Walmart looks at blockchain powered customer marketplace

To quote the document: “A registration-based user-interface architecture includes a retail shopping facility operated on behalf of an enterprise having a plurality of physically-discrete items disposed therein that are offered for retail sale. A control circuit maintains a record (for example, in a blockchain ledger) of a particular customer’s purchase of a particular one of these items and also provides an opportunity to that particular customer to resell that particular item via a sales platform operated on behalf of the enterprise.”

Earlier this month, we reported that Walmart had filed a patent involving blockchain powered autonomous ground vehicles (AVGs). Restricted access areas at a customer’s home would receive packages from the AVGs. Blockchain technology could form part of a solution providing authentication-based access and encryption and the distributed network could also be used to track and authenticate goods.

The patent application stated: “When a customer interacts with a product, the customer is permitted to do so via a private or public authentication key. In response, new blocks may be added to subsequent root blocks, which will contain information relating to the date and time a product delivered by the AGV was accessed, as well as the authentication key that accessed the product.”