Startup to Solve Traceability Issues in Seafood Industry Via Blockchain

The blockchain-based startup Fishcoin plans to apply decentralized ledger technology to seafood supply chains, linking fishermen and fish farmers at the point of harvest to global seafood supply chain actors, ranging from distributors, processors, wholesalers and retailers.

The company aims to apply blockchain technology to bring traceability to the seafood industry and create an ecosystem which could allow seafood producers and supply chain intermediaries to get rewards via microtransactions.

From 2017 onward, Eachmile has been reimagining mFish as a tool for small scale fishers and fish farmers to share data with the Fishcoin blockchain network.

The Fishcoin white paper describes the seafood industry's problems as partially rooted in supply chain inefficiencies.

"By tracing a batch of seafood back to the point of capture, we can verify whether the seafood was legally harvested, grown or processed when cross-referenced with data, such as vessel tracking and identification, permit numbers [and] input/output data for mass balance assessment," commented Jayson Berryhill, of Eachmile Technologies, in an interview with The Economist's World Ocean Initiative.

In order to resolve these issues, Fishcoin offers the idea of applying blockchain-based traceability principles to the seafood industry.

That, according to the startup team, will help the entire ecosystem of stakeholders - including fishers, fish farmers, fish processors, seafood exporters and governments - identify, verify and reward those that adopt the best practices.

Launched in 2014 around Secretary Kerry's Our Ocean conference, together with the Fishcoin team, Fishackathon promotes the development of usable solutions that tackle worldwide fishing issues.

The Fishcoin model creates a mechanism for rewarding seafood producers and supply chain intermediaries through microtransactions - with the use of Fishcoin tokens.

The project team states that Fishcoin tokens can act as both the incentive and the mechanism for data capture across seafood supply chains.