Volkswagen Joins IBM-Backed Blockchain Platform for Cobalt Supply Chains
Volkswagen is joining a -powered scheme to ensure the cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries for its electric vehicles is responsibly sourced. The carmaker announced its involvement in a on April 18.
The German-headquartered company hopes the technology, built on the Platform, will “increase efficiency, sustainability and transparency in global mineral supply chains.”
In smartphones to cars, cobalt has become a crucial component for consumer products, but according to an IBM , two-thirds of global production comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an estimated two million miners face “profound challenges including human rights violations.” In 2017, Reuters that some cobalt mines use child labor and are controlled by insurgent militias.
The new platform, powered by the Linux Foundation’s Fabric, aims to ensure major companies can “trace and record the flow of minerals across the supply chain in near real-time.” In describing how a permanent, secure record will help Volkswagen meet responsible sourcing requirements, the company’s announcement adds:
“Traditionally, miners, smelters and consumer brands had to rely on third-party audits and laborious manual processes to establish compliance with generally accepted industry standards.”
LG Chem and the Ford Motor Company are among the other multinational corporations to have so far. It is hoped the group will expand to include companies from the aerospace, consumer electronics and sectors in future.
The solution, built in partnership with MineHub Technologies, was first announced in January.As Cointelegraph at the time, registered manufacturers stand to benefit from their involvement too, as the platform’s founders believe it will help improve logistics while reducing costs.
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It’s been just over one month since we first introduced Essentia at Devcon3, that seems like an eternity between new forks, market growth, and media coverage. But what is the most exciting is for us to finally introduce Essentia to the public today! Here we go!
After extensive researches and starting as an underground project in Amsterdam a long time ago, Essentia is now the framework to create, store, access and operate your decentralized digital life.
From one seed. In short, Essentia is a modular framework that empowers the user with the full ownership and control over his identities, data, wallets, and assets, dApps and to operate in the decentralized web easily, anywhere and from any device.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the features of Essentia.
Logins
If you are like us then you are sick of having to re-enter passwords, save backups and change devices to access your decentralized and centralized accounts. Having one seed grants you instant access to all of your personal and business-critical logins.
Identities
This is a big one: we let you take control of your identities with custom profile settings. You decide what details to share and whether you would prefer to be anonymous, pseudo-anonymous or KYC compliant within your identities.
Multiple wallets and multi-currency
In one place? Surely not. Yup, no need to bounce between multiple wallets. We have integrated with your favorite currencies like bitcoin, Ethereum, ERC20 Tokens, IOTA, Litecoin, and Ripple. You can also monitor cold storage assets that are not present in our framework, accessible only by you, all through your seed.
Storage
We have integrated with powerful decentralized storage systems as Swarm, Ipfs, Storj, giving you access to the new backbone of digital storage. Where data is encrypted, persistent and censorship-resistant.
Exchanges
We integrate and partnered with Ether Delta and Flyp.Me to unlock your decentralized prosperity. Multi-chain minimizes downtime and secures your assets across secure, decentralized networks.
Any platform. Any device.
Essentia works on any platform. You can access it via browser, desktop app, mobile app, or command line interface
Integration
The team report that they’ve already successfully integrated into Essentia: Ethereum, bitcoin, and IOTA, as well as Status.im, EtherDelta, IPFS, Swarm, Storj, Flyp.me, Aragon and announced to integrate several others projects in the coming weeks.
Wrapping up
It’s exciting times ahead for all of us which is why we are so happy to introduce Essentia! We want everyone to make use of the value of storing, accessing and operating your decentralized world from one seed, on any platform, at any time.
This is only the beginning of a new adventure, and of a series of article to deepen into Essentia and how it can be useful in users lives.
See you with the next articles and updates! All Your Data. Truly Yours. In Just One Seed.
has been an underground project in Amsterdam created by two early bitcoin adopter Matteo Gianpietro Zago and Mirco Mongiardino.
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What do you think of Essentia’s platform? Do you like the idea of being able to manage all of your digital assets and identification data from one place? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of Essentia
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