Introduction — Forests cover approximately 30% of the planet and the ecosystems they create play an essential role in supporting life on earth. They account for 75% of the gross primary productivity of the Earth’s biosphere and contain 80% of the Earth’s plant biomass. However, deforestation is clearing Earth’s forests on a massive scale. In 2010, the global total for reported wood removal was 3.4 billion m3, which does not take into account the amount of wood removed illegally. According to the FAO’s State of the World’s Forests Report in 2011, the amount of sawn logs removed and used for paper products was 853 million m3. And the demand for wood and paper products is expected to increase as developing countries industrialize, which will only put more pressure on forest ecosystems.

Use-case — Let us take a look at businesses and their paper usage. Companies send documents and payslips to each employee monthly. If we take for example a company with 950 employees. When sending payslips, memos and contracts the company would use more than 1.300 envelopes as well as 3.000 sheets of paper strictly for transaction purposes. This translates to 120 trees per year and more than 8.84 tons of CO2 emissions. To better comprehend the scale let us compare this to a company with 10.000 employees. They would need 1.273 trees every year solely for document transfer and employee payments. A great deal of paper, however, is recycled so the numbers of trees needed to supply businesses may vary from country to country. Nevertheless, deforestation presents a great problem in today’s society.

Blockchain eDelivery Protocol — Blockchain eDelivery has significant advantages, comparing to traditional eDelivery. It is based on a distributed model where the electronic data and documents exchange process runs between blockchain wallets, where private and public cryptographic keys are used for transaction authentication. Blockchain eDelivery is a protocol that allows its users to exchange and safely store sensitive digital assets such as data or documents among each other without any intermediaries. 4thtech eDelivery protocol is Blockchain-based multiple wallets and document management system capable of: (1) connecting senders and receivers by executing document exchange; (2) performing eDelivery based on the current EU legislation, and; (3) archiving secure encrypted data storage. Designed and build based on Blockchain-technology, tested on KOVAN network and implemented on ETHEREUM main net in Q3 2018. The second 4thtech product implementation is on the Slovenian National Blockchain Testing Infrastructure called SI-Chain, which enables testing of existing and new blockchain applications for the public and private sector. SI-Chain was established by the innovative technology provider company Hashnet in cooperation with Telemach, the telecommunication solutions provider, in November 2019 (Slovenia launches national test blockchain infrastructure and Slovenian Blockchain partnership | GOV.SI, n.d.). Hashnet is an innovative consensus platform which provides a novel solution to computational and communicational difficulties of maintaining large-size public distributed ledgers. (Tolar — Next-gen cryptocurrency, n.d.)

Conclusion — With this technology, document transfer and exchange can be revolutionized, not only by implementing a cost-effective digital system but also by thinking green and reducing the carbon footprint in businesses around the world.

Joins us in creating the future.

*Read more: https://the4thpillar.io/

Jan Jordan Frangeš