“it was so clear to me that being able to track where this came from and to ensure that it is safe to consume can literally save lives” — Joel Semczyszyn

Even with the legalization of cannabis in Canada now in full tilt, the legal and jurisdictional waters for weed are still murky at best, and complicated at worst. The only other comparison that comes to mind seems to traverse an even more contentious ocean — the blockchain. For the vast majority, navigating the space of even one of these domains can be enough to make your head spin. That is unless you’re Joel Semczyszyn; then you decide to do both at the same time.

A Winner of BotanIQ’s 2018 Power 10 Series “Disruptor,” and “Rising Star,” are undoubtedly well-earned titles for Joel as the helmsman (CEO) and Co-Founder of Rubikon Blockchain Corporation. Rubikons flagship product CBN combines RFID and blockchain technologies to provide seamless compliance, surface real-time business intelligence and is changing the way we track and measure the quality of cannabis. Never one to waste a minute, we were lucky to reach Joel in his Vancouver office.

In his own words, Rubikon is “an end-to-end product information platform for the legalized cannabis industry.” Similar (and yet very different) to seed-to-sale solutions that presently exist Rubikon takes all the relevant information and logs it to the blockchain to bring unmatched data security and transparency to the industry.

JOEL: “ The benefit of doing this is for consumer protection. Numerous recalls have already happened in the space that has been worth over ten million dollars. Additionally, it is a benefit for government oversight, and this comes of particular interests when it comes to the International export of regulated cannabis.

For example, we are in discussions with some EU governments regarding using our platform for the import of cannabis. Their primary concerns are with product traceability and quality. With our system, we’re gathering all of this product information through the applications that we have developed and are developing, and since we have logged all of that information to the blockchain, we can track it from the moment of material procurement to the moment in which it is consumed. We are able to provide an immutable chain of custody and record of provenance regarding product information for our clients and governments to rely on."

It’s been a hell of a ride. Along with Co-Founders, Nicholas Wong and James Demello, Joel and the Rubikon team are making a serious impact in the legal cannabis industry. But, what makes the company unique comparatively to its competition, is its origins. While Many products and companies are formed out of a need in a market, Rubikons creation came out of raw necessity.

JOEL: “ I’m sad to say this, but it came from a bit of a crisis. One of the co-founders of the company's wife has a condition that she treats with cannabis and she must source this cannabis medicinally to be able to live a regular life. Unfortunately, the cannabis she received could not prove precisely where it came from, and there was a situation in which she ingested some of the supposedly medicinal cannabis and instead of helping her it actually made things substantially worse. She was left with medicine that couldn’t keep her seizures at Bay. Fortunately, things are better now, but this incident made it so clear to me that being able to track where this came from and to ensure that it is safe to consume can literally save lives. Then, we can take that a step further, and once we started exploring this idea, we realized we’d be able to create custom cannabinoid profiles for each person that would be using our system to be able to deliver ideal or potentially perfect products to them there’s there are much larger ramifications to this.”