BlockApps
Blockapps: Digitizing Real World Assets How Blockapps Became The Leader In Web3 Commerce For Business

As blockchain technology has matured over the last few years, enterprises have sought the benefits of a decentralized network, but adoption has struggled with the balancing act of transparency versus pseudonymity. Enterprises expect to know who is on the other side of a transaction, and they are reluctant to disclose sensitive, proprietary information on any kind of shared network. These requirements present a major challenge to industry leaders who are looking to leverage blockchain to both maximize the value of assets and interact more efficiently, transparently, and seamlessly with multiple parties on the network. This challenge materialized into an opportunity for innovation for the founders at BlockApps.

“In association with Bayer Crop Science, we wanted to create a solution that could trace value, from seed to table”

Founded by Kieren James-Lubin, Victor Wong, and James Hormuzdiar, BlockApps brings together the best of public and private blockchain networks, forging a decentralized network that hosts real-world assets and products through trust, transparency, and fairness. As founding members of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (the world’s largest open standard blockchain organization), BlockApps pushes the envelope of decentralized technology, developing enterprise-grade capabilities for its clients.

Focused on ‘bridge building’ as a fundamental philosophy, BlockApps empowers enterprises to experience the multifold benefits of a public blockchain, such as transparency and auditability, while safeguarding sensitive information, similar to a private network. These benefits are provisioned through STRATO—a highly flexible blockchain network that is the underlying platform for secure transactions. As a variant of Ethereum, STRATO is optimized for enterprise use, where all network participants are verified and capable of seamlessly managing their data privacy posture. The enterprise-grade platform features high-performance measures with low energy utilization, opening up avenues for sustainability use cases. Likewise, drawing on the merit of public blockchain networks, STRATO interconnects multiple validators functioning in a decentralized fashion. The amalgamation of public and private infrastructures ensures that clients can bring innovative developments from the public sphere onto the STRATO network and reap the rewards of both worlds. In contrast to other blockchain networks, STRATO requires zero to minimal transaction fees.

“Businesses could incur transactional fees for any change in data entry on a public chain, without moving around assets or currencies. The inherent scalability of our network ensures that businesses need not pay exorbitant prices to validators for data-intensive use cases,” affirms Kieren James-Lubin, CEO & co-founder of BlockApps. BlockApps employs fiat currency as the primary token of exchange, further simplifying transactions for value chain participants.

Contrary to this practice, introducing a new token of exchange would create new digital assets within the network, which goes against the idea of simplicity.

Deducing Immeasurable Value from Decentralization

One of the unique benefits of blockchain technology is its ability to coordinate many participants and transactions without requiring one central authority to intermediate all activities. Blockchain also provides full traceability of transactions and assets on the network, ensuring that all interactions are documented and indexed permanently, providing complete provenance of assets on the network. BlockApps’ agribusiness value chain traceability application TraceHarvest is a perfect showcase of these features. Organizations such as Bayer Crop Science—the largest seed manufacturer in the world —are often challenged with inadequate traceability of assets and the value they generate for the enterprise. For instance, seed manufacturers realize the value generated by the seeds only when they reach the final destination within the network – the growers.

Before it reaches this destination, the seeds pass through multiple checkpoints such as packaging hubs, warehouses, distribution nodes, and delivery partners. As a result, seed manufacturers are often unaware of when their goods are consumed by the growers and are deprived of consistent feedback from the value chain. This primarily affects consumer-facing companies that are growing concerned about their suppliers, the origin of products, and relevant sourcing networks, demanding transparency across the entire value chain. TraceHarvest defines supply chain operations, enhancing efficiencies, transparency, compliance, and stewardship associated with agricultural products.

The inherent scalability of our network ensures that businesses need not pay exorbitant prices to validators for data-intensive use cases

“In association with Bayer Crop Science, we wanted to create a solution that could trace value, from seed to table,” explains Victor Wong, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder. “Our clients want to know where their products are going and how they are performing, ultimately building more confidence in their products through this network. Effectively, they could sell these products at a premium.”

Sharing its merits with TraceHarvest, BlockApps’ TraceCarbon solution allows clients to register carbon offsets, identify emission-intensive areas, and detail comprehensive corporate reporting on products and assets hosted on the network.

TraceCarbon offers insights into sustainability practices and their subsequent environmental impact. The application is also designed to conduct timely compliance and transparency checks for CO2 ecosystems, prompting businesses to re-evaluate their carbon footprint and undertake corrective measures to regulate their emissions.

Provisioning a Value-Driven Partner Network

In the early days at BlockApps, the company partnered with Microsoft to create the ‘Blockchain as a Service’ category —a first-of-its-kind service that laid the foundation to enable businesses to use blockchain for various enterprise use cases. This development marked the origins of the BlockApps Partner Network, where in BlockApps sought partners around the globe, large and small, to evangelize and adopt STRATO. The company also nurtures a healthy professional services network that helps businesses with custom integrations and application development. Their sturdy technological foundation, coupled with a community-backed approach to integrations, allows companies to bring products to market in a bundled fashion. While solutions sit on top of the STRATO network, enterprises are encouraged to ‘add their own flavor’ to the developed products.

Companies exploring blockchains to host assets or carryout transactions do not appreciate the idea of reengineering their core technological infrastructure to suit the new infrastructure, whilst remaining hesitant of onboarding solutions that could involve complicated integration processes. BlockApps enables clients to retain their current operational practices and technology stack, or in some cases, with minimal changes to their technical architecture. Businesses can also create digital assets backed by real world resources and commodities as required by their business, thereby ensuring transparency across the network for all parties involved in any subsequent transactions or exchange of assets.

STRATO improves the auditability of assets and transactions through validators within the network, who verify the identity of participants in the value chain. They also retain the power to authorize access to sensitive information among different parties as deemed necessary. This approach to traceability of interactions and exchange of assets occurring on the blockchain combines the best of both public and private worlds, side stepping any potential shortcomings of these networks. As evidenced by various use cases, decentralized solutions such as STRATO serve as the breeding ground for innovation, inviting businesses to enrich the community and their partner networks.