The BNSF Railway Company has joined with more than 200 other freight transportation companies to create blockchain standards for the logistics industry.
The news makes BNSF the first Class I railroad to join what is being called the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA). Blockchain is a sort of ledger, a list of ever-growing records (blocks) that become resistant to modification through cryptography, yet to which all members of a particular blockchain have unrestricted access. Each member, or record, holds a part of the chain’s whole information. The design makes it so that 51 percent of the blockchain’s participants are required to make any changes to the blockchain information as a whole.
“Blockchain technology has the potential to change several aspects of the transportation industry and it is important that the industry comes together to align around a set of standards,” Muru Murugappan, BNSF vice president of technology services and chief information officer, said. “We are excited to help drive those standards forward as a member of BiTA.”
BiTa itself is hailing BNSF’s participation as a forward step for customer supply chains. Together, both BNSF and its fellows in BiTA will determine exactly what data goes into this freight transportation blockchain, as well as how that data is formatted, structured and in what cases it would be utilized.