Blockchain for Diamond Industry: Opportunities and Challenges

In the recent years, the blockchain (BC) technology has been used in various applications ranging from financial sector to healthcare sector. Moreover, developing BC-based solutions for these applications has been an area of interest among the academia and industry professionals. Diamond has huge potential to become an investment asset, but there are some issues, which hinder the progress of the diamond industry, such as provenance, supply chain traceability, involvement of third party in the verification process, and reliability of transactions. BC seems to be a promising technology, which bridges the gap between the diamond industry and the burgeoning financial markets. Individuals are always confident that the crystals they bought are legitimate and that stolen property can be handed back to the legitimate owner easily. Motivated from these facts, in this article, we surveyed the adoption of BC in the diamond industry, and also present pros and cons of this integration. Then, we discuss issues of the diamond industry operations and based on the literature review, we suggest their probable countermeasures. Then, we analyze various open research issues and challenges associated with integrating the BC in the diamond industry. Finally, we present a case study on frameworks, such as Everledger and Tracr, which highlights the real-time challenges of integrating BC in the diamond Industry.