Sidhardh G S, M Nandhana Sunil, Rishika Swapna Nair, Shanu Sudhakaran · 5 authors
Ensuring the authenticity and safety of food products has become a major global concern due to increasing cases of food fraud, mislabelling, and contamination. Traditional traceability systems are often centralized, lack transparency, and are vulnerable to data tampering, making it difficult to accurately track product origin and movement. To address these issues, this project proposes a blockchain-based food origin traceability system that uses smart contracts and a distributed ledger to securely record product information at every stage of the supply chain. Stakeholders record key data such as origin, processing, and transportation details, ensuring transparency, immutability, and reliable verification. The system also incorporates allergen traceability and quality verification mechanisms to enhance product safety. By improving transparency, reducing fraud, enabling faster recalls, and supporting regulatory compliance, the system provides a scalable solution for food safety and traceability while promoting better coordination, reducing dependency on intermediaries, and supporting informed decision-making across the supply chain.
Abstract This research presents a comprehensive blockchain-based solution for supply chain traceability. The system ensures secure, immutable, and transparent tracking of products from origin to delivery. Unlike conventional centralized systems, the proposed model leverages distributed ledger technology to eliminate data tampering and improve stakeholder trust. Smart contracts automate validation, reduce delays, and enhance operational efficiency. The framework demonstrates scalability and applicability across industries including manufacturing, food, and pharmaceuticals. Keywords: Blockchain, Supply Chain, Traceability, Hyperledger Fabric, Smart Contracts, Transparency
This study develops a cost-effective digital traceability framework for bioethanol supply chains, addressing compliance challenges faced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) under the Renewable Energy Directive II (RED II) and Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. A hybrid Blockchain–Artificial Intelligence (AI)–Internet of Things (IoT) architecture minimizes energy consumption through an optimized Proof-of-Stake and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus mechanism. The research integrates a 200-stakeholder international survey, controlled blockchain simulations, smart-contract benchmarking, and Monte Carlo financial modeling. Performance evaluation in a controlled simulation environment demonstrated 1960 transactions per second with sub-second finality, 12-million-gas savings through contract optimization, and compliance latency below 2.1 s. Economic analysis yielded a mean return on investment of 20%, five-year net present value of approximately USD 71,000, and payback within five years in 50% of scenarios. All results derive from reproducible simulations and anonymized data, providing an upper-bound performance envelope prior to field deployment and positioning the framework within emerging hybrid blockchain–AI–IoT monitoring, reporting, and verification systems by explicitly addressing cost realism, readiness heterogeneity, and disruption resilience for SMEs. The framework offers a scalable, energy-efficient pathway for digital compliance in sustainable fuel certification. • Hybrid Blockchain-AI-IoT framework reduces bioethanol certification energy consumption by >99.999% at 1960 TPS • Gas-optimized smart contracts cut computational costs by 57% vs. traditional Proof-of-Work systems. • Economic modeling confirms SME viability: 20% ROI, USD 71,400 NPV, payback within 5 years in 49% of scenarios. • Framework enables RED II and CORSIA compliance with real-time emission verification in renewable fuel supply chains. • International validation across 200 stakeholders in Africa, Asia, EU, and North America demonstrating global scalability.
This paper explores contemporary blockchain applications in the supply chain and logistics sector, focusing on how distributed ledger technology enhances transparency, traceability, security, and operational efficiency across complex global supply networks. The study reviews key blockchain concepts, including consensus mechanisms, smart contracts, and tokenization, and examines their role in improving coordination among stakeholders. Real-world case studies from organizations such as Walmart, Nestlé, Pfizer, Moderna, and Maersk demonstrate practical implementations of blockchain for product traceability, anti-counterfeiting, and shipment tracking. The paper also analyzes major challenges facing blockchain adoption, including scalability limitations, regulatory uncertainty, interoperability issues, and data reliability concerns. Furthermore, it highlights emerging trends such as integration with artificial intelligence, Internet of Things technologies, digital twins, sustainability tracking, and cross-chain platforms. The findings suggest that blockchain plays a critical role in supporting digital transformation initiatives aligned with Industry 4.0 and enables the development of more resilient, transparent, and trustworthy supply chain ecosystems.
