According to reports this week, the world's largest retailer by sales has joined MediLedger, a pharmaceutical industry consortium that is working to build a blockchain solution for tracking the provenance of pharma products. The company is already well known for its involvement spearheading the blockchain industry consortium known as the IBM Food Trust. In other supply chain news, a recent report provided details on GoDirect Trade, an online marketplace for used aircraft parts that is powered by blockchain and hosted by a major global aerospace firm. According to the report, by leveraging blockchain, GoDirect Trade enables more efficient tracing of the origins and certifications of aircraft parts, which are heavily regulated. Late last week, Hyperledger announced the launch of the Hyperledger Supply Chain Special Interest Group, an organization intended "to facilitate focused technical and business-level conversations related to appropriate use cases for blockchain technology across Supply Chain management."

In a recent press release, two major U.S. insurance companies announced a "joint subrogation solution" that will leverage blockchain to improve the speed of the auto claims subrogation process. The solution is being billed as "the first of its kind between two major leaders in the insurance industry." In the banking sector, a blockchain-based identity management system co-developed by Brazil's central bank and a major global technology firm was reported this week. The solution is reportedly built on Hyperledger Fabric and is intended for eventual integration into payment systems used by all financial institutions in Brazil. Also this week, a major U.S. technology and camera-related products company announced the launch of a blockchain-based document management platform designed to enhance information safety and security.

Late last week, a Big Four accounting and consulting firm released the code for its experimental Ethereum-based "Nightfall" solution on GitHub, the open source software repository. Nightfall reportedly uses "zero-knowledge proofs" to enable ERC20 tokens to be transacted on Ethereum with "complete privacy." A recent report by Gartner addressed the multitude of blockchain platforms in the market and predicted that 90 percent of current enterprise blockchain implementations will need to be replaced within the next two years, due in part to the lack of industry consensus on product concepts, feature sets, core application requirements and target markets.

For more news on blockchain payments, please see the following articles:

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