Blockchain-Based Solution for Proof of Delivery of Physical Assets

摘要

To date, building a highly trustworthy, credible, and decentralized proof of delivery (POD) systems to trace and track physical items is a very challenging task. This paper presents a blockchain based POD solution of shipped physical items that uses smart contracts of Ethereum blockchain network, in which tracking, and tracing activities, logs, and events can be done in a decentralized manner, with high integrity, reliability, and immutability. Our solution incentivizes each participating entity including the seller, transporter, and buyer to act honestly, and it totally eliminates the need for a third party as escrow. Our proposed POD solution ensures accountability, punctuality, integrity and auditability. Moreover, the proposed solution makes use of a Smart Contract Attestation Authority to ensure that the code follows the terms and conditions signed by the participating entities. It also allows the cancellation of the transaction by the seller, buyer and transporter based on the contract state. Furthermore, the buyer can also ask for a refund in certain justifiable cases. The full code, implementation discussion with sequence diagrams, testing and verification details are all included as part of the proposed solution.