Shereen Ismail, Bashar Othman, Hassan Reza, Eden Teshome Hunde
Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities have become one of the most critical challenges facing the global fish industry, particularly in developing countries, with the economic impact of fish fraud reaching billions of dollars annually. A major contributor to this problem is the limitation of conventional fish supply chain systems, which lack secure data sharing among stakeholders, fail to provide trusted product information to consumers, and offer insufficient transparency for regulatory authorities. These shortcomings facilitate fraud and weaken trust and oversight across the supply chain. Blockchain technology has demonstrated strong capability to address key cybersecurity challenges by enhancing traceability, transparency, and tamper-resistant data integrity across distributed supply chain stakeholders. In this paper, we present an enterprise-oriented prototype of a secure, permissioned blockchain-based fish supply chain system designed to enable trusted data sharing and end-to-end traceability across multi-stakeholder environments. Building upon our prior work in Ethereum-based seafood quality monitoring, this study contributes: (1) a modular, consortium-grade architecture implemented using Hyperledger Fabric and containerized via Docker, supporting scalable organizational participation; (2) formal UML-based system modeling of supply chain actors, assets, and lifecycle transitions; and (3) custom chaincode logic that enforces ownership transfer workflows and regulatory compliance policies. In addition, the architecture is designed as agent-ready, exposing standardized APIs that enable future integration of autonomous AI-driven client applications for proactive supply chain orchestration. By leveraging a private, permissioned network model, the functional prototype demonstrates the feasibility of improving data veracity and providing a practical foundation for mitigating fraud and enhancing regulatory oversight in the global fish industry.
Huda M. Elmatsani, Arief Sartono, S. Joni Munarso, Sari Intan Kailaku · 14 authors
Background Agricultural supply chains are characterized by high transaction costs and agency risks stemming from information asymmetry and biological variability. Although blockchain is widely proposed as a solution, existing literature predominantly focuses on passive traceability rather than active algorithmic governance. Methods This study conducts a bibliometric synthesis of 367 documents (2018–2025) to map the field’s intellectual structure and research orientation. Co-occurrence analysis was employed to reveal distinct thematic clusters and identify the evolution of technological infrastructure in the sector. Results The analysis reveals a critical volume-impact paradox within the technological infrastructure group and a 16:1 asymmetry between traceability and automation research. This indicates a significant gap in leveraging smart contracts for economic enforcement and active supply chain management. Conclusion We propose the Agri-Cognito framework, a prescriptive architecture designed to bridge the cognitive void through AI-driven pre-consensus validation. The framework provides a theoretical blueprint for transitioning agricultural blockchains from passive digital logbooks to autonomous governance ecosystems, offering a direct response to the “oracle problem” and structural inefficiencies in current implementations.
Abstract Decentralized Web Applications (dApps) built on blockchain, Web3 technologies, and the Inter- Planetary File System (IPFS) are emerging as a promising solution to longstanding challenges in agriculture. Conventional centralized systems often result in opaque supply chains, data tampering, fraud, and limited empowerment of smallholder farmers. This systematic review identifies and analyzes 12 representative studies published between 2017 and 2025, selected via a structured search across IEEE Xplore, Scopus, and Google Scholar using a defined inclusion and exclusion protocol. Studies are examined with particular emphasis on supply-chain traceability, IoT-enabled smart farming, parametric crop insurance, direct farmer-to-buyer marketplaces, and secure farm-data management. Most implementations leverage Ethereum smart contracts or Hyperledger Fabric, integrate IoT sensors for real-time monitoring, and employ IPFS for off-chain storage of large files such as sensor readings and images. Key benefits include immutable records that prevent tampering, end-to-end traceability for rapid identification of contaminated produce, automatic smart-contract payments, and trust-building without intermediaries. Notable examples are the Walmart-IBM blockchain pilot for mango and pork traceability and platforms such as Etherisc and Arbol for parametric crop insurance. However, challenges remain, including high gas fees and slow transaction speeds on public blockchains, high energy consumption, interoperability issues, data privacy concerns, and limited digital infrastructure among smallholders in regions such as India. This review synthesizes findings across four core application areas—data storage, supply-chain tracking, smart-contract automation, and security/trust—and identifies six open research gaps. It concludes that dApps have strong potential to make agriculture more transparent, equitable, and sustainable, provided that scalability, usability, and regulatory barriers are addressed.
