Use cases and future prospects of blockchain applications in global fishery and aquaculture value chains

Fishery and aquaculture sectors use blockchains to enhance traceability and transparency in value chains and to fight illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. The aim of this paper is to provide the current status and future prospects of blockchain application in worldwide fisheries and aquaculture. A literature review was conducted using blockchain and global value chain frameworks. Results indicate that generally, the use of blockchain is vertically driven by the requirements of markets and business competitiveness. The majority of the blockchain use cases are for traceability and storytelling, and to a lesser extent for payments or incentives. Moreover, there has been limited use cases of blockchain at horizontal level, such as decentralized finance (de-fi), enabling fishers to gain capital access and entering global markets. Overall, enhancing the adoption of blockchain should address suitability, incentives, and trust factors in using blockchain. As future prospects, projects in fishery and aquaculture could better utilize the full potential of blockchains by (1) incorporating financing, capital, and insurance through de-fi solutions, (2) providing tangible incentives, and (3) using automation such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) in data collection to improve quality and trust in data.