Blockchain

In recent years, digital platforms have established themselves as a central concept in the IT field. Due to the wide variety of digital platforms available on the market, there is still a need for clear comparison with criteria to enable interested parties to select, change, operate and further develop these platforms. The following paper aims to contribute to the facilitation of this comparison by undertaking a systematic literature review of digital platform frameworks in the context of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) for manufacturing companies and thus providing a basis for a number of potential ways to effectively compare current digital platforms and ecosystems.

Blockchain is seen as an enabler to increase the efficiency, transparency, and security of information exchange in supply chains. An important application area is maritime logistics, as blockchain facilitates the digitalization of documents and increases the efficiency of the processes. In this article, we elaborate on the example of temperature-controlled container transports the potential for adopting blockchain and the requirements to be considered from the technological and organizational environment.

Alongside to the enormous rise in Bitcoin value in 2017/2018, there was also a tremendous rise in required Hashpower and electricity to verify blocks of the Bitcoin-Chain. Deriving from this problem, this article investigates different consensus algorithms and their impact on sustainability. Furthermore this article proposes an extensive comparison of the most used Blockchain algorithms with a focus on their contribution to sustainability.

Blockchain technology is expected to have great potential for success, especially in logistics and supply chain management. In the following, the Blockchain project “Release Order based on Blockchain (ROboB)” in the Port of Hamburg will be discussed in particular. The analysis showed that in addition to positive aspects, the core characteristics of the Blockchain could also represent obstacles for logistics business. Therefore, this paper examines whether transparency is an important design consideration when using blockchain in logistics and the supply chain.

Blockchain holds high potential for various applications. In the business context, one of its key features - the availability of data to various parties - is a liability as business secrets shouldn’t be exposed and GDPR compliance has to be ensured. In this paper, we discuss solutions for these privacy problems. Also, we present the HANSEBLOC project, a blockchain-powered platform for data exchange in logistics, and the chosen privacy solutions.