The agricultural sector is essential for global food security but continues to face challenges in supply chain management, including lack of transparency, traceability, and data integrity. This study proposes AgroChain, a blockchain-based framework designed to enhance governance and trust in the Agricultural Supply Chain (ASC). The system is built on the Quorum blockchain platform, an enterprise version of Ethereum, which integrates Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) protocols to ensure data privacy while maintaining secure and transparent transactions. AgroChain introduces a scalable process model that separates the registry of agricultural records from the actual data, enabling efficient data handling. Smart contracts are used to automate key supply chain operations such as record creation, validation, transfer, and deletion, allowing end-to-end traceability from farm to consumer. The framework also incorporates rolebased access control for stakeholders including farmers, distributors, retailers, and consumers. Experimental results indicate that AgroChain improves transparency, accountability, and interoperability, demonstrating the potential of blockchain technology to transform agricultural supply chain governance.
The agriculture sector plays a pivotal role in global economies, and optimizing its perishable food supply chain (PFSC) is vital to ensuring food security and transparency. The purpose of the study is to develop a blockchain-based smart contract to secure and provide transparency about perishable goods in the PFSC while delivering the goods between the stakeholders, such as farmers, mandis, and wholesalers. The study enhances collaboration between stakeholders by implementing smart contracts. The delivery status and the transactions have been safely recorded and verified by the stakeholder in the PFSC to ensure data integrity all the way through. The blockchain application has reduced fraud and streamlined the flow of goods and information. Moreover, this study emphasizes providing farmers with a straightforward route to the market to empower them. The benefits for the stakeholders are optimizing inventory control and developing appropriate decision-making skills. A three-echelon PFSC can become more resilient and is able to meet changing market demands by implementing blockchain-based smart contracts. Finally, the study employs blockchain technology to establish a decentralized and efficient PFSC, confirming a tamper-resistant system and enhancing stakeholder trust and collaboration.
International Journal of Technology, Leadership and Sciences
Food and agriculture supply chain transparency is growing in importance for both consumers and states. The fast expansion of blockchain technology's use is being propelled by its inherent trustworthiness and immutability. This technology can offer safe traceability for the management of the agri-food chain, prevent food fraud, and provide information like a food product's provenance. It is far more difficult than in other businesses to create smart contracts that are suitable for certain use cases. Although many agri-food chain management systems based on smart contracts and blockchain have been developed, they are all quite ad hoc and not easily adaptable to different products or production processes. A new method for quickly adapting and developing universal smart contracts for the agri-food business based on Ethereum is presented in this research. We can automate the process and reuse modules and code using this strategy, which shortens development times without sacrificing dependability and safety. In order to set up a semi-automatic system, we want to start with the production process and build the smart contracts that control the system and the user interfaces that automatically connect with them. To further illustrate how our method works, we provide a case research on honey production. The primary goal of future studies will be to find ways to apply the method to different types of supply chains. Even though Ethereum is now in use, our technology can be simply adapted to other blockchain systems.
A study of enhanced traceability, transparency, and compliance in the pharmaceutical supply chain ecosystem is suggested to be done using the present paper's proposal which is a combination of a distributed ledger and smart contract based system.The system as demanded keeps the entire history of a batch, custody transfers, and compliance events on a ledger that can be accessed by the big players only without the middle men.Also, it automates the task assigned to the smart contracts such as authorization, monitoring of the cold chain, and recalling of the products if they are found to be defected.The procedure develops the trust of all the stakeholders.
Lukas Stopfer, Eugen Buss, Alexander Kaulen, Ferréol Berendt · 11 authors
This study quantifies the energy use, carbon dioxide equivalent (CO 2 e) emissions, and transaction-related costs of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) in the context of timber traceability. It combines: (i) a PRISMA-guided systematic review of empirical studies on DLT energy consumption; and (ii) benchmark values derived from continuously updated online monitoring sources, captured at defined access dates and fully documented in the . Comparable metrics are reported at the level of individual traceability events (kWh/tx, gCO 2 e/tx, and USD/tx) and are related to a realistic timber supply chain transaction model that was empirically validated in a pilot study. The results reveal substantial differences in sustainability performance across consensus mechanisms. Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks exhibit prohibitively high energy demand and CO 2 e emissions for frequent traceability notarizations. In contrast, Proof-of-Stake (PoS), PBFT-based, hybrid, and Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) architectures enable low-energy and low-cost event logging. This study bridges the gap between established DLT sustainability research and the operational requirements of regulated forestry traceability by providing a transparent and reproducible benchmarking workflow that includes URLs, access dates and calculation spreadsheets.
