Blockchain-Based Wine Supply Chain Software for FIDÉwine

Summary

ScienceSoft designed and developed blockchain-based wine supply chain management software for an EU-based tech startup, FIDÉwine. With ScienceSoft’s help, FIDÉwine managed to bring its innovative solution to the market in only 9 months.

About FIDÉwine

FIDÉwine, a French supply chain technology startup, was founded in 2022 with the mission to promote transparency and combat counterfeiting in the premium wine industry. FIDÉwine wanted to introduce a one-of-a-kind solution that would streamline multi-tier wine supply chain planning and give wine producers, distributors, and consumers full visibility into the wine provenance and chain of custody, ensuring product authenticity at every supply chain stage. FIDÉwine opted to build its software on blockchain to offer a complete and tamper-resistant record of wine transactions. Giving each bottle of wine a digital passport in the form of a tradeable non-fungible token (NFT) would facilitate en primeur wine sales and enable supply control at the bottle level.

FIDÉwine had a clear business idea but doubted its technical feasibility and did not have the internal development skills to turn the high-level concept into a successful product. The company sought a reliable technology partner to aid in planning and implementing its blockchain-based supply chain management (SCM) solution. ScienceSoft came across as a seasoned startup consultancy and blockchain development provider with 12 years of experience in creating custom SCM software.

End-to-End Development of Blockchain-Based Wine Supply Chain Software

Discovery stage

ScienceSoft’s blockchain consultants started by studying FIDÉwine’s business idea and devised a tailored discovery plan. To obtain a complete picture of FIDÉwine’s expectations, end-user needs, and the competitive environment, our experts did the following:

• Interviewed FIDÉwine’s stakeholders to elicit detailed business and technical requirements for the wine SCM solution.
• Discovered the needs and expectations of all major software user segments: winemakers, brokers, distributors, shops, restaurants, and consumers.
• Explored the supply chain participants’ business processes to grasp the industry-specific challenges and define value-adding opportunities. ScienceSoft’s business analyst and architect arranged a set of onsite sessions with FIDÉwine’s prospective customer, a Bordeaux-based Grand Cru winemaker, to inspect the day-to-day wine manufacturing, selling, and order fulfillment workflows.
• Researched the wine supply chain software market trends and studied competitor offerings to sharpen FIDÉwine’s unique selling proposition (USP).

Having analyzed the collected data, ScienceSoft composed a detailed requirements specification for the blockchain-based wine SCM solution and mapped the scope of project tasks. Our architect introduced several architecture design options with different tech stacks to give FIDÉwine an idea of the possible ways to implement its software. After comparing the costs and benefits of each option, ScienceSoft’s expert pointed out the most feasible approach in the context of FIDÉwine’s requirements and resource constraints.

After the technical design was agreed upon, FIDÉwine received a comprehensive development plan that included a resource allocation plan, collaboration flows, cost and time estimates, and risk mitigation steps. ScienceSoft’s consultants also crafted a market entry strategy for FIDÉwine to maximize customer acquisition and drive quick payback.

Development stage

Considering FIDÉwine’s business priorities and expectations regarding the product release timelines, ScienceSoft suggested splitting the development project into two major stages:

• Stage I. Delivering role-specific functionality for en primeur wine sales, order fulfillment management, and blockchain-based supply chain traceability. This way, winemakers (who are the first party in the wine supply chain and the primary product audience) can start using the blockchain SCM solution at the beginning of the nearest en primeur season, ensuring traceability for the future supply. For FIDÉwine, this also means the opportunity to generate revenue quicker.
• Stage II. Adding functionality for bottled wine tokenization, stock control, and instant transfer of bottle digital passports during in-store wine selling. With this functionality, reputable wine shops and restaurants can provide consumers with proof of origin and ownership documentation for each purchased wine bottle. Attracting the retail user segment gives FIDÉwine an additional revenue stream.

ScienceSoft assigned a fully managed team to handle the development of FIDÉwine’s blockchain-based wine SCM solution end to end. The team included a project manager, a business analyst, a solution architect, a UX/UI designer, three PHP developers, a Golang developer, two React developers, an iOS developer, an Android developer, a QA engineer, a DevOps engineer, and a data engineer.

ScienceSoft’s PM suggested following the Scrum model with one-week sprints at the start of the project. This would enable agile task planning and quick feedback from FIDÉwine, ultimately driving a faster development pace and ensuring deliverable alignment with FIDÉwine’s priorities.

ScienceSoft’s UX/UI designer created clear user journeys and a UI kit for role-based interfaces to consistently communicate FIDÉwine’s brand. Working together with our data engineer, the designer created an intuitive UI for analytical dashboards and reports to simplify the delivery of supply chain insights to FIDÉwine’s customers.

