EY, one of the world’s largest accounting firms by volume, has partnered with Polygon to launch OpsChain Supply Chain Manager on Nightfall, a Layer 2 (L2) Ethereum blockchain which was co-developed by Polygon.
The supply chain tracking service will be hosted on Nightfall with a beta release expected today, with the service available for EY’s pre-selected partners. OpsChain represents EY’s first application for businesses to track supply chains with the use of blockchain technology. EY has also disclosed that it is also developing other use cases in partnership with Polygon.
#Polygon, in partnership with @EYnews, is launching the first-ever L2 zk live on Mainnet.Polygon Nightfall.Streaming live on @Twitter, @YouTube, and @LinkedIn.Tomorrow at 12:30 PM ET. pic.twitter.com/IQj3qacMmc
— Polygon – MATIC 💚 (@0xPolygon) May 16, 2022
OpsChain is designed to enable organizations to mint either fungible or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Nightfall’s L2 protocol. These tokens will then represent physical assets or items within a company or user’s inventory which can then be traded through the Nightfall blockchain. This system will open data and transactions to less expensive means of authentication and verification for supply chain use cases, with the Nightfall blockchain providing infrastructure for it.
The use case of blockchains for supply chain tracking has been in development for several years. However, there has been a lack of privacy-focused solutions for this use case. The OpsChain supply chain manager changes that by providing a privacy-focused solution that leverages the Nightfall protocol. This is a major step forward for the use of blockchain in supply chain management and could lead to wider adoption of the technology for this use case.
The OpsChain system is an industry first, in that it will be the first supply chain-specific dApp to utilize zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs) through Nightfall, ensuring privacy by turning actual transactional data encrypted on the blockchain.
“Managing complex operations across enterprise boundaries is a big step forward. EY OpsChain Supply Chain Manager significantly widens the breadth of use cases available for clients to consider,” shares James Canterbury, principal and blockchain leader at EY.
The OpsChain supply chain manager is a joint effort between EY and Polygon, with EY providing the application front-end while Polygon handles the blockchain back-end. The two companies have been working together since at least mid-2019, when the two first partnered to launch an Ethereum-based blockchain analytics platform. This latest project expands on that previous collaboration and marks a significant milestone in their partnership.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
