Regarding an interesting counter-example to blockchain hype, check out Omnichains:

https://www.omnichains.com/

They initially argued that they could provide an unrivaled form of transparency because they kept all the data on the blockchain. But now I'm working for a customer of their's, and I realize there is no blockchain. I believe they now run a standard service backed up by a standard SQL database.

But look at their marketing:

"Omnichain has earned the prestigious recognition for its innovative solution that is helping brands and retailers create more transparent, connected supply chains and drive intelligent process automation."

Or check out this blog post:

"Lack of visibility is not a new problem. Supply chains have long dealt with fragmented management systems and data siloes—barriers that limit transparency, efficiency, and collaboration between stakeholders. The pandemic only magnified these challenges.

...Moving forward, end-to-end visibility solutions—made possible by technologies like blockchain—will be instrumental in helping businesses proactively identify risks and pivot accordingly. So going back to suppliers, manufacturers can use blockchain to connect and share data with their suppliers. With accurate, real-time visibility into available resources upstream, they can quickly identify alternate sources if needed, and ultimately prevent costly production delays."

I have the impression this company started off hoping to use the blockchain to create a more transparent supply chain. I also have the impression they have pivoted away from that vision.

And that's fine, of course. I'm not criticizing them. A startup starts with one hypothesis, tests it, and then pivots when that first hypothesis fails. This is good management.

But I think, in a small way, it indicates what is happening with those startups that got started when blockchain hype was at its peak. Two or three years ago you could get money from investors by promising to revolutionize an industry by using the blockchain. And now it's turning out that the blockchain is less useful than was supposed for creating new kinds of transparency.

As it turns out, supply chain transparency is limited by each companies unwillingness to share it weaknesses, it's lack of cash flow, it's lack of inventory, and it's slow shipping times. Blockchain can not fix any of those things.

And as I've said elsewhere, with these industrial applications of blockchain, I've yet to see a service that could not have been done more easily with a standard framework (Ruby On Rails or Django or Symfony or NodeJS) sitting in front of a standard SQL database.

A final point: this is my first time working on a big retail/warehouse project, and I am absolutely shocked at the primitive technology that is currently in use. Most of these companies lack APIs, which, in the year 2021, I find shocking. For our warehouse, for instance, there is no way to do an API call to find how much of a particular item is still in inventory. And this clearly limits how much the blockchain is able to change anything.

And this is especially wild: I've spoken to the good folks at Omnichains, and they tell me that they do not have an API. Rather, they can send us a CSV file at regular times, but that is it. In the year 2021!

Just amazing.