ADDA Protocol

⭐ Reimagine Last-Mile Logistics with Docusign and Blockchain-Based Implementations ⭐

💡Inspiration: The Agreement Trap in Last-Mile Logistics

🤷‍♂️ What is last-mile logistic? Is it important?

Last-mile logistics represents the final phase in a complex industrial supply chain, where goods or products are transported from a distribution center or warehouse directly to the end consumer. This stage is crucial because it often serves as the only direct interaction a customer has with the supply chain, significantly influencing their satisfaction and overall experience. A smooth and efficient last-mile delivery process not only enhances customer perception but also strengthens brand reputation, offering a competitive edge in the market.

🕸️Challenges: Stuck in the Agreement Trap

Last-mile logistics involves numerous processes and requires various agreements to be settled at each stage, such as service agreements, service terms, proof of delivery, and acknowledgment of delivery. However, many industries continue to rely on traditional methods to manage these agreements, leading to what can be described as an "agreement trap". This trap results in several challenges, including👇:

🥇Docusign is the Perfect Candidate

DocuSign stands out as the perfect solution for addressing the challenges and inefficiencies in last-mile logistics workflows. It offers a robust suite of tools and technologies—such as DocuSign eSignature, Templates, Connect, Click, Maestro, and others—that facilitate a seamless and efficient agreement signing and management process. These capabilities make DocuSign uniquely suited to transform current traditional approaches. By integrating DocuSign into last-mile logistics workflows, industries can👇:

😕What's Impossible? Operational Transparency is Missing

Docusign Only Focus on Document Transparency

DocuSign offers significant benefits in document transparency and streamlined agreement management in a last-mile logistics workflow, but not on operational transparency. DocuSign primarily focuses on creating clear, auditable trails for agreements and signatures. However, it does not inherently address the broader operational transparency of the logistics process itself. Critical operational data, validation, accountability for each step in the delivery process, and visibility into decision-making—remains outside its scope. And based on research, operational transparency is also important in last-mile logistic as it is a key success factor of industry supply chain.

This creates potential centralization issues 👇:

1️⃣Lack of Real Time Context and Physical Validation

Logistics processes mostly involve physical events, such as delivery execution, condition checks, recipient authentication, and proof of service completion. These activities require real-time context and validation to ensure accuracy and accountability. While DocuSign ensures secure and trackable digital agreement signing workflow, it cannot provide insights into physical conditions or immediate operational statuses during the distribution process (for example, physical condition verification).

2️⃣Bad Actor Scenario Occurs

Relying solely on DocuSign for last-mile logistics introduces vulnerabilities to bad actors, as it lacks mechanisms to address the complexities of physical validation and accountability. On the recipient side, bad actors could exploit the system by making fraudulent delivery claims or impersonating the intended recipient using fake identities. Similarly, on the logistics side, couriers might falsify delivery reports, claim to have shown up without doing so, or mishandle goods while concealing their actions. Without additional layers of validation or tracking, it becomes challenging to identify and mitigate these risks effectively, leaving the process susceptible to abuse.

3️⃣Lack End-to-End Accountability in Large Network of Stakeholders

In supply chains with a large network of stakeholders, achieving transparency in the last-mile logistics phase becomes particularly challenging, especially when using a Docusign-based internal system. With so many different parties involved, managing who has access to what information can quickly become cumbersome and inefficient. An external solution is needed, such as a shared ledger concept database, provides an effective approach by offering a decentralized, tamper-proof record of key events and data associated with each logistics transaction. This ensures that all stakeholders have access to the same transparent, up-to-date information, reducing the risk of discrepancies and enhancing accountability across the entire logistics process.

📌📌📌 To conclude: Industries require an external mechanism that is inherently transparent and resilient against fraud and manipulation to combine with Docusign in order to facilitate the whole last-mile logistic workflow.

Our team come out with a solution👇

✨Everything Is Possible! Docusign x Blockchain-Based Setup

🤷‍♂️What is blockchain? How it helps?