A considerable proportion of perishable goods, including fruits and vegetables, deteriorate prior to reaching customers. Inadequate refrigeration infrastructure, particularly in developing nations with arid climates and markets distant from agricultural sources, accounts for most of these losses. A food cold chain has three primary phases: pre-cooling, cold storage, and refrigerated transportation. All phases of the cold chain rely fundamentally on refrigeration to preserve perishable products at designated temperatures, relative humidity, and CO2 concentrations, thus prolonging their shelf life. Solar-driven or aided refrigeration systems use solar energy to power cooling systems and preserve the food in the cold chain. These systems are especially beneficial in off-grid or developing areas for preserving perishable goods such as fruits, vegetables, and other food items, mitigating postharvest losses that can exceed 30–50% in areas with inconsistent energy supplies. Despite progress in efficiency and scalability, numerous research gaps remain across technological, economic, social, policy, and regional dimensions, including technical aspects, optimization, and integration. There is a need to enhance energy-efficient designs, particularly by managing solar intermittency to address non-uniform cooling, which leads to inconsistent ripening and spoilage, and by integrating sustainable refrigerants to mitigate environmental impact. Further development is necessary for micro-scale, transportable, or decentralized systems designed for small farms, while economic and financing obstacles include high upfront costs and limited financial accessibility. Substantial deficiencies exist in creating affordable models and funding channels for small-scale agriculturalists. Addressing these deficiencies could expedite adoption, thereby reducing global food loss and waste (accounting for 8–10% of GHG emissions) while improving food security. Future research must emphasize multidisciplinary methodologies that amalgamate engineering, economics, and social sciences to provide comprehensive solutions.
Munir A. ADEWOYE, Ahmed Aliyu, Usman Ali, Abdulrasheed Jimoh
Food is fundamental to human survival, we eat to live, sustaining ourselves with nutrition that meets our daily needs. Food security, defined as universal physical and financial access to safe and nutritious food, depends heavily on efficient supply chains. However, ensuring this security faces significant challenges in tracking and transparency. This study examines two critical problems in blockchain-based food supply chain tracing: privacy preservation and scalability. While blockchain technology combined with Internet of Things (IoT) devices offers promising solutions for real-time monitoring, transparency, and fraud prevention in agricultural supply chains, questions remain about balancing computational efficiency with privacy protection, achieving scalable integration across multi-actor supply chains without compromising traceability, and implementing these systems in resource limited environments. Through a comprehensive review of current research, this study identifies emerging technologies like Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) and ZK-Rollups that enhance both throughput and privacy in decentralised systems. The research presents layered architectural models integrating blockchain ledgers, off-chain storage, IoT sensors, and cryptographic protocols to enable secure and scalable traceability. These models support compliance verification while protecting sensitive data and can be adapted for low-resource contexts. The findings demonstrate that scalable, privacy-preserving blockchain technologies can transform agricultural traceability, empowering supply chain stakeholders while maintaining data confidentiality and integrity. The study also identifies future research needs, including cross-chain interoperability, policy integration, cost-benefit analysis for smallholder farmers, and field validation.
Abstract Traceability is an essential practice to ensure transparency, authenticity, and regulatory compliance in modern agricultural supply chains, especially high-value agricultural products. Regarded as the king of fruits in Southeast Asia for its unique taste, texture, and aroma, durian dominates the market of exported fruit commodities. However, recurring issues such as fraudulent GAP numbers, mislabelled origins, premature harvesting, and product tampering undermine consumer trust and export credibility. To address these challenges, this study presents an integrated traceability architecture combining RFID, a MySQL database, an automated Node.js backend, and Ethereum-compatible smart contracts. The developed system enables automated ingestion of physical RFID data, secure on-chain recording via immutable ledger functions, and optional generation of ERC-721 NFTs as digital certificates. Empirical validation includes RFID read-rate testing, blockchain performance measurement, and gas usage analysis. Carton-level tagging, wherein a single RFID tag is attached to a carton rather than each individual fruit, significantly reduces per-durian blockchain cost. The results demonstrate that the proposed architecture is technically robust, flexible, economically scalable, and suitable for SME use in high-value or ultra-premium fresh-produce chains.
In this study, the authors developed a smart traceability framework for athletic equipment using distributed ledger technology. They conducted their research to address persistent gaps in authenticity, life cycle visibility, and fan-side provenance across the sports equipment ecosystem. The framework was designed through a design-science approach, integrating Internet of Things sensors, digital twins, Electronic Product Code Information Services logistics data, and retail/resale events into a unified distributed ledger technology architecture governed by smart contracts. Simulation results show high validation accuracy, strong life cycle coverage, stable ledger performance, and reliable ownership transfers across manufacturing, field use, and secondary markets. These findings indicate that end-to-end, tamper-resistant traceability can significantly improve trust, operational transparency, and fan engagement in real-world sports equipment environments.
