Blockchain In Action

While visiting Rock Hill, South Carolina for Thanksgiving, two of my interests collided — coffee and blockchain.

Let me set the stage. I was enjoying a crafted espresso at a local roaster, Knowledge Perk. As I was sipping my drink, I caught a glimpse of a blockchain login screen that I had seen before. The screen came up on a large monitor where customers can observe the details of the coffee roasting process in action.

I asked an employee if they use any blockchain technology. She said, “yes.” She then led me over to a bag of coffee and demonstrated how I could scan the QR code on each bag to learn more about the roasting details.

Here’s a picture of an 8 oz bag of Knowledge Perk coffee. At the bottom, you will notice ‘Scan to verify roast’. On iOS or Android, you can use your default camera app to read the QR code and redirect to a browser that will show the roasting specifics which are stored on Dragonchain’s instance of a blockchain service.

Here’s the link for this bag of coffee that returns the information about this specific roast.

Blockchain needs use cases like this one to showcase the practicality of the technology. While the current Knowledge Perk iteration is focused on the provenance of the roasting process, I would like to see this solution extended to the coffee bean supply chain to validate the country origin.

The Cardano blockchain project recently launched a similar blockchain use, but, instead of being focused on coffee roast verification, it’s focused on shoe authenticity for New Balance.

Blockchain is too revolutionary to not have a significant impact on society. Experiencing a practical use case while on a Thanksgiving vacation in an unexpected location far away from Silicon Valley is proof that the technical shift to distributed ledgers is imminent.