Beating Amazon with Blockchain

…and a shared Supply Chain and an eCommerce System Dr. Drew Miller Managing Director, Blockchain Business Consultants drmiller@bchainconsult.com An article, “The Shrinking Middle Class: How We Got Here, And Why” in the December 2018 issue of magazine reported how many urban neighborhoods have no small stores left, and residents must travel miles to get groceries. Walmart decimated small retailers, and Amazon is now finishing the job. Mega retailers also raise competitive barriers for small manufacturers and shape an economy favoring mega firms, not small town, neighborhood businesses. Great for the richest family in the world, the Walton heirs, and the richest man in the world, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, but not the rest of us. Tech giants like Amazon don’t just abuse small manufacturers and retail stores — they exploit their customers personal, private data for their profit. Fortune [i] The original Internet promise of peer to peer sharing and decentralized, individual empowerment gave way to centralized, mega corporations that capitalized on network effects and exploitation of private data to grow into the largest monopolies in history. In retail eCommerce, Amazon (with half of the U.S. eCommerce market) and Alibaba, have such dominance that other retail firms pushing online sales don’t slow Amazon’s continued growth. As Richard Howells, SAP’s Vice President for Digital Supply Chain concluded, “it’s difficult to see others catching up.” [ii] Walmart had already killed off small independent stores, and now the combined pressure of Walmart and Amazon is killing off even large retail chains. Blockchain advocates are motivated by this powerful new technology promise to “take back” the Internet, bypass Big Banks, and protect personal data from exploitation by Amazon and the big tech mega firms. Blockchain and cryptocurrrency are very disruptive, but it will take a 3-pronged Trident to stop Amazon. There is a revolutionary new company launching now that has all three spears needed to beat Amazon and Walmart in the retail sales industry. This article explains how a comprehensive shared supply chain and eCommerce system using the Internet, blockchain, and a very different supply chain process, can save small retailers and manufacturers in the era of crushing mega firm dominance. For advocates of sustainable business, a better environment, more vibrant small towns and urban neighborhoods, this new firm is also a dream come true. Many blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts hope these new technologies can break Amazon’s stranglehold on eCommerce. Bitcoin’s early big use was for illegal eCommerce on the Internet’s dark markets. Blockchain transactions are more secure than typical Internet systems. For sellers, crypto payments offer a near-instant means of receiving value: there is no three-day delay entailed, as there is when waiting for credit card payments to clear. Particularly on a private blockchain, transaction fees are very low. In a shared blockchain system sellers can be paid instantly. Bernard Lunn, CEO of Daily Fintech and author of The Blockchain Economy believes that “When cryptocurrency-based payment systems bring near-zero instant payments globally, decentralized markets will happen.” But if Amazon adds cryptocurrency and blockchain to their system, you can be confident Amazon will take the float and force terms that profit Amazon and at the expense of their sellers and customers. While cryptocurrency can disintermediate Big Bankers, smart contracts running on the blockchain may be far more valuable: helping businesses disintermediate lawyers. CEOs my consulting firm have talked with are more excited by blockchain’s ability to avoid lawyers and courts than smart contract’s ability to reduce administrative expenses. [iii] Blockchain’s most valuable use in business, which doesn’t get much attention compared to cryptocurrency, is its great use in connecting business partners and sharing information without the security risks and unreliability of traditional IT. Because of blockchain’s value as a systems and business partner integrator, its #1 use in business now is for supply chain applications. You can enter a case of product as an asset in a blockchain database and track its progress through the supply chain. Blockchain helps with preventing counterfeit products, food safety, and standard blockchain benefits of one trusted, secure source of data. Blockchain technology enables one shared database with all the information, versus siloed databases that must be connected or accessed — and may not be trustworthy if controlled by another party or vulnerable to hackers and data theft or alteration. Blockchains can take inputs from “Internet of Things” such as temperature readings (to ensure refrigerated goods are within the correct range) and date stamps transiting harbors, etc. Blockchain “smart contracts” can notify parties of goods arrival, automate invoicing and payments, greatly reducing supply chain errors and expenses. [iv] In our consulting work on blockchain we find that many still wrongly believe that blockchains are too slow in transactions speed and cannot scale. Private or permissioned blockchains can do fast transactions and handle large business volumes. The big supply chain applications in use today, like the IBM and Maersk ocean shipping “TradeLens” system are not