The Maharashtra government is using Polygon’s blockchain, previously known as Matic, to maintain COVID-19 test result records. Bengaluru-based Polygon is a blockchain company that has been gaining considerable global attention. Its crypto-token ‘MATIC’ now among the top 20 crypto tokens globally and recently breached the $10 billion mark in market capitalisation, according to Coinmarketcap.com.
“The Maharashtra government are using Matic (now Polygon) network tokens to run smart contracts and record transactions. MATIC network is also scalable — in simpler terms, it can issue 30,000 certificates in a day if needed,” Sharat Chandra, president of the Government Blockchain Association told MediaNama. “This usage of blockchain to store COVID-19 results can very well be in the future be used to issue vaccination passport,” Chandra said. He cited the example of cities like New York where blockchain was being used to issue such passports allowing citizens to access various public spaces.
“Since State is a health subject they can take the decision to issue vaccine supports on their own. For opening up the economy, this could be very necessary,” Chandra added.
MH govt planning to formulate blockchain policy
Last year, an Economic Times report said that the Maharashtra government was going to come up with a State Blockchain Policy and that it was working on several pilots in this area. At Gokuldas Tejpal Hospital in Mumbai, blockchain was used to run corneal transplantation; in State Warehousing Corporation blockchain was deployed to facilitate easy access to finance and export crops. Apart from that, the technology was also introduced as a pilot in RTO Mumbai.
However, COVID-19 has accelerated the state government’s adoption of blockchain technology. The government is using Polygon’s blockchain network, which is scalable, quick and secure, to issue vaccine test results.
The Maharashtra government’s Department of Disaster Management, Relief and Rehabilitation has been sending text messages to citizens informing them that their COVID-19 test results were being stored on a given link. The link directs to a webpage powered by DocChain.io, which is a blockchain-based document sharing platform. The webpage shows the citizen’s COVID-19 report, along with other details such as the person’s name, age, district, redacted phone number and so on.
There is also an option for citizens to verify their report. When clicked on it, it leads to the bottom half of the page where the report is verified in real-time by ‘fetching encrypted hash from Blockchain’, ‘verifying cryptographic signatures’, ‘checking revocation status’ and so on.
There is also an option for public audit-proof, which is essentially an assessment of the recorded transaction on the blockchain supported by evidence. It has details about smart contract address and transaction details powered by Polygon’s blockchain.
Several Blockchain-COVID solutions currently functional
With four of the six companies which are working on COVID-19 vaccines based out of Hyderabad, the Telangana government introduced blockchain to prevent possible attempts at black marketing or hoarding of vaccines by using blockchain technology, reported the New Indian Express.
According to the report the department roped in StaTwig which, while working earlier with UNICEF (the largest distributor of vaccines in the world), developed their blockchain solution, Vaccine Ledger, to secure supply-side irregularities. The tried-and-tested solution, Vaccine Ledger, tracks every single dose of a vaccine during its movement from the manufacturer to the consumer.
Last year, IIT-Bengaluru and IMACS studios incubated startup YoSynch partnered with Malaysia-based blockchain company BelfricsBT to develop a blockchain-powered Covid-19 tracking platform called BelYo, Inc42 reported. The report said that BeIYo uses the BelfricsBT Belrium blockchain platform to convert COVID-19 related data from the physical form into digital assets. This can also be retrieved by contact tracing apps including Aarogya Setu via APIs.
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