Blockchain Used to Track Marijuana Legitimacy

The United States is one of the biggest markets for cannabis, with the plant being legal in almost all of its states. A cannabis nursery in California has turned to blockchain and smart contracts to certify the originality of its medicinal plants. The smart contract will verify clones on the blockchain to establish their authenticity and genetic lineage. 

On the 13th of January 2023, a cannabis nursery known as Mendocino Clone Corporation was named in a cooperation announcement from the EMTRI project and tech firm Global Compliance Applications. All young plants or clones with a batch certificate will have their capabilities of harnessing their mother plants verified on the blockchain. Cannabis nurseries are institutions that specialize in plant genetics, producing clones, baby plants, and seeds for wholesale distribution.

According to the nursery, the move allows it to document the origination phases of a cannabis plant’s course to becoming a premium product for consumers based on the weight of its flowers. For each clone batch, this Bitsoft 360 AI review mentioned that a self-generated smart contract is certified and provides each baby plant with its unique identity block, created by the nursery and linked to its Ethereum-based blockchain. The nursery’s clients, including commercial farms and retail dispensaries, can use this to authenticate the authenticity of their clones and their genetic lineage.

It is said that the first round of batch certificate clones will be available starting in the first quarter of 2023. For rewards and better rates, licensed cultivators who acquire Mendocino clones will get access to EMTRI tokens (EMT) for participating in the blockchain project. In November 2021, EMT was launched to provide rewards for project participants. EMT is not listed on any centralized exchange or crypto market data platforms, and the tokens can be distributed on Uniswap for USDC or staked for further yield. The co-founder of EMTRI Corporation, Scott Zarnes, noted: “We are excited to be at the forefront of the cannabis industry becoming the first in the United States to adopt this cutting-edge technology in this manner.” 

Blockchain can be defined as a digital ledger that records and tracks data and physical assets from one point to another in the supply chain. And information on the blockchain is cryptographically secure and tamper-proof, meaning no one can change data once it has been entered and verified. Blockchain technology can be used in the cannabis industry by verifying product origin, compliance, seed verification, proof of ownership, cultivating and manufacturing processes, transactional information, location tracking, and the paper trail of the supply chain.

The need for transparency and trust in the cannabis supply chain has grown as people want their products and packaging contaminant free, with supply chain partners and customers wanting more information about industry practices and products. Blockchain adoption is increasing and could be the next game-changing technology for the cannabis industry. It has been proven that blockchain-powered platforms offer potential benefits from breeders with new genetics to consumers shopping dispensary shelves.

According to Cannabis attorney Braden Perry, people should think of blockchain as a digital ledger that contains a series of unchangeable records consisting of blocks, storing a wide range of product-specific and transactional information that includes the time and date, for specific actions, product origin and process steps or product inputs. 

Unlike traditional databases, a blockchain ledger is decentralised, and the information is stored across multiple locations. Data is protected, and once a block is created, it cannot be changed; new data or corrections to previous entries result in new blocks, while the original block remains constant. “Automated ledger ensures that information cannot be altered from either an intentional standpoint, such as a forgery or other type of wrongdoing or an unintentional standpoint, such as an error,” Perry said. ”From a seed-to-sale perspective, especially in today’s regulatory environment in the legal marijuana industry, the recordkeeping and reporting are very complex,” Perry added. 

In 2018, Lucid Green, a cannabis supply chain platform, was launched with a blockchain-empowered product QR code aimed at brand-to-consumer and brand-to-budtender education as well as marketing and a token-based rewards program. The platform received resistance from brands, who assumed that blockchain and cryptocurrency were synonymous. According to the CEO and co-founder of Lucid Green, Larry Levy, people need to be educated about the misconceptions about blockchain and blockchain networks in terms of how they work and how secure it is to use blockchain.

In January 2022, a Las Vegas-based glass pipe maker launched a series of bong-related non-fungible tokens (NFTs) featuring celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Rita Marley. The use of blockchain with cannabis isn’t new, and as blockchain’s benefits become better known, blockchain-empowered and cannabis-related products and services will grow.