using public blockchains like Ethereum, but private blockchain’s like Hyperledger Fabric. While blockchain and cryptocurrency have huge benefits for eCommerce and supply chain operations, these advantages are not on their own going to take down Amazon. Open Bazaar, a VC funded, zero fee blockchain-based decentralized marketplace, launched in 2016. Three years later the peer to peer networking open source software has been released, but the system generates little business since there is no one to support or promote it. Particl is another free peer to peer networking eCommerce system, started in 2017, with “a Beta launching soon” but no reason to suspect it will fare any better than Open Bazaar. BitBoost started in 2014, a “pioneering marketplace on the Ethereum network . . . a peer-to-peer approach that does not involve a company or require any gatekeepers.” After four years of programming and work, BitBoost failed and has closed. The problem is that nothing but data flows in these blockchain eCommerce systems. It’s like Craigslist with cryptocurrency payments. Nothing in the complex and expensive supply chain movement of goods is coordinated or optimized, nothing to offset Amazon’s huge Network effect and economies of scale advantages. Selling one item at a time to a customer, à la eBay or Amazon, entails much more shipping cost, energy and packaging waste. Asking blockchain and thousands of dApps to serve as a huge, decentralized network is similar to running way too many applications on your phone or personal PC, and is not feasible. Kyle Wang, a former IBM, blockchain enthusiast rightly warns that “blockchain should work as a tool to enable the new internet ecosystem, not become the ecosystem itself. It’s the tractor, not the farm!” [v] [vi] [vii] [viii] [ix] The vast majority of blockchain business applications involve much much more than just IT changes. William Mougayar, author of The Business Blockchain argued that blockchain applications are largely process redesign. [x] This is the reason I got into blockchain in my 50’s when it was largely 20 somethings developing blockchains — — they know nothing about process redesign (or business in most cases) and I’ve got decades of experience in business development, value chains and reengineering. Blockchain cryptocurrency and software alone might let you defeat Western Union, but for the vast majority of industries it will take far more than Information Technology to topple the current players. The supply chain process must also be redesigned to unseat Amazon and Walmart. You need a lot more than blockchain for eCommerce success. Who figured out how to redesign Supply Chain operations, and exploit the Internet and blockchain technology to revolutionize eCommerce and retailing? An Asian-American named Luke Ho-Hyung Lee (not Satoshi Nakamoto) who had started up small manufacturing businesses, run small retail stores, and became a supply chain expert, came up with this idea and published it in a 2013 article. Lee laid out a new supply chain processes that “could alter the business landscape, helping small and medium-size businesses to become more competitive.” Supply Chain Quarterly [xi] Lee observed that the Internet while ideal for sharing information, was not being used for coordinating the complex flow of goods and services in the highly complex, convoluted supply chain system. Big companies can coordinate and optimize their supply chain operations, but no one had attempted to design an internet-based system for small firms to band together for shared, coordinated, and optimized supply chain operations. Lee developed a shared supply chain system using the Internet, to “connect multiple information sources and recipients” and “introduce huge increases in effectiveness (or application capability) in information.” [xii] As Lee noted, “nobody has tried this, and therefore there is no efficient, public process system with infrastructure or platform for real markets.” Well, Lee did decide to try this, patenting his business concept, and then forming SharedChain™ — a shared supply chain and eCommerce system using his patented internet concept and blockchain. Quoting from his patent, “”many suppliers can present offerings through the above-described web or network-based application. . . . These benefits are enabled through the centralization of transportation, distribution, warehousing and local delivery or pick-up functions, allowing costs to be spread across multiple suppliers.” With network effects in a shared eCommerce system exploiting the Internet, and physical goods economies of scale in a shared supply chain system, SharedChain enables “competitive-cooperative relationships” with each supplier “able to achieve much higher efficiency, productivity, and application capability than before.” Lee rightly calls this a “Supply Chain Revolution.” He is building a “networked, public, real supply chain infrastructure bundled with a third-party infrastructure for communication.” [xiii] [xiv] [xv] [xvi] It’s a much easier, lower cost business to launch because SharedChain has zero fixed assets — they facilitate/organize the shared effort of existing, independent businesses. It is purely a platform. Independent warehouses store the goods of independent suppliers transported by independent transportation firms to independent retailers. Explaining SharedChain is like trying to explain the Internet and Amazon before the