Blockchain & the Gold Standard for a Conflict-Free Supply Chain

Apr 27, 2018 | Ariella Brown
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Conflict minerals making their way into the electronic supply chain presents a challenge to companies that want to act both legally and ethically. Tracing such minerals to their source is not straightforward or simple. Blockchain technology can solve that problem. The Responsible Gold supply chain  is designed to track “responsibly sourced gold from mine, to refinery, to vault.” It’s put out by Emergent Technology, and has first been applied to gold mined by Yamana. The way it works, according to Emergent’s announcement, is by tracking movement every step of the way: “Miners, refiners and other supply chain participants use a mobile application that scans smart chips in tamper-proof seals to record transfer of custody and other data on the Responsible Gold blockchain.” That blockchain was set out in 2017, though Yamana started working with Emergent on setting up the platform a year before that.