Blockchain is a shared and decentralized ledger. It enables the secure recording and verification of transactions without the need for intermediaries. Its inherent characteristics, such as immutability, transparency, and tamper-resistance, make it particularly suited for storing critical events and data in last-mile logistics, including digital agreements. It act as a strong backbone to eliminate bad actors scenarios and providing all the validation on physical events. This suitability stems from blockchain's ability to act as a reliable chain of custody, which is essential for tracking and documenting the lifecycle of goods from their origin to final delivery.

In last-mile logistics, a chain of custody ensures that every handoff, timestamp, and status update is recorded, providing a clear and indisputable audit trail. A blockchain-based setup enhances this workflow as it offers end-to-end accountability and traceability, which are invaluable in resolving disputes, as every action is tied to a verifiable stream of data, fostering trust between stakeholders. Additionally, integrating external systems for data exchange in last-mile logistics can be highly complex, particularly when incorporating role-based access control (RBAC). Blockchain simplifies this process by offering a secure, unified medium that eliminates the need for intricate integration layers, ensuring robust access control and data security, especially with a large network of stakeholders.

💪We now have a Chain of Custody, working with Docusign

Now we understand that setting up a chain of custody using a blockchain implementation can address issues of centralization and bad actors, while restoring the missing operational transparency. Taking a broader view, we can integrate DocuSign into our designed last-mile logistics workflow. As mentioned, DocuSign excels at maximizing document transparency within the digital agreement signing process. It provides a seamless experience for all phases of agreement signing in the last-mile logistics workflow, ensuring convenience for clients.

Once the agreements are successfully handled by DocuSign, copies of those agreements, along with all key data and events occurring throughout the workflow, are securely stored on the blockchain-based chain of custody in a tamper-proof manner. Conversely, when logistics operators need to trace a specific record or event in the future, they can do so effortlessly, as everything is transparently recorded on the blockchain, ensuring the data retrieved is always accurate and verifiable.With this setup, large networks of stakeholders participating in the supply chain can also subscribe to all events recorded on the blockchain, effectively providing an external shared ledger.

While the system is promising so far, there are additional aspects that need to be considered to ensure the mechanism is complete and robust enough for real-world applications. That's why...👇

🎉We introduce the concept of ADDA

Inspired by the concept of the chain of custody, our team has designed and developed a novel system called ADDA, which stands for Attestation Driven Distribution Assurance. As the name suggests, the core of ADDA relies on a prominent concept in the blockchain space—attestation—to provide assurance in the logistics distribution process during the last-mile delivery phase. This ensures that the delivery process is transparent, accurate, and safeguarded against bad actors.

The backbone of ADDA is the blockchain, enabling immutable and verifiable records. Its core components include:

• ⭐ DocuSign: Facilitates the digital agreement signing workflow in each phase of the last-mile logistic workflow

• ⭐ Sign Protocol: Manages and publishes all attestations on the blockchain we are going to deploy our system on

• ⭐ World ID: By World Foundation, which performs identity verification during the physical delivery stage in a decentralised approach.

Highlight 1️⃣ : World ID as a fast first layer filter

World ID is a privacy-preserving, decentralized identity system based on zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology. In simple terms, a user with a World ID can securely and anonymously prove they are a real human without revealing any personal information. This underlying mechanism makes World ID an ideal choice for our team to implement a simple, fast, and powerful filter to eliminate bad actors during the parcel signing phase. With a large user base of over 9 million and the ease of acquiring a World ID, onboarding new users to the ADDA protocol becomes significantly streamlined.

Each World ID distributed to users is unique. For instance, when a parcel is assigned to a recipient by the logistics system, the recipient must use their World ID to perform a verification process. In the context of World ID, this verification is referred to as an "Incognito Action." This process generates a unique zero-knowledge proof (ZKP), which is then passed to the World ID cloud verifier. The verifier checks the ZKP and returns a nullifier hash—a unique identifier tied to this specific delivery order. The nullifier hash is permanently bound to the delivery.

