between parties through effective digital transformation.
We decreased documents losing to zero. It takes just a few minutes to add new documents that are stored in unified digital storage.
By leveraging blockchain, the platform creates a clear audit trail for every operation and market player, disables any data manipulation, and builds trust as a result.
We increased the turnover of the rice trading marketplace by making it more transparent with blockchain technology: more than 400 early adopter companies from 60+ countries have signed up and are planning to trade more than 7 million tons of rice annually.
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