Tracing Components in e-Supply Chain at Open Marketplace using Lightweight Consensus and Semi-Fungible Tokens

In the present era, blockchain technology has been widely used to facilitate transparency and mitigate issues related to counterfeiting and piracy in the electronic supply chain (eSC). However, present state-of-the-art solutions do not provide sufficient information about tracking of the components in the eSC to users, who do not know about the technicalities of blockchain. We provide an approach to this using a token-based solution. Moreover, the existing models are expensive in terms of time, power, and energy, which we try to reduce by formulating a lightweight consensus algorithm. For this, we use a modified byzantine fault-tolerant mechanism that is more secure, less energy, and more power-consuming than the conventional RAFT consensus strategy, which most of the existing works adhere to. Finally, we introduce an open marketplace having a public possession record. This provides a one-stop solution for all queries of the users, related to the e-supply chain and its products. Such type of informative open marketplace is also not focused on existing works. For enacting these, we adhere to semi-fungible tokens, which are unique identification codes that are stored in a blockchain, and transferred between users via the blockchain to confirm ownership and ensure traceability. Experimentation has been performed on Hyperledger Fabric. During experimentation and result analysis, we obtain higher stabilization and fault tolerance than existing strategies. Additionally, we observe that fewer communication bits are required in our strategy, which implies that fewer messages need to be transferred between the nodes and an increase in throughput and reduction of latency of the network is obtained.