Basic components – a term that sounds very cryptic and general at first. But what many people don’t know is that basic components are the foundation for innovation and for the infrastructure of the future. Just as a computer is made of many indivi- dual components, the open source-based future also needs many individual block- chain basic components to become one big picture. 

In the future, companies, public authorities and even citizens will not be able to avoid the platform economy. Crowdsourcing, open source or open innovation are the big growth drivers for logistics. Within the framework of open ecosystems, all players in logistics will participate in platforms. To this end, data must be genere- rated, contracts and payment negotiations must be automated, and the organi- zation of logistics processes must be simplified. The basis is formed by individual components that can be connected on an event-driven basis. This is exactly what blockchain basic components do. 

Basic components are not geared to specific use cases, but enable one or more general application functions. As generic building blocks, they can be used as needed in different use cases and together they form a modular system for the blockchain-based IT architecture. Blockchain Europe is making headway with an initial three basic components. Soon, the components will be made available as open source and can then form the cornerstone for your blockchain-based IT infrastructure. Further basic components are being planned. 

The basic components as an overview

If all logistics players cooperate via platforms in the future, a lot of data, often sensitive data, will be exchanged. To ensure data sovereignty in the net-work, Blockchain Europe is currently building the authorization module as a blockchain base component. With its help, access rights can be controlled on a project-specific basis. Each actor in-volved in a process can be assigned a set of roles as needed, defining the actors’s access, write and read rights. In this way, access rights are stored in a classic role rights system and can be assigned to or revoked from users  individually.  

In blockchain-based settlement, a token stands for a piece of information, a document or a specific  company asset. This is stored digitally and managed by the token manager. Examples of use can be found in logistics, such as the safekeeping of transport documents (electronic waybill, export accompanying documents, transport documents, etc.), the tracking of events and information along the supply chain by means of photo documentation, or the transfer of assets between different companies. Depending on the use caseboth entire data sets and individual documents (e.g. XML, PDF) can be stored on the blockchain using tokens.