Fujairah Honey Chain (FHC): A Blockchain Framework for Monitoring Honey Production

Abstract Honey is globally recognized for its substantial nutritional impact and therapeutic properties. In addition to its health benefits, honey is commonly used as a natural sweetener in daily life. However, because of its high market value, honey is susceptible to manipulation and counterfeiting. For instance, honey may be mixed with corn syrup or other sweeteners to increase profit margins. Counterfeit honey negatively impacts consumer health and the honey market. The manipulation of honey poses challenges to the growth of beekeeping businesses. These issues highlight the importance of designing solutions to ensure the authenticity of traded honey. Accordingly, this paper presents a blockchain-based framework to monitor the honey trade supply chain and detect counterfeit honey products. The proposed framework incorporates an oracle component that ensures the accuracy and authenticity of the collected information or images regarding honey quality and origin. Consequently, consumers can access all honey quality variables and origin information using the framework. By associating honey batches with fungible and non-fungible tokens, the proposed framework closely tracks honey products in the trade supply chain. Several experiments were conducted to analyze the economic feasibility of the proposed framework, demonstrating that the cost of performing a trade is expected to be less than $1. Additionally, the results indicate shows that the oracle component achieves an average accuracy rate of 90% in detecting falsified sensor data, compared to the variability found in traditional audits, which can fluctuate depending on differing standards and certifying bodies.