Digitized supply chain solutions offer no means of verification for reported data. Data can be manipulated or falsified by any actor along the supply chain. It requires no stretch of the imagination to understand that buyers and sellers along supply chains may have anti-aligned economic incentives. In coffee supply chains, actors may misreport data on yield or payments. Digitized records alone cannot inspire trust along a supply chain without sharing the entirety of contextual information. Blockchain technology enables users to selectively unveil information without context. It captures not the data itself, but the proof of that data, which any claim can be checked against. Supply chain data relies on identifying those who enter data on record, in order to help build accountability into their systems. Smallholder farmers, however, may not feel comfortable reporting data if they are worried about repercussions. While a digital approach can provide for anonymized data entry, this greatly reduces the ability to verify the information recorded. The World Economic Forum, in chorus with many resounding voices from the tech community, is pushing blockchain technology as a potent solution to this major supply chain problem. Though blockchain technology has been making waves in the world of finance and economics for years, its influence has yet to reach maturity across the broader use-cases for which its potential is routinely touted, especially with regard to applications in a development context. Blockchain technology offers what is known as trustless transparency. The word ‘trustless’ implies that the technology doesn’t require users to trust the parties involved in a transaction. This quality eliminates the need for a middle-man to carry out a transaction, diffusing trust by cutting out traditional powers who may, in some contexts, be deemed unaccountable, like banks or governments. Instead, the technology itself acts as the verifier of authenticity and the mediator of the exchange. 8