Janus: Toward preventing counterfeits in supply chains utilizing a multi-quorum blockchain

Abstract

The modern pharmaceutical supply chain lacks transparency and traceability, resulting in alarming rates of counterfeit products entering the market. These illegitimate products cause harm to end users and wreak havoc on the supply chain itself, costing billions of dollars in profit loss. In this paper, in response to the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), we introduce Janus, a novel pharmaceutical track-and-trace system that utilizes blockchain and cloning-resistant hologram tags to prevent counterfeits from entering the pharmaceutical supply chain. We design a multi-quorum consensus protocol that achieves load balancing across the network. We perform a security analysis to show robustness against various threats and attacks. The implementation of Janus proves that the system is fair, scalable, and resilient.

Keywords

• Blockchain
• Pharmaceutical supply chain
• Consensus protocol