Topl LLC, a distributed ledger blockchain-as-a-service ecosystem for supply chain tracking and management, today announced $3 million in seed funding.

The company said the round, led by Mercury Fund, will help provide more sustainable and accountable practices for companies. Topl is a women-led, Houston-based company founded in 2017 that has developed a purpose-built blockchain ecosystem to provide ethical and sustainable business practices for company supply chains. It does so by delivering supply chain tracking from procurement, refinement, packaging, distribution, retail and sales.

Blockchain technology can be used to track products in a supply chain by tagging individual materials as they are produced and certified by authorities and guarantors, meaning that they can be proven to be ethically sourced. This is done because blockchain technology records information about those materials as transactions to the blockchain as data and distributes it as a ledger between numerous peers. Those copies then act to make the system tamperproof, so if any one copy changes, it can be compared to all the others, showing that it’s been faked.

An abundance of information can be stored in a blockchain from source information, such as who pulled a mineral from the ground, where it was gathered, how much was gathered, impurities present, how much water was used, how many beans were in a bag, how heavy crate of bauxite or even how cold it was inside a refrigerated truck when it left a facility. As a result, a blockchain can become an environmental or ethical snapshot of any number of data points.

For example, Topl currently powers the supply chain of Right Origins, an ethical supplier of slave labor-free chocolate. The key mission of Right Origins is for farmers to have co-ownership of their products they help produce, by tracking the product shipped on the blockchain to refinement with Topl, 80% of the profits can be shared with farmers, resulting in up to five times more income to farmers than other products.

“Bringing transparency to causes dedicated to environmental and social good has never been more important,” Topl Chief Executive Kim Raath. “We are building a modern blockchain for a world where purpose and profit go hand-in-hand.”

Topl also partnered with LuDiem LLC, to power a precious gems and metals tracking application that provides blockchain traceability through the blockchain for mines, distributors and retailers to securely and effectively capture the journey of their products from mine to customer. Others in the diamond and mineral industry have done similarly including, for example De Beers and JD.com Inc. and Everledger Ltd.

According to data gathered by consulting company McKinsey, there is a positive link between environmental, social and governance performance and how a business affects the daily lives of people. Using a blockchain communities and companies can make verifiable claims about historical data, which reveals information about social and environmental impact of supply chain management because it was recorded in the ledger.

In addition, the certification of the products would have also been recorded in the ledger as it was pulled out of the ground, picked from the tree, sheared from the animal, meaning that ecological and human impact can be measured, from water usage for crops to pollution through the production line to transportation emissions.

“Topl’s track-and-trace solution appeals to so many core industries, from healthcare to agriculture to energy,” said Manolo Sánchez, former chairman and chief executive of BBVA Compass and a member of Topl’s board. “Anyone who needs to ensure transparency, efficiency and sustainability would benefit from their technology.”

Photo: Pixabay