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The plot has thickened in the longest-running “whodunit” in the blockchain space: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin and author of the white paper that started it all, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System? Published in 2008, Nakamoto’s paper proposed a form of electronic cash that would operate purely peer-to-peer, without the need for a trusted intermediary (such as a centralized financial institution) and in a verifiable manner that protects against the “double-spend” problem. That white paper served as the launch pad for the Bitcoin network and inspired blockchain’s proliferation. Over a decade later, the true identity of Nakamoto and whether Nakamoto is a single person or a collective remain a mystery, despite speculation and multiple claims to the digital throne.

Recently, claimants turned to intellectual property registrations in their campaigns for recognition. In April 2019, Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright (who has long claimed to be Nakamoto) sparked controversy in the blockchain community by filing two copyright registrations claiming authorship of Nakamoto’s white paper (Reg. No. TXu002136996) and the original Bitcoin source code (Reg. No. TX0008708058). In the wake of Wright’s claims, on May 24, 2019, Wei Liu, reportedly a cryptocurrency entrepreneur and a Chinese citizen with an address in California, upped the ante by also filing a copyright registration (Reg. No. TX0008726120) asserting that he had in fact authored the white paper.

The gauntlet, it seemed, had been thrown down.

While there has been a great deal of attention being paid lately to the use of blockchain for the issuance and investment (or speculation) in cryptocurrencies, other enterprise-based applications of blockchain continue to be deployed with increasing frequency but less fanfare.

One of the more recent deployments of blockchain – viewed as a milestone in the world of supply chain logistics – is based on Easy Trading Connect (“ETC”), a blockchain-based system developed by a consortium of companies led by Dutch financial institution ING. The system was initially designed to manage commodity trading funds transactions. The most recent transaction, involving a shipment of soybean cargo, is believed to be the first agricultural commodity sale processed completely “on chain” (e.g., on a blockchain-based system). The ETC was used to process all steps of the transaction, and reportedly no paper contracts, certificates or other similar documents changed hands. According to ING, the system reduced what is traditionally a process of 11-14 days to only four days.

This is not the first deployment of ETC – in 2017, it was used to handle the sale of an oil consignment. The shipment at issue was resold three times through the system before it actually left its departure point. The banks involved reportedly reduced the cost typically associated with these types of transactions by thirty percent.

Last year’s spike in the valuation of bitcoin has much of the technology world focused on blockchain, the distributed database ledger technology behind bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies.  Lost behind the scenes, however, is a rush by some in the industry to patent inventions relating to the blockchain technology itself.  These moves come with controversy in an industry known for its culture of open-source practices.