Traceability reality check: blockchain pilots consolidate around verified data capture

After years of hype, supply chain traceability projects converge on a simpler truth: the ledger matters less than verifying what gets written to it.

A review of 60 blockchain traceability pilots in apparel, minerals and food found the surviving deployments share a focus on verified data capture — scanned transaction certificates, geotagged harvest records, third-party attestation — rather than novel ledger architecture.

Practitioners now describe distributed ledgers as one storage option among several, with the compliance value residing in evidence quality and chain-of-custody discipline.