Enterprise Data Management on the Neblio Blockchain — Part 2: Fan-In
Tags: Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Enterprise Technology

When getting started with a blockchain project, it is often difficult to visualize the many different ways data can be stored and interacted with on-chain. Neblio’s rich enterprise data management features give users a wide variety of unique options when deciding how to structure their data transactions. Throughout this series, we’ll discuss some of the data management features that make Neblio unique and how they may apply to various real-world industries. You can find Part 1: Tokenized Permissions, here.

Fan-In

“Fan-In” is a term used to describe a scenario where streams of data from many or multiple sources converge to a single, centralized location. This could be fleets of autonomous cars reporting statistics back to the manufacturer, medical devices reporting patient health statistics back to a hospital, thousands of companies reporting supply chain information to a large retailer, etc.

Let’s use the example of a global retailer that wants to utilize blockchain to track the supply chain of all the goods they sell, requiring all of their tens of thousands of vendors to submit supply chain data to a centralized location where it can be tracked and processed.

Vendors send SHOP tokens with supply chain data to the Global Retailer’s NEBL address

With an NTP1 token and Neblio’s NTP1 Encrypted Metadata we can start to visualize how such a system would work. Our retailer issues a new NTP1 token called SHOP for its vendors to use to record supply chain data on the Neblio blockchain. Our retailer then distributes this token to its vendors, sending more tokens as needed. As seen in the above diagram, Lettuce Vendor uses its SHOP tokens to send supply chain information about the lettuce it produces for sale at our retailer. This information will include things like when the lettuce was grown, where it was grown, its expiration date, the quantity in the shipment, and so on. If there is ever any problem found with the lettuce, such as E. coli, the problem could be immediately be traced back to the farm where the lettuce originated and pinpoint exactly where other contaminated lettuce may be in the supply chain, possibly saving lives. Lettuce Vendor encrypts this information with Neblio’s native NTP1 Metadata Encryption, ensuring only it and our retailer can read this data.

Similarly our Electronics Vendor sends supply chain data to our retailer, using the SHOP token, as does the Clothing Vendor, and so on, all using Neblio’s NTP1 Encrypted Metadata to ensure that no one other than them and our Retailer can read this data, not even the other vendors that are also sending data.

The end result of this setup is that each vendor can permanently store data on the Neblio blockchain encrypted in such a way that no vendor can read any of the other vendor’s data streams, but our retailer can read ALL of the data streams submitted by all vendors. All of this work happens behind the scenes, each vendor simply needs to send SHOP tokens with their supply chain data to our retailer and enable metadata encryption, that’s it. Decryption of each individual transaction from each vendor happens automatically for our retailer and they are able to receive, read and process all of the data in a highly-secure way.

Once again, the possibilities of a setup like this are limitless and unique to Neblio’s blockchain, no one else can do this, and no one makes it this easy. The exact same setup could be used in an example where hundreds of thousands of medical devices such as pace makers securely report health data back to a hospital using the Neblio blockchain. Due to NTP1 Encrypted Metadata, each patient’s data is securely encrypted in a way that it cannot be read by any others, however the hospital in this example is able to receive, read and process the data from ALL patient devices.