The agri-food supply chain is a cornerstone of food security and economic stability, yet traditional systems often grapple with challenges such as limited transparency, data manipulation, delayed payments, and an over-reliance on intermediaries.These centralized frameworks hinder the ability to verify the origin, quality, and authenticity of agricultural products, weakening trust among stakeholders.This paper introduces a Blockchain-Based Crop Supply Chain and Traceability System leveraging smart contracts to address these persistent issues.The proposed system employs blockchain technology to establish a decentralized, transparent, and immutable ledger that records every transaction within the supply chain.Key processes are automated through smart contracts, including crop registration, ownership transfers, transaction validations, and payment executions.To manage large-scale data effectively, the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is incorporated for decentralized storage of crop-related documents like images, health reports, and certificates, while cryptographic hashes are stored on the blockchain for verification purposes.A token-based digital payment mechanism linked to the Indian Rupee (INR) ensures fair and instant payments between farmers and buyers.The system is implemented as a decentralized application utilizing React.js,Node.js,Solidity, and MetaMask, and deployed on the Binance Smart Chain Testnet.Experimental findings reveal significant enhancements in traceability, transparency, fraud reduction, and stakeholder trust compared to conventional agri-food supply chain systems.
Aqsa Rashid, Raja Wasim Ahmad, Mirna Nachouki, Atta Ur Rehman Khan
Ensuring food safety and traceability in fruit supply chains (FSC) remains a critical concern, as traditional centralized methods often suffer from data manipulation, lack of transparency, and delayed responses during contamination events. These challenges lead to reduced consumer trust and inefficiencies in monitoring product integrity throughout the supply network. To address these limitations, this paper presents a blockchain-based framework that leverages cryptographic protocols and smart contracts to secure, automate, and validate traceability processes across all stages of the fruit supply chain. The proposed FSC_SDG system enforces trusted data recording, real-time provenance verification, and autonomous policy execution, while aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs). A proof-of-concept prototype was implemented on the Ethereum blockchain to assess performance. Experimental evaluations demonstrate reduced latency in traceability verification, improved data integrity, and enhanced resistance to tampering compared with existing approaches. These results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed framework in strengthening food safety, transparency, and trust within fruit supply chains.
R. N. V. Jagan Mohan, Pravallika Sree Rayanoothala, R. Praneetha Sree
Agriculture faces multifaceted challenges including climate variability, soil degradation, and supply chain inefficiencies, particularly for smallholder farmers practicing multicropping. This study systematically integrates blockchain technology for secure, transparent transactions with reinforcement learning (RL)-optimized Neutrosophic multi-regression for precise crop loss prediction in multicropping systems. Using real-world data from six crops (rice, banana, turmeric, elephant foot yam, coconut, cocoa), Neutrosophic multi-regression estimated losses with RL hyperparameter tuning, achieving superior prediction accuracy. A blockchain framework was developed for farmer validation, transaction security, and smart contract execution using Ethereum/Ganache. Results demonstrate 25%–35% reduction in predicted crop losses and enhanced supply chain traceability. This Smart Agriculture 5.0 framework advances Agriculture 4.0 through human-AI symbiosis and uncertainty modeling, addressing single-point failures, data privacy, and trust deficits for scalable sustainable farming Through this multidimensional approach, the study endeavors to not only enhance the productivity and sustainability of agricultural practices but also to foster resilience in the face of evolving challenges.
In this article, we provide an in-depth analysis of the different causes of food fraud, food safety, and food waste, which are recognized as the main challenges in agri-food supply chains. Leveraging technologies like blockchain- and IoT-enabled traceability systems presents promising solutions to overcome these challenges. Using the PRISMA methodology, we conducted a comprehensive literature review of 41 selected articles to assess the effectiveness of such solutions. The findings reveal that only 48% target primarily improved food safety, while food waste (9%) and food fraud (21%) played a less important role. Only a few papers actively incorporate these attributes into their architectural design and many papers lack practical implementation details, leaving significant gaps in understanding their practical applicability. One finding was that 61% of the proposed solution were build on a public permissionless blockchain (Ethereum) and 39% where build on a permissioned private or consortium blockchain (mainly Hyperledger Fabric and Sawtooth). Critical aspects such as data privacy, confidentiality, final infrastructure governance, or legal frameworks are in most cases missing, e.g., 75% did not discuss the governance of the solution at all. To address the identified limitations, we propose a modular reference architecture that balances transparency and confidentiality through a hybrid blockchain approach. It incorporates a trusted platform layer with secure data storage, publicly verifiable summaries, and role-based access control. The architecture is illustrated through multiple use cases and qualitatively evaluated against characteristics of existing solutions, highlighting its conceptual suitability for regulated agri-food ecosystems.