Internet was launched. SharedChain is a centralized but shared eCommerce system that coordinates and operates a shared supply chain network system, with decentralized peer-to-peer contracts and business deals, and peer to peer responsibility for physical goods. Once goods are ordered, the SharedChain system controls and optimizes the pickup from one of the many local warehouses, delivery to the Distribution and Transportation Center, and then to local delivery centers or pick up centers — with trucks dropping off goods to a store often picking up from a nearby warehouse on their way back to reduce delivery times and expenses. And all the logistics work is done not by SharedChain own assets or employees, but private firms that contract for and compete for business in this massive shared supply chain system. SharedChain has nothing to do with seller relationships and business with retail stores or final customers — that’s for their clients to decide and manage. Blockchain and cryptocurrency aren’t required for this system to operate, but is being added to achieve the blockchain benefits in supply chain operations. It will take all the above, including another huge change in supply chain process described next, to pull off the massive, revolutionary change in eCommerce and retailing needed to stop Amazon and check Walmart’s destruction of small businesses. The shared Chain system is not just for business to consumer retail sales like Amazon or eBay. It’s a supply chain system for B2B sales as well — a highly efficient shared but optimized system that will supply small stores with much lower costs than they can achieve on their own. By bundling eCommerce sales, shipments to retailers, deliveries to pick up centers, and home delivery in one big, massive supply chain and delivery system, SharedChain will achieve more network effects and bundled delivery economies of scale than Amazon. Again, quoting Lee’s article, “because this supply chain process system is constructed as a partnership by connecting the power of all participating members, each member will benefit from the size of the supply chain process system.” Supply Chain Quarterly [xvii] As the Wall Street Journal’s top blockchain reporter, Paul Vigna, writing in MIT Technology Review explained, “Google, Facebook, and Amazon turn economies of scale and network-effect advantages into de facto monopolies.” A shared supply chain and eCommerce system used by hundreds of thousands of small retailers and manufacturers, operated by thousands of independent warehouse and transportation firms, can exceed the scale of Amazon and Walmart. [xviii] Blockchain and a massive shared Supply Chain and Internet eCommerce system provide two powerful spears — but a third is needed to take on Amazon. This third spear, another key part of the shared supply chain system Luke Lee designed, hits Amazon where it’s most vulnerable. Amazon’s system of long distance, rush shipping of individual packaging has inherent big costs and environmental damage from transportation energy waste and individual shipping packages. This third key feature of SharedChain is that it is based on — not long-distance rush shipping. Furthermore, the SharedChain system rarely ships individual packages or one order a time — goods for multiple destinations come from multiple local warehouses through the local Distribution and Transportation Center to local delivery centers — in bundled pickups and deliveries, in crates and reusable totes — not individual cardboard packages stuffed with foam and plastic. Lee’s SharedChain system has a huge, vital business process change. It provides a much better way to enable what has become a key tenant of supply chain operations today: Just In Time (JIT) delivery. Lee’s solution is not high tech but a return to an old-fashioned logistic practice: local warehousing. Since SharedChain sourced goods are sold by local markets (115 would cover the U.S.), this system can do same day delivery easily — faster and much cheaper than Amazon! local markets shipping goods from local warehouses A great theory, but does it work? After a year of investment and software development, SharedChain system did a market test in Los Angeles, and it worked brilliantly. From order to delivery took four hours — at far less expense than Amazon. This third point in the SharedChain Trident enables effective competition against Amazon. SharedChain can deliver many goods much faster at much lower cost! While consumers love faster delivery and lower price, they will also appreciate the reduction in environmental damage of the SharedChain system. , SharedChain’s return to local warehousing favors bulk ocean and rail shipment of goods which wastes far less energy. The avoidance of wasteful individual packaging, and its costly toll in damage to marine life, is another big consumer appeal for SharedChain. Rather than using aircraft and long-distance trucking to quickly move goods from local warehouses for just in time delivery Amazon’s dominance is from network effects and physical economies of scale in moving mountains of goods through the supply chain. Writing in , KJ Erickson, CEO of Public Market, lamented that “Far away from the internet’s original promise of unfettered peer-to-peer exchange, online commerce is today dominated by a small handful of middlemen marketplaces that charge outsize commissions for access to a consolidated buyer pool.” Hackernoon [xix] The only way small firms can compete with Amazon — or Walmart — is to band together and share their supply chain to achieve the economies of scale that can match Walmart in prices and, sourcing from local warehouses, beat Amazon in both prices and speed of delivery. Network effects are economies of scale on the Internet. But there are sometimes more important economies of scale in physical operations, like bundled deliveries and fully loaded trucks. Even more big cost and time savings accrues in supply chain operations if you’re sourcing from a local warehouse, not rush shipping an item with air freight and long-distance trucking. Retailers and sellers do their own marketing, have their own eCommerce sites (front ends — with SharedChain system hidden in the background, accessed by their system). The SharedChain system takes care of finding and registering warehouses onto their system and aggregates/organizes/optimizes the routing and distribution of products in the local market. In sum, as Lee noted, his new “supply chain process system has the potential to induce a Supply Chain Revolution in real markets, just as the Internet did in information.” [xx] SharedChain is not a retail name or brand — it’s a “backoffice” Internet system, eCommerce network, and shared supply chain/distribution system. SharedChain has pledged to never compete with its clients — never offering products for sale, no “store label” brands, no investment in any physical assets to compete as a warehouse or transportation provider (Amazon operates its own warehouses and even has its own fleet of aircraft to further steal business from any other firm). SharedChain is pledged to be the software, blockchain, back office system for a shared supply chain and eCommerce system. SharedChain is not a fully decentralized marketplace as some blockchain enthusiasts want, but is a shared supply chain and eCommerce system that greatly limits centralized control to the minimum needed to organize and optimize the physical delivery of goods. You can’t do a shared completely decentralized supply chain and local distribution operation with absolutely no one in control (or responsible). An optimized supply chain and delivery system sourcing from dozens or hundreds of warehouses in a locality, with bundled deliveries of products out to hundreds or thousands of retail stores, pick up centers or home delivery requires complete central control or you can’t achieve the efficiencies and cost savings vital to cut expenses and match Walmart prices and beat Amazon prices. The SharedChain blockchain will be the primary means that thousands, eventually millions of suppliers and retailers interact with the SharedChain database and supply chain/eCommerce system. When a supplier has finished goods ready to ship, they’ll enter a “digital asset” representing them into the SharedChain blockchain, which passes the data (if properly formatted and authenticated) into the SharedChain database. Blockchains should not hold big databases. They are great as a distributed ledgers of key transaction data, but are not efficient as giant databases. As the goods are transported to the local market, the blockchain can track them to be sure the custody of control is not broken (counterfeit goods), IOT temperature and time stamp inputs can be added, and arrival at the local warehouse in the SharedChain system verified. SharedChain’s massive, shared supply chain system with blockchain could be a god-send for IOT sensors, Big Data and AI. SharedChain will provide a huge, open supply chain blockchain that IOT devices can serve, generating data for analysis. The SharedChain blockchain is not necessary for their system to run now, but they will be adding a private Hyperledger Fabric blockchain to reduce the threat of hackers and nefarious groups ability to access the SharedChain system and to enable the many other improvements blockchain offers. Large users of the system will be asked to operate a node, and groups that can validate the quality and authenticity of products (such as organic or not, meeting claimed standards) will also be invited to both operate nodes on the blockchain and certify whether sellers did meet standards. The SharedChain utility token will be used to query and transact on the SharedChain system. As blockchain identity control and protection services advance, more consumers will take control of their identity to prevent Amazon and Facebook abuse — and the SharedChain system will accommodate this. Blockchain will enable major improvements in improving the safety and reliability of the supply chain while reducing costs and errors. Again, blockchain may be the most valuable tractor on the farm — but can’t alone replace the farm. The inventory database, routing and bundled, mixed delivery optimization, and the vast majority of the computing will not be run on a blockchain. Outside users will query and transact through the blockchain, digital assets will be created to track the provenance and ownership of goods, smart contracts will be leveraged to automate billing — but the vast majority of the data and computer calculations will be off chain. Blockchain plus all the other elements of the SharedChain shared supply chain system and process redesign and some central coordination and control are all essential for success. Sellers cannot easily access their customer on Amazon, and can be kicked off the Amazon platform if