可以this startup use blockchain to brew up more sustainable coffee?

在核实所谓冲突矿物的起源背景的企业家，是指应用专业知识，密切关注世界上最广泛交易的商品之一：咖啡。跟踪这个厨房主食需要新兴技术，如的混杂blockchain,artificial intelligenceand the internet of things.

他的创业目标，bext360, is to help coffee buyers automate their dealings with fair-trade farmers, allowing them to more closely track the source and quality of the fair trade beans they’re buying while speeding up payments for local growers.

对于购房者来说，服务承诺更深层次的透明度，以及自动化的验证过程的一种方式。对于收割机和种植者 - 主要是妇女 - 服务可能意味着投资资金更容易获得，根据bext360 CEO丹尼尔·琼斯。

"We’re aiming to transform the coffee supply chain while bringing consumers and farming communities together to improve product quality, community livelihoods and the consumer coffee experience," he said in a press release launching the new company.

To achieve that aim, the startup — which emerged from stealth Tuesday with $1.2 million in venture funding led by SKS Venture Partners — is tapping into恒星在新兴经济体中使用现有的基于blockchain-交易网络。Blockchain是管理数字比特币货币交易的分布总账，虽然技术是在中心dozens of experimentsin the sustainability realm, many involving a range of供应链应用andenergy trading schemes.

Bext360’s first "product" will be a kiosk, similar to a Coinstar change collection machine, that farmers can use to sell their beans, Jones said. The system is designed to use smart image recognition technology to evaluate the crops being submitted at production facilities, drawing on machine learning software to categorize the grade, assign a price and determine the identity of the person selling it. The farmers are credited for their delivery via a mobile app.

他上心了使用中的数字支付咖啡供应链— an estimated $100 billion market worldwide — while working on a previous business focused on exporting conflict-free minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to Jones, 25 million people are directly involved in the coffee chain, many in rural, emerging countries. Reaching them is a thorny logistics issue.

“我们发现当我们这样做，我们看到了我们的P＆L和我们的成本结构，并发生了什么事情在我们身边，是我们花SG＆A的安全性及其他物流服务的30％，只是为了交通的钱到现场付手工采矿者为他们的好，来分析他们的商品，”琼斯告诉GreenBiz。“与此同时，我们总是感到惊讶，即使在刚果东部地区，我们可以得到一格信号，和大多数人即使是在小村庄，或者有些人，我应该说，在刚果的小企业，被交易的街道上用自己的手机“。

了解更多关于在模型的市场转型VERGE Hawaii, June 20-22 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Initially, bext360 will work directly with coffee buyers to place machines in communities where they have trading partners. The business model calls for its kiosks to be owned by local entrepreneurs and cooperatives, with commissions from transactions split between the banks or financial services companies managing the digital "wallet" accounts of farmers, the business hosting the collection system, and (ultimately) bext360. "They would be able to implement our technology seamlessly into their supply chain," Jones said.

The company has tested the technology at coffee plantations in Mexico and plans to run a larger pilot in California this summer, Jones said. Bext360 already has relationships with financial institutions in Congo and Rwanda, and is in discussions with an investment group interested in deploying the systems in Colombia. "Our goal is that we are going to do two of those before the end of the year," he said. "Supervised, end-to-end deployments."

Another potential impact of the technology, according to Jones, is that farmers might be able to command a higher price for their harvests because the system’s artificial intelligence software will use image recognition to assess the grades of their beans more accurately than the current manual methods.

"The way the NGOs are working, and the people who monitor that fair trade for the companies themselves, it’s very antiquated," he said. "In some cases, it’s as antiquated as carbon copies: green, blue, yellow pieces of paper. With our technology, combined with Stellar, we’re able to know exactly where every cherry came from in that batch, every farmer that contributed to that batch. In that instant, we can say, 'The fair trade payment is now this,' and literally click one button, and suddenly all those phones would beep with their payments."