The Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) uses blockchain to simplify global trade

GSBN is a platform developed by the Global Shipping Business Network in collaboration with Oracle, Microsoft, AntChain, and Alibaba Cloud. Its mission is to modernize the global trade and shipping industry by digitizing key processes and transactions. Utilizing Hyperledger Fabric as its foundational technology, GSBN aims to enhance operational efficiency across shipping, trade finance, and supply chain management. The platform replaces cumbersome, paper-based systems with streamlined, digital solutions, significantly reducing the time and costs associated with cargo release and other trade operations. GSBN also focuses on recruiting a diverse range of shipping lines and terminals to its platform, thereby fostering collaboration even among competing market participants.

In summary, GSBN serves as a comprehensive digital solution designed to transform the global trade landscape, offering increased efficiency, transparency, and collaboration for all stakeholders.

Overall, the platforms served 10,000 customers and allowed them to reduce cargo release time from days to hours and to reduce port congestion and pollution. The platform can serve 100 transactions per seconds and already handled more than 1 million shipments.

“We chose to join Hyperledger Foundation because it brings together resources and infrastructure required for open-source software blockchain projects” says GSBN’s CTO.

Below is an illustration of how the platform works:

Image source: Hyperledger’s website

• Modernize the shipping industry with digital transformation
• Simplify global trade and supply chain
• Remove barriers to collaboration among competing market participants
• Paperless, efficient, and transparent blockchain-based solution
• Provides a single, immutable source and record of data
• Harnesses trusted data directly from the shipping industry via GSBN
• Improves end-to-end operational efficiency and transparency

From GSBN’s CTO: “We need a new digital utility infrastructure ‘grid’ to enable data sharing. As a digital utility infrastructure, GSBN’s goal isn’t profit, but rather increasing global trade powered by the platform.”

Future features for the platform include the expansion of:

• The Cargo Release solutions, a solution to simplify the release of cargos: “By eliminating the need for paper, Cargo Release simplifies data exchange
  and shortens operation time among parties with real-time updates. This cuts the time for cargo to be document ready for release from days to hours.”
• The Trade Finance solutions, a solution to improve the financing process for banks: “Consent collection offers a new level of protection by allowing banks to get trusted data directly from the source. This facilitates approval processes and makes trade finance more accessible to SMEs.”
• The : Electronic Bill of Lading (eBL), a solution to securely and accurately digitalize bill of lading and enable all channel to access real-time data: “Like other blockchain networks, GSBN provides APIs so others can build applications on our operating system. Our goal is for different industry participants and application builders to contribute to this digital transformation of global trade.

Project is live and is still developing. Research by Alexandre on November 2023.