they try to directly connect. SharedChain’s system allows suppliers to deal directly with final customers or retail stores, whatever they want. SharedChain will promote and facilitate Reddit (or other) discussion groups, with many specialty channels to link consumers, suppliers, stores and facilitate interactions — the freedom of communication Amazon outlaws. Retailers who have signed up for the SharedChain system are highly motivated — they need an alternative to the current crushing vise of Amazon eCommerce domination and Walmart lowest prices to survive. Walmart annihilated “Mom and Pop” and small independent retail stores. I was a University of Nebraska Regent representing southeast Nebraska, and my district was littered with dead villages that perished when Walmart forced the small stores out of business. The cafes and barbershops followed when shopping switched to the Walmart out of town, and village downtowns and often the entire town perished. Amazon is finishing the small retailer genocide, and taking out large national chains as well. “During the first weeks of 2019, retailers shut down 23% more stores than they did at the start of 2018, according to Coresight Research. The firm concludes there’s “no light at the end of the tunnel” for troubled store companies.” [xxi] Amazon and Walmart abuse manufacturers of all sizes, but the smaller firms are less able to deal with it. Walmart also excludes small suppliers because they can’t meet the volume requirements and stringent warehouse delivery requirements they dictate. Sellers pay high fees to sell on the Amazon platform or get a slot in a Walmart store. KJ Erickson, CEO of Public Market, an open data protocol for marketplace eCommerce, notes that the net effect of Amazon policies, charges and competition is that “only the largest sellers are able to profitably use the platform.” A recent article entitled “An American Small-Business Horror Story: One entrepreneur’s tale of his time in Amazon purgatory” detailed the countless ways Amazon abuses small suppliers. “Amazon conspicuously fails to safeguard the interests of small businesses while advancing its own at their expense.” [xxii] Inc Magazine [xxiii] Amazon doesn’t just spy on customers and sell their data, they analyze seller data and copy the best performing products — cheating their key clients. Their apparent goal is to replace all third-party sellers and products with Amazon Basics versions. In March 2019, Amazon was testing a “pop-up feature on its app that in some instances pitched its private-label goods on other seller’s product pages.” An entrepreneur who knows Amazon and blockchain, believes that Amazon seller’s fear and hate Amazon’s unfair competition. He wrote that “Most sellers would do ANYTHING to control their company’s destiny. If that means promoting a blockchain based e-commerce platform (BBEP), you can bet your ass they would” While thus far Amazon’s exploitive business model has made Jeff Bezos the wealthiest man in the world, it also lays the ground work for suppliers, large and small to eagerly abandon Amazon for better alternatives like SharedChain. [xxiv] [xxv] Normally a startup faces a huge marketing challenge in building awareness and acceptance. SharedChain plans to “declare war” on Walmart, issuing press releases and staging media events with small retailer and business associations to condemn Walmart’s unfair and illegal practices in dodging taxes, forcing manufacturers to give them discounted prices, and exploiting workers who file 5,000 lawsuits annually against Walmart. Walmart has a big cohort of detractors who condemn the profiting of the Walton Family, with $150 billion in net worth from inheritance, not work — more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans! Walmart’s enemies hate their practice of hiding cash and assets overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes while sourcing most of its goods sold in the U.S. from overseas. SharedChain expects industry associations and word of mouth support from sellers and retailers to champion this alternative to Walmart and Amazon abuse. Strong consumer support for SharedChain is also likely. Older Americans remember how Walmart destroyed small towns and “Mom and Pop” neighborhood stores when their unfair practices ruined their business. The appeal of helping small stores and reducing the environmental damage Amazon’s long-distance rush shipping and packaging waste causes will also boost the switch to small retailers using SharedChain. Small businesses, sustainable business, and “economics as if people mattered” — the theme of economist E. F. Schumacher’s famous book “Small is Beautiful” is still a strong appeal. The modern version of Schumacher’s philosophy in our shared economy is “Shared Small is beautiful.” SharedChain can stop the destruction and abuse of Amazon and Walmart, helping not just small businesses, but small town and urban neighborhoods recover and improve our society, economy, and quality of life. Only one firm today has the three-pronged approach that’s needed to halt Amazon. SharedChain is the one platform that can make network effects in both communication and supply chain physical economies of scale for the first time. Size of individual producers or sellers do not matter anymore, just price and quality of their products. SharedChain may appear to have a ridiculous “mouse that roared” preposterousness, tilting at the Amazon