Try using blockchain technology to solve the "logistics pain" of Double Eleven

As the heat of the Double 11 shopping festival faded, Tmall finally broke the record with a transaction volume of 91.217 billion. JD.com's Double 11 shopping festival this year has exceeded the combined order volume of the past five years. According to Star Chart data, the 24-hour sales volume of the entire network on November 11, 2015 was 122.94 billion, with 680 million packages generated, and mobile phone sales accounted for 7.5% of the entire network. The development of mobile Internet and the advancement of payment methods have largely contributed to the unprecedented popularity of the e-commerce industry.

The feast of e-commerce, the logistics industry is both happy and painful

In an interview with CCTV Finance, Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma said that the weakness of Double 11 is still logistics, and there will be huge room for improvement in the future. Indeed, while the logistics industry is enjoying the joy brought by the e-commerce carnival, it is also under constant pressure to deliver 680 million packages. Many logistics and express delivery stations are under many times more delivery volume than usual, and warehouse explosions and package losses also occur frequently. Most packages are sent directly to consumers by e-commerce companies using logistics and express delivery, and most consumers are worried that their private information will be leaked and resold by bad companies, so the new real-name system policy in the logistics industry has encountered difficulties in implementation.

After Double Eleven, logistics became a key word (screenshot from Baidu News)

In addition to the problems of lost packages, warehouse explosions, wrong delivery, and information leakage, most logistics companies also have to bear the possibility of unpredictable accidents. On November 12, 2015, a logistics truck in Jiangxi caught fire during transportation, and more than 4,000 packages were burned; on November 17, 2015, a logistics truck in Xuchang, Henan overturned, causing some packages to be damaged. Although most logistics companies promise to compensate for packages damaged in accidents, it involves the traceability of information, and there are still certain difficulties in implementation.

Application of blockchain technology in the logistics industry

Blockchain technology is a distributed database that is almost impossible to change. The "Hangzhou Complex Beauty Blockchain Research Center" has been studying blockchain since 2013. Over the past two years, it has integrated the concept of using blockchain technology in multiple sub-sectors such as finance, catering, corporate management, and express tracking, and has written these application scenarios into the "Blockchain Project White Paper" published in November 2015. According to the content of the white paper, blockchain technology can record all steps in the process from the shipment to the receipt of goods, create a consensus network, directly locate problems in the middle of express delivery, and ensure the traceability of information, thereby avoiding the occurrence of problems such as express warehouse explosion and loss of packages, and mistaken collection, and can also effectively promote the implementation of the logistics real-name system.

The handover of express delivery requires the private key signatures of both parties. Each courier or express delivery point has its own private key. Whether it has been signed for or delivered only needs to be checked on the blockchain. The final user has not signed for the express delivery if he has not received it. The courier cannot forge a signature, which prevents the courier from evading assessment by forging a signature and reduces user complaints.

At the same time, companies can also use blockchain to control the logistics direction of products, prevent channel diversion or counterfeiting, and ensure the interests of offline dealers at all levels.

The graphic clips are taken from the "Blockchain Project White Paper" of the Complex American Blockchain Research Center

Blockchain technology also solves the core link of the Internet of Things. IBM started to study blockchain as early as 2014. Recently, Wanxiang Group in China has also launched a venture fund with an investment of 50 million US dollars to fund blockchain projects. Hangzhou Fuzhumei Blockchain Research Center also revealed that it is currently communicating, cooperating and connecting with some domestic enterprises and institutions, and is committed to making blockchain technology no longer limited to the research stage.