A blockchain-based seed-to-sale tracking system would give complete transparency without costing taxpayers the “millions” Task Farce leader Anne McLellan promised.
Here’s merely one way, courtesy of Redditor 086709, of using the blockchain to do something more effectively and cost-efficient than a government administrative bureaucracy.
Remember that the blockchain is a ledger. So instead of mining bitcoins, FarmerID tokens will be issued to growers by some authority. Who this authority is and what kind of power they wield depends on any number of factors.
It preferably shouldn’t be Justin’s Liberals. Theoretically, every municipality in Canada can have a cannabis seed-to-sale tracking blockchain so that the local authority can issue, freeze and generate new FarmerID tokens.
Additionally, there are tokens issued to represent each and every plant during its lifecycle, from seed to harvest to sale.
Held in contracts between the farmer and the authority, the public addresses of the PlantID’s, HarvestID’s and SaleIDs will be provided to the farmer, allowing him or her to identify each plant through the growing, harvest and selling cycle.
At harvest, HarvestID tokens are issued to represent the harvested product, entrusted only in the audit contract.
The SaleIDs are the tokens issued to represent the sale of each product.
Those are the components, here’s how it all works:
Whether seed or clone, upon each cutting/sprouting, the grower will send a FarmerID token to the authority who holds the contract which returns the FarmerID token and sends a plantID to the Audit Contract.
This establishes the audit period which logs the plant into the blockchain using the Audit Contract.
This creates a FarmersID and PlantID hash the grower submits to the audit contract. A hash is an identification as well as an integrity verification.
In submitting the hash, the grower specifies the current status of the plant, this could include its weight, THC/CBD levels, relative health. They would even specify whether it died and if it did, the PlantID held in contract would be destroyed.
When the plant is harvested, the grower sends a transaction to the Audit contract containing their FarmerID and the PlantID to be harvested, and the total weight of the harvested product.
The Audit contract then destroys the PlantID’s and generates HarvestIDs by taking the total weight and breaking it into individual portions, however defined, generating one HarvestID token per portion.
The HarvestID is sent back to the Audit contract and the FarmerID is returned to the senders address.
Every sale is processed with the Auditor contract. When a sale is made a hash is generated, identifying the amount sold and from which HarvestID it came from.
Each HarvestID is tracked by the auditor so that when the product has been sold, and an audit has been activated, the harvestID is destroyed and logged as cleared.
The auditor logs the contract and generates a SaleID which they also hold.
Product that does not have a harvestID cannot be added into the chain, so only fully tracked products make it to sale in this system.
Data in the chain is pseudonymous so that industry insights into production and trends can be gained without compromising privacy and security.
In a society that demands government action, local cannabis enforcement boards can control the minting of new FarmerIDs.
Since the Audit contract allows for auditing of different tokens to look for discrepancies, checking for any leaks in the production process, a blockchain “smart contract” would likely serve better than a manual hands-on approach by municipal governments.
Legal cannabis is new and emerging. We don’t have to repeat the same old mistakes of regulation.
If the public wants commercial cannabis tracked, then governments would be best to relinquish control and cede to the blockchain.