Chronicled

See website — product verification is the focus here today.

Chronicled; also the node operators; solution providers; individual companies — there is a working group of pharmaceutical companies who sign an agreement and pay a fee; users of the product verification service do so via a contract directly w/ Chronicled as customers of Chronicled.

The system is permissioned. Each company is identifiable by its GS1 GLN [the GLN is the GS1 Identification Key used for any location (physical, operational or legal) that needs to be identified for use in the supply chain], and there is manual KYC to verify it.

There is no voting and no software driven governance. When onboarded, a company has specific abilities / access / roles based on what they do in the industry. Part of KYC and onboarding.

Any firm that meets the definition of a market participant is free to join without exclusion. Very open.

Solution providers or companies themselves can run nodes (SAP has the contract with Chronicled and the pharma companies work with SAP; other providers are in a similar position to SAP; these solution providers do some of the KYC functions.)

All node operators will be a member of the governance group after go-live.

No tokens; companies that run nodes have an interest in solving the business problem, i.e. meeting regulatory requirements. That’s all the incentive anyone needs today. No mining, no inflation, no slashing, no token.

N/A

Users are paying to access the system. Node operators pay to run their own nodes. No other structures or institutions exist currently.

Chronicled says so (and the users don’t object).

The stated values of the system are “Industry first; companies second; Chronicled third” and Chronicled is intent on showing that nobody is getting an advantage over anyone else. There’s a shared value that every global rule needs to equally beneficial to all. “Consensus through collaboration.” Some needs can be met w/ 1:1 interactions w/ Chronicled. There was one individual whose requests couldn’t be honored. The system mantra is to serve the industry dispassionately and equitably. Chronicled earns a reasonable profit. The “Network Charter” states some of the shared values and some more technical expectations as well. The respondents were firm in saying “Blockchain is a team sport.”

Any node operator can introduce change proposals of their own or from customers; any issues raised will be addressed by Chronicled. The ‘true north’ is the business requirement to be solved and the regulations to be followed.

There is a functioning method of establishing consensus via collaboration and discussion.

For a software upgrade for example (planned vs emergency), it’s the node operators who follow the Network Charter.

Chronicled takes the lead. The need for governance is light because the system has been designed to be light. The “industry first” value deflects most disputes — more than one might imagine. The contracts that people sign coming in (that Chronicled designed) have some teeth about ensuring that nodes run well. The working group is the venue for airing issues and finding resolution. The rules do have an escalation path, which has been never used; all participants seek to avoid it.

If Chronicled got out of hand, people would leave the network. There is a different work group for each specific problem or problem type. There are no obvious competitive advantages to be seized by tweaking the system, so folks have a primary incentive to just make the “plumbing” work.

The group is small enough to have conversations. There is GS1 that Chronicled supports; GS1 has a rule that any dissenting vote needs to be heard. The guidance has been “avoid voting.” There are 800 manufacturers and 3 main distributors (100+ distributors in total) involved with the system, which would complicate voting. There’s another [blockchain] group out there doing a big arrange-the-chairs exercise around voting; the respondents are glad to be avoiding it.

There is a distinction, that if something is broken, Chronicled gets to just fix it and notify folks. There is a focus on consensus and collaboration, so no, no levels of decision making.

Not applicable. The priorities may be the closest thing (Industry first, etc)

Everything is hard. 😉

One of our ethos elements is, Chronicled has no access to anyone’s data. There is of course the possibility of errors and mistakes; there may be interim controls in place that can be used to recover from error states, that they can give up once things are more solid and stable. E.g. access to troubleshooting data.

“The only thing we can think of is, that there is a lot of flexibility in setting the conditions for joining the organization, so we can include as many as possible.”

• There are three standards bodies that are collaborated with — GS1, HDA and PDSA. Chronicled has great working relationships with them and doesn’t seek to step into their turf.
• Chronicled’s governance is narrow and operational, by design. The goal is to attract users to solve a problem, and to minimize the overhead. They don’t want to get into general standards setting or any governance that can be yielded up to a better fit organization.
• Several participants have said they couldn’t call these meetings because they would taint it by who they are — Chronicled gets to be ‘neutral convener’ or Switzerland in these matters.