During the past months, we experienced that a lot of people in the crypto world don’t really know what GS1 is, and why our partnership with them is crucial.

As trading goods became global, the need for standardization had been emerging. Companies all around the world managed their products, partners, locations, but they needed to “speak a common language” to be able to utilize those data sets efficiently.

Regional standars were used for long, but there were too many of them to be effective. As the motto of GS1 tells, companies needed a “Global Language of Business”.

The first product with a UPC barcode (1974)

GS1, a non-profit organization, with presence in 112 locations around the world, successfully managed to work out standards, and let existing standards (UPC, EAN) to incorporate its structure. Several GS1 standards were also incorporated by ISO.

Today, GS1 standards like GTIN, GLN, EPCIS, or the GS1 barcodes are used by millions of companies, the GS1 barcodes are scanned more than six billion times every day.

The promise of blockchain technology is the ability to provide automated, globally scalable traceability data ledgers.

Every supply chain solution provider, which intends to operate globally, needs standard identification, which is familiar to companies from Australia to Zimbabwe.

Despite many people tend to believe, there will not be a “winner takes it all” moment of blockchain based solutions. Just like in other areas of technology, there will be several providers. If these providers want to provide a global solution, they need to connect to each other.

Eventually IBM, Vechain, Waltonchain, Ambrosus, OriginTrail, Devery, TE-FOOD and the others will be forced by their customers to create gateways to exchange data. And the common language of their connection will be based on GS1 standards.