When the parcel is delivered to the recipient's doorstep, the recipient must perform the same verification process and provide the nullifier hash. If the recipient is the intended recipient, their World ID will generate the same nullifier hash, confirming their identity. However, if a bad actor attempts to impersonate the recipient, their World ID will be unable to produce the correct nullifier hash tied to the delivery. Consequently, it becomes impossible for bad actors to pass this verification process.

Although DocuSign includes a native ID Verification feature with a robust set of mechanisms—such as AI-enabled biometric liveness detection, identity document verification, knowledge-based authentication, and electronic ID verification—it primarily verifies the signer’s (client’s) identity during the parcel signing stage in the last-mile logistics workflow. However, we aim to implement an additional, external layer of verification to quickly filter out incorrect or unauthorized signees before they even reach the signing stage. This added layer speeds up the overall process and ensures that bad actors are removed from the workflow entirely, preventing them from progressing to the signing stage.

World ID provides an ideal solution for this first-layer filter due to its simplicity and speed. The verification process consists of just two steps: the logistics system generates a QR code, and the recipient scans it to verify their identity. This streamlined approach makes World ID a perfect choice for a fast and efficient preliminary verification phase.

The ADDA protocol, by design, is both flexible and modular. This means that World ID verification can be applied at any point within the signing stages of the last-mile logistics workflow, depending on the specific requirements. Furthermore, DocuSign’s ID Verification can always serve as a second, more detailed inner layer of verification, adding an extra layer of security. Once all verifications are successfully completed, the workflow proceeds seamlessly to the signing stage.

Highlight 2️⃣ : On-Chain Attestation: A Logistic Cycle Wrap-Up on the Blockchain

In last-mile logistics, we often encounter a miscellany of claims and assertions made by clients or logistics couriers during the workflow. For example, when a courier delivers a parcel to a recipient’s doorstep, they make a claim about this event. Traditionally, such claims rely on classic trust assumptions and system relationships, such as assuming an entity is honest or relying on an authoritative body for confirmation. However, with the evolution of blockchain technology and its tamper-proof, immutable nature, we can now safely record these attestations on-chain. This approach enables easy verification using an external shared ledger, eliminating the need to depend on DocuSign for this function, which is both challenging to manage and not designed for such use cases.

For effective on-chain attestations, a well-defined schema is crucial. A schema serves as a structured framework that defines the type and format of data required for an attestation. This ensures that attestations are accurate, composable, and insightful for any observer (verifier) within the logistics stakeholder network. An analogy to understand a schema is to think of it as the blueprint for an attestation. It provides the necessary context and clarity that an attester uses to create meaningful confirmations.

Our team designed a schema tailored for recipients and logistics stakeholders, which includes all agreement details, photographic evidence, identity verification information of the involved parties, and other relevant on-chain data. This schema ensures that every attestation is robust and comprehensive.

Using the Sign Protocol, which provides a suite of tools, infrastructure, and standards, we can facilitate the submission of these structured attestations to the blockchain network. This results in a chain of attestations, where each attestation encapsulates the details of a single last-mile logistics cycle. With the Sign Scan Explorer, these attestations can be queried at any time.

🎉🎉🎉 Hooray! With everything in place, let's see how they work together!👇

🛠️Architecture and App Flow Overview

To demonstrate the concept of the ADDA protocol and showcase the feasibility of combining DocuSign and blockchain technologies in a real-life last-mile logistics application, our team designed a proof of concept (PoC), which serves as a research prototype, based on a simple parcel delivery workflow. This workflow involves three distinct parties:

1. 🧑Sender: Responsible for sending a parcel to the recipient through the logistics system.

2. 👨Recipient: The individual receiving the parcel sent by the sender through the logistics system.

3. 👨‍🦱Logistics: The entity that delivers the sender’s parcel to the recipient’s doorstep.

➡️This workflow comprises 5️⃣ sequential events:

1. The sender creates a delivery order for their parcel through the logistics system.

2. The recipient accepts the delivery order and waits for the parcel to be delivered.

3. The parcel is delivered to the recipient’s doorstep, initiating the parcel signing stage between the recipient and logistics.

