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2019 will be the year in which the passion for blockchain dies, but this will lead to the realization of the real advantages of technology.
This is the vision of the head of IATA's digital cargo, Henk Mulder, who believes that at present the blockchain is being misused by the logistics industry.
"See how it is deployed at the moment, you have Maersk and IBM that use it as a tool for tracking documents," he told the Cold Chain Distribution Conference yesterday in London.
"They say it works, but we all know that it does not work, and it can not, in that form, because it is a sector that uses non-digital paper documents – it is first necessary to solve the problem of paper".
Mr. Mulder, whose background includes the banking industry and the European Organization for Nuclear Research in which the world wide web was developed, said that when he joined the cargo part of the aviation he was, technologically speaking , 30 years behind compared to what is available.
He said that the blockchain path would reflect that of 3D printing, with the buzz going through the technology of the distributed ledger that faded rapidly over the next 12 months.
This, he added, was vital. Without the hype, it would be easier to extract the characteristics that generated that "excitement" in the first place.
"So what will be pulled from these ashes? For me, it will be the ability to discern the chain of ownership, custody and value," said Mulder. "It will also be beneficial for smart contracts and payments, but it will not be applied to physical location and quality monitoring activities."
Mulder said that using the blockchain to prove a chain of custody would be a great tool to reduce lost VAT payments. He suggested that the money generated would be sufficient to pay for the UK health service, but because logistics relied on physical processes, he again emphasized areas that could not be applied.
"It will not work for physical tracking because it's a physical process, it does not make sense to use it this way," he said. "And of course, you have suggestions that could be applied to quality monitoring, but it's not designed to work this way."