windmill — and taking on Walmart as well. But their proposition is based on the shared economy, an army of mice, very angry mice. The small retailers and small manufacturers who have been crushed by Walmart and Amazon are very angry indeed. Enabled by blockchain technology, the patented Internet supply chain technology of SharedChain, and this switch from just in time delivery to local warehouses — this army of small companies could well defeat Amazon. Their market test was convincing: 4 hours from order to delivery at a much lower cost than Amazon. Consumers like same day delivery at lower cost than Amazon. They will also prefer small local stores that can match Walmart prices, provide far better customer service, and beat Amazon in speedy delivery. [xxvi] SharedChain is raising equity now to launch at functional scale. Many people who have looked at SharedChain compare the company’s potential to Amazon and Uber. Uber started operations in July 2010, and in October 2010 raised $1.6 million (valued at $5.4 million). A few months after that they raised $11 million in their first Venture Capital round. Despite many years of no profits, in 2018 they reached $60 billion in valuation. SharedChain has no investment in equipment or facilities, very low operating costs, and should be profitable by 2020. Uber has Lyft and other competitors — SharedChain has a patent for its system. The retail sales industry dwarfs the size of the taxi/shared ride industry. [xxvii] SharedChain may seems to be preposterous in taking on Amazon and Walmart — not David versus Goliath, but Arya fighting The Mountain and The Hound at the same time. But these are poor analogies because it’s not SharedChain alone, but thousands of small stores and thousands of manufacturers, and thousands of warehouse, logistics and transportation firms, all united via the SharedChain system against Walmart and Amazon. Consumers want small neighborhood and village stores back. They care about the environment and packaging killing marine life. They don’t like big tech companies profit by spying on customers and selling their personal data. They would like an economy that operates as if people matter. Blockchain alone can’t achieve this, but a full system like SharedChain can. Fortune Staff, “The Shrinking Middle Class: How We Got Here, And Why,” Fortune Magazine, December 24, 2018 [i] Richard Howells, “What’s Ahead For 2019: New Business Models And Changing Supply Chain Roles”, digitalistmag.com, Jan 7, 2019 [ii] Bernard Lunn, “Decentralized Marketplaces to beat Amazon = big opportunity or cypherpunk pipedream?” dailyfintech.com, June 30, 2018 [iii] Deloitte, “Breaking blockchain open, Deloitte’s 2018 global blockchain survey” [iv] [v] https://openbazaar.org/ [vi] https://particl.io/ Olga Neroda, “Blockchain is the future of e-commerce,” hackernoon.com, Jul 10, 2018 [vii] [viii] https://medium.com/bitboost/engineering-heavy-cash-light-good-bye-from-bitboost-33ea6dc8b1f1 Kyle Wang, “Blockchain and the Journey Toward a New Internet Architecture,” hackernoon.com, Jan 22, 2018 [ix] William Mougayar, The Business Blockchain, Wiley, 2016 [x] Luke Ho-Hyung Lee, “How a “3-D” supply chain process system could revolutionize business,” Supply Chain Quarterly, Quarter 2, 2013 [xi] Luke Ho-Hyung Lee, “How a “3-D” supply chain process system could revolutionize business,” Supply Chain Quarterly, Quarter 2, 2013 [xii] Luke Ho-Hyung Lee, “How a “3-D” supply chain process system could revolutionize business,” Supply Chain Quarterly, Quarter 2, 2013 [xiii] Luke Ho-Hyung Lee, U.S. Patent 8,793,194 B2, July 29, 2014 [xiv] Luke Ho-Hyung Lee, “How a “3-D” supply chain process system could revolutionize business,” Supply Chain Quarterly, Quarter 2, 2013 [xv] Luke Ho-Hyung Lee, “How a “3-D” supply chain process system could revolutionize business,” Supply Chain Quarterly, Quarter 2, 2013 [xvi] Luke Ho-Hyung Lee, “How a “3-D” supply chain process system could revolutionize business,” Supply Chain Quarterly, Quarter 2, 2013 [xvii] Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna, “In Blockchain we Trust”, MIT Technology Review, April 9, 2018 [xviii] KJ Erickson, “Blockchain plays can create new rivals to Amazon and eBay,” paymentssource.com, September 24 2018 [xix] Luke Ho-Hyung Lee, “How a “3-D” supply chain process system could revolutionize business,” Supply Chain Quarterly, Quarter 2, 2013 [xx] Doug Whiteman, “These Chains Are Closing: Tons More Stores in 2019. The retail landscape is on the way to looking even bleaker.” Moneywise.com, March 7. 2019 [xxi] KJ Erickson, “Blockchain plays can create new rivals to Amazon and eBay,” paymentssource.com, September 24 2018 [xxii] Jeff Bercovici, A recent Inc Magazine article entitled “An American Small-Business Horror Story: One entrepreneur’s tale of his time in Amazon purgatory,” Inc Magazine, March/April 2019, p. 55. [xxiii] Jay Greene, “Amazon Imposes on Seller’s Listings,” Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2019, p. A1 [xxiv] Matt Ward, “Blockchain vs The Big Four: How Cryptocurrencies and Decentralization Affect Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple,” Hackernoon.com, Feb 5, 2018 [xxv] The Mouse That Roared is a 1955 Cold War satirical novel by Irish American writer Leonard Wibberley, adapted into a Peter Seller’s movie [xxvi] SharedChain is offering equity to accredited investors on the crowdfunder.com equity crowdsourcing website [xxvii]