ABSTRACT The perishable food cold chain is a vital part of the global food system, mainly ensuring the quality of temperature‐sensitive products such as milk, seafood, fruits, and vegetables. However, this system still faces several challenges related to real‐time monitoring, data transparency, and proactive demand planning, which often lead to spoilage, food safety violations, and disruptions. In this work, we propose a comprehensive end‐to‐end system that includes Internet of Things (IoT)‐based environmental sensors, blockchain‐enabled immutable logging, and a hybrid ARIMA–LSTM model for demand forecasting and spoilage risk detection. The system uses ESP32 microcontrollers with DHT11 sensors at key cold‐chain points to collect temperature and humidity data, streamed to Blynk dashboards for real‐time visualization and anomaly alerts. Anomalies and product metadata are permanently recorded through smart contracts on a private Ethereum blockchain, while payloads are stored off‐chain on IPFS for traceability and auditability. Additionally, historical blockchain logs and external sales data are used to train a hybrid ARIMA–LSTM model that predicts future demand and spoilage risks more accurately. Experimental results show that the proposed model achieves a forecasting accuracy of 90% ( R 2 = 0.90), outperforming baseline approaches on multiple metrics including RMSE, MAE, MAPE, and R 2 . The framework is scalable and data‐driven, aiming to improve supply availability and reduce food waste.
Addressing the challenges of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) traceability systems, including heavy data storage burdens, poor privacy protection, and susceptibility to tampering, this study establishes a highly secure and trustworthy traceability supervision system for the entire Chinese medicine supply chain, which enhances product quality and safety assurance. Centred on the Hyperledger Fabric consortium blockchain as its core architecture, a multi-chain integration framework comprising one regulatory main chain plus five organisational sub-chains is proposed to achieve permission control, data isolation, and privacy. A multi-mode encrypted data storage mechanism is designed, integrating China’s national cryptographic algorithms SM4 and SM3 with CP-ABE attribute-based encryption to enable tiered management of private and non-private data. Zero-knowledge proof technology safeguards identity privacy during cross-chain data transmission, while QR codes and environmental data collection mechanisms enhance data entry efficiency and authenticity. The system achieves end-to-end traceability from cultivation and processing through transportation, warehousing, and sales. Comparative performance analysis shows that the proposed framework effectively alleviates data storage pressure, ensures data validity, enhances data security, and improves collaborative efficiency among organizations across the TCM supply chain. The proposed multi-chain integrated Chinese medicine traceability and supervision system enables efficient collaboration and trustworthy traceability across the entire Chinese medicine industry chain, while safeguarding data security and privacy, and has significant application and promotion value. Future integration with artificial intelligence and big data technologies could further enhance the system’s intelligent analysis and decision-support capabilities.
Ensuring transparency, security, and privacy in agricultural food supply chains is critical for maintaining consumer trust, regulatory compliance, and data integrity. Traditional centralized traceability systems suffer from several limitations, including data tampering risks, single-point failures, and potential privacy leakage. To address these challenges, this research proposes a privacy-preserving blockchain-based traceability framework that integrates the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) with Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs). The framework leverages the Ethereum blockchain for immutable record-keeping, while zk-SNARK-based proofs enable compliance verification without revealing sensitive underlying data. A prototype was implemented using Solidity smart contracts and Python-based zk-SNARK circuits. Experimental evaluation across varying record sizes, from 50 to 200, demonstrates high security and efficiency, achieving 100% success in detecting simulated tampering attempts. Performance metrics indicate a highly scalable system with an average end-to-end latency of approximately 0.33 seconds, rapid proof generation times of approximately 0.0002 seconds, and near-constant verification times averaging 0.027 seconds. Furthermore, the system maintains a consistent simulated transaction cost of 20.40$ per proof, regardless of the total records processed. Overall, the proposed approach provides a robust, scalable, and computationally efficient solution for modern agri- food supply chains, successfully balancing data confidentiality with rigorous cryptographic integrity.
Open access
Food Supply Chain Traceability
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security