Cooperating closely with FIDÉwine’s stakeholders, ScienceSoft’s engineers delivered the MVP of blockchain SCM software focused on en primeur wine in just 2.5 months. The team proceeded to evolve the MVP into a fully featured solution with major releases every 2 weeks.

During the subsequent 4 months, FIDÉwine obtained the ready-to-use SCM product comprising the following key components:

• A blockchain database storing an immutable record of multi-party supply chain transactions and events. ScienceSoft built the database on Polygon, an Ethereum sidechain network offering lower transactional cost at equal performance, to help FIDÉwine optimize blockchain expenses.
• PHP back end that automates wine order processing, collaborative order fulfillment planning and execution, creation of digital passports for bottles, and supply chain control workflows, including wine tracking at the bottle, carton, and pallet levels (using QR codes, NFC, and RFID). The server side includes four go-to APIs to integrate the solution with SCM systems of B2B customers.
• Blockchain back end that introduces an asset tokenization mechanism to convert bottle passports to blockchain NFTs, as well as Golang smart contracts to automate NFT transfer between the parties and data entry in the blockchain. To help FIDÉwine cut the blockchain transaction processing costs, ScienceSoft’s engineers coded smart contracts to enforce transactions when the gas is minimized.
• A data analytics engine to analyze, forecast, and report supply chain variables (sales, finance, fulfillment, etc.). FIDÉwine planned to add AI-supported analytics later on. ScienceSoft implemented analytics on Amazon QuickSight business intelligence service since it can be easily integrated with a range of AWS AI services.
• AWS cloud storage to store supply chain metadata like bottle images, delivery instructions, and shipping documents. Storing large files in the cloud will help FIDÉwine avoid costly on-chain data storage.
• Role-specific web interfaces for wine supply chain participants (winemakers, brokers, distributors, etc.) to use the blockchain SCM platform.
• iOS and Android apps for field workers (wineyard, warehouse, shop personnel) to report supply chain events and manage wine digital passport transfers on the go.
• Native mobile apps for consumers to verify wine provenance and manage the digital passport portfolio. Since FIDÉwine focused on premium wine products, ScienceSoft suggested building native iOS and Android apps to ensure a top-of-the-line experience for demanding B2C clientele.
• An admin panel for FIDÉwine to manage user accounts and user access rights to wine SCM data, track due and received payments, and analyze user behavior.

ScienceSoft employed proven coding frameworks, pre-built UI components, and cloud services to speed up development and ensure high software quality. The blockchain part was first built and tested locally on Ganache, an Ethereum blockchain environment simulator, to prevent costly smart contract adjustments in the running Polygon network. ScienceSoft’s team conducted automated functional tests in parallel with development and used manual testing for smart contracts to ensure there were no logic gaps or code vulnerabilities that could compromise the accuracy and security of FIDÉwine’s solution.

In the course of development, FIDÉwine requested a number of functional changes that affected the logic of access provisioning, wine passport traceability, and price analytics. ScienceSoft’s team quickly adapted to changing requirements and managed to address FIDÉwine’s requests without delays or budget overruns.

FIDÉwine received the documented code with test reports every month and got biweekly project reports outlining the accomplished tasks, efforts, and expenses. To promote complete cooperation transparency, ScienceSoft’s PM gave FIDÉwine access to the project tracking tools so that our Client could control the development progress in real time.

As of May 2024, ScienceSoft has delivered the ready-to-launch en primeur wine SCM solution and is working on the Stage II tasks.

Key Outcomes for FIDÉwine

• A fully functional blockchain wine supply chain solution delivered in 9 months.
• Reduced project investments thanks to ScienceSoft’s advice on optimal solution design and pragmatic project planning.
• Possibility to cut solution maintenance expenses and gas fees thanks to the cost-effective tech stack.
• An opportunity to drive high user adoption thanks to the solution’s role-specific functionality and convenient UX and UI.
• Minimized risks of startup failure thanks to the well-researched market entry strategy proposed by ScienceSoft’s consultants.

Techs and Tools

• Back end: PHP Symfony 6 framework, Golang, Polygon, Ganache.
• Front end: React.js, Material UI.
• iOS: Swift, SwiftUI, R.swift, MVVM, Combine, REST API.
• Android: Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Material, Jetpack Navigation, Jetpack ViewModel, Kotlin flow, Coroutines, Dagger/Hilt, OkHttp/Retrofit, New Relic, Mochi, Firebase.
• Cloud services: Amazon RDS, Amazon SNS, Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Amazon ECR, Amazon EKS, Amazon QuickSight, AWS IAM, Firebase Cloud Messaging.
• Collaboration and project management: Jira, Confluence.