Today the agribusiness initiative Covantis announced that ConsenSys will be its lead technology partner. The consortium consists of the world’s largest agribusiness companies Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill, Glencore Agriculture and Louis Dreyfus.
Two months ago, the group unveiled its branding and revealed more details about its plans to digitize post-trade processes with blockchain, AI, and other solutions. At that stage China’s COFCO was one of the partners, but is not currently.
The project’s aim is to move away from manual processes to enable efficiencies and cost savings. The consortium plans to launch its first platform this year, subject to antitrust clearance.
In today’s announcement, it emphasized that the platform will cater to both large and small players in the supply chain.
With Ethereum’s enterprise blockchain Quorum selected as the technology, ConsenSys was already a likely candidate given it has a dedicated Ethereum consultancy. And especially since it had some involvement with commodity trade finance platform komgo, based on the same technology.
“The founders set up a robust selection process, including a two-week hackathon, to ensure that we chose the right technology partner to meet our industry’s needs,” said Stefano Rettore, an independent advisor to the project.
“ConsenSys presented prototypes that demonstrated excellence in its field and has a track record of using blockchain technology to digitize processes in the commodity trade finance industry. We are confident this partnership will allow us to build a first-class product centered around unparalleled functionality, security and privacy.”
ConsenSys will also involve other specialist solutions that are part of the ConsenSys family, including Kaleido, the cloud management software, and MythX, the smart contract security company.
Additionally, it plans to incorporate PegaSys Orchestrate, which is probably best described as blockchain middleware and can be used to talk to a whole family of Ethereum clients. Apart from supporting Quorum, it also supports Hyperledger Besu, which was originally founded by PegaSys. Besu is seen as an up and coming competitor to JP Morgan’s Quorum.
Orchestrate enables connectivity between multiple Ethereum blockchains.
| Company | 2017 Revenue | 2018 People |
| ADM | $60.8 billion | 31,300 |
| Bunge | $45.8 billion | 31,000 |
| Cargill | $114.7 billion | 155,000 |
| LDC | $18.8 billion | 18,000 |
| COFCO | $34 billion | 11,000 |
| Glencore Agriculture | $12.6 billion | 13,000 |
Update: The article was updated to remove COFCO from the list of project members.