4. The logistics provider completes their part of the parcel signing process.

5. The recipient completes their part of the parcel signing process.

👇Below attached is a high-level architectural overview of the application, divided into two major components:

1. ✅Our DocuSign Setup
2. ✅Our Decentralized Application (DApp) Setup

👋Note: When an application implemented blockchain-related features, we called it a DApp - Decentralised Application

🏃‍♂️ We have a speedrun explanation of the whole architecture in our demo video!

✅Our DocuSign Setup

1. The sender initiates the process by creating a delivery order in our logistics system. This process is facilitated by a DocuSign Web Form. To create the delivery order, the sender is required to sign a 📑parcel delivery agreement that includes general parcel details, sender information, and recipient information. To streamline this process, our team created a parcel delivery agreement template and configured a corresponding DocuSign Web Form. The generated web form instance simplifies the collection of all necessary information for the agreement while providing a user-friendly experience for the sender. Once the web form is submitted, an agreement envelope is generated, and the sender enters an embedded signing session powered by DocuSign eSignature.

2. After the sender creates the delivery order, the workflow requires the recipient to accept it before the parcel can be delivered. During this phase, the recipient must sign a 📑pre-delivery agreement. Our team prepared a template for this agreement, and an envelope is generated for the recipient. The fields in the agreement are pre-filled with the information collected in Step 1’s web form. The agreement is sent to the recipient's email address provided by the sender. The recipient completes the signing process remotely using DocuSign eSignature.

3. When the logistics provider delivers the parcel to the recipient’s doorstep, both the logistics representative and the recipient enter the parcel signing stage. Before proceeding with the parcel signing, they are required to sign terms and conditions. Our team prepared these 📑terms and conditions using an elastic template. This template generates an embedded session, enabling both parties to use elastic signing to accept the terms and conditions. Consent is captured using DocuSign Click.

4. During the parcel signing stage, the logistics provider signs the 📑delivery completion agreement. A template for this agreement is already prepared, and the logistics provider completes the signing in an embedded signing session powered by DocuSign eSignature.

5. Similarly, the recipient acknowledges the delivery by signing the 📑acknowledgment of delivery agreement. The template for this agreement is also pre-configured, and the recipient completes the signing in an embedded signing session, again powered by DocuSign eSignature.

6. Docusign Connect is used to keep track the status of all signing activities happening in the workflow and also powering the waiting room during the parcel signing process.

✅Our Decentralized Application (DApp) Setup

1. All signed agreement copies mentioned in the DocuSign setup section are uploaded and stored in Pinata storage. Pinata is a Web3 storage solution built on blockchain technologies, ensuring that all stored data is immutable and tamper-proof. This immutability is achieved because data stored on Pinata is represented as CID (Content Identifier) hashes rather than URLs. CID hashes are derived directly from the content of the data itself. If any content changes, the corresponding CID will also change. Thus, in this phase, we capture and store all the CIDs of the agreements.

2. During the parcel signing stage, both the logistics provider and the recipient are required to take photos of the parcel delivery to document its condition. These photos are uploaded to Pinata as photographic evidence. Both parties' photographic evidence is also represented as CID hashes, ensuring tamper-proof storage.

3. To interact with blockchain features, clients need to connect to the public blockchain chosen for the application (opBNB blockchain). Clients must perform blockchain actions, such as attestations, using a blockchain account referred to as an Externally Owned Account (EOA). To simplify onboarding for clients with no blockchain or cryptocurrency knowledge, our team integrated Dynamic. Dynamic allows users to create a blockchain account linked to their social accounts (e.g., Google login). This setup enables users to access their blockchain account seamlessly by logging in with their Google account.

4. World ID integration includes a connection process (Incognito Action) powered by World ID-Kit. This enables clients to link their World ID, generate zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, and verify them using the native cloud verifier provided by World ID.

5. The core mechanisms of ADDA include recipient verification, which binds the recipient's World ID to the delivery; recipient delegation, allowing a delegated recipient to bind their World ID to the delivery; and a pre-attestation check conducted during the parcel signing stage with the support of World ID integration.

6. Firebase is used to store nullifier hashes bound to each parcel delivery. These hashes can be retrieved and compared during the recipient verification phase to ensure data consistency and security.

7. The parcel delivery creation system records unique delivery IDs and timestamps for each delivery, ensuring proper tracking and traceability.

8. An attestation schema is formed with the following structure:

   • CIDs of all signed agreement copies
   • Photo evidence CIDs
   • Delivery ID
   • Delivery timestamp
   • Identity verification information of the opposite party

9. The structured claims, based on the defined schema, are submitted to the opBNB blockchain as on-chain attestations using the Sign Protocol.

🚩The Next Step of ADDA Protocol

Milestone #1️⃣: Launching Pilot Programs with Local 3PL

Our team is based in Malaysia, making it a great place to start within our local community. We see significant potential in partnering with last-mile delivery providers and onboarding them to use the ADDA Protocol. As blockchain technology is still relatively new across industries—and the integration of Docusign technologies with blockchain even more so—it remains in an early validation stage. Launching pilot programs presents an ideal go-to-market strategy, offering industries a low-commitment way to trial our product while enabling us to continuously refine and achieve a stronger product-market fit (PMF). Moreover, this approach helps drive greater adoption of the Docusign ecosystem.

Milestone #2️⃣: The First Web3.0 Extension App on Docusign

During the hackathon, our team explored the concept of extension apps and discovered an exciting opportunity: there are currently no blockchain-related extension apps available in the Docusign marketplace that can be incorporated into Maestro workflows. Introducing a blockchain-focused extension app would undoubtedly attract more Web3 companies to adopt Docusign.

For example, in the context of last-mile logistics with a blockchain-based setup, an extension app that stores agreement copies on decentralized storage solutions like Pinata could be used for attestation or other advanced blockchain applications. This functionality could seamlessly integrate into future logistics workflows across various industries.

Although we couldn't include our own extension app in our proof of concept due to the limited timeframe, it is now part of our roadmap and will be available soon!

Milestone #3️⃣: Sign with Docusign, Pay in Crypto

Our team ❤️ the "sign and pay" feature provided by Docusign, as it unlocks numerous practical applications in real-life scenarios, including last-mile logistics, such as cash-on-delivery (COD). Since the ADDA Protocol is built on blockchain technology, this feature also creates an exciting opportunity to seamlessly integrate cryptocurrency payments into the signing process. Looking ahead, the potential to implement automated payments through smart contracts after successful signing further enhances the possibilities for ADDA Protocol development.

🧘‍♂️Our Reflections

Our team specializes in Web3 development and blockchain technology. However, this was our first time working with Docusign technologies, and we’re grateful to the hackathon for providing this opportunity. We spent a significant amount of time exploring and experimenting in the sandbox environment, figuring out how to seamlessly integrate blockchain with Docusign. The challenge lay in reconciling the differences in tech stacks and implementations within a tight timeframe.

Designing the underlying mechanism and workflow for the ADDA Protocol was another major hurdle. This required in-depth research into the challenges and pain points of the last-mile logistics sector, as well as brainstorming solutions that effectively address each issue in a cohesive and practical way (combining every part to form the final pipeline).

What's worth mentioning is, introducing Web3 blockchain technology into the Docusign ecosystem—largely a Web2 space—was relatively unfamiliar territory for the audience, community, and judges. We invested a lot of effort in figuring out how to present these novel concepts clearly, ensuring the workflow and its underlying value were communicated effectively. You can see how much we wrote for this project🥳

Throughout this journey, we learned a great deal, driven by continuous research and a process of trial and error to create the best proof of concept (PoC) for the hackathon. We are proud to have developed a feasible and innovative approach that addresses operational transparency challenges in the logistics space by combining advanced blockchain implementations with Docusign technologies.

Making the impossible...possible,
ADDA Protocol Team❤️