Blockticity

Verification layer for digital conformity assessment. Tamper-evident trade documents, independently verifiable.
Trusted Trade at Scale.

[Blockticity @blockticity]

@Prof_Oak_ Congrats!!

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM ☕️

Manufacturing Monday 🇺🇸🏭

American manufacturing is gaining momentum.

New October data shows manufacturing hiring accelerating, stronger demand, and growing order backlogs.

But there’s a challenge: supplier delivery performance has deteriorated to its weakest level in more than four years.

Expanding domestic manufacturing capacity is important. Building resilient, transparent, and verifiable supply chains around it is just as critical.

🔗 https://t.co/w7Z8Ndiniu

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM 🐟

Yesterday, we highlighted the America First Seafood Strategy.

This investigation shows why stronger seafood supply chains need deeper visibility.

Reporting by Ian Urbina and The Outlaw Ocean Project examines forced labor, pollution, and illegal fishing linked to the fishmeal used to feed farmed seafood.

The sourcing questions start long before the farm:

Where did the feed come from?
Who supplied it?
What evidence supports those claims?

We believe origin records, test results, and certifications should be verifiable and connected across each handoff.

Protecting responsible producers starts with making their evidence easier to check.

https://t.co/XzZeoFw8Vz

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM 🌊🇺🇸

The White House announced its America First Seafood Strategy, emphasizing domestic production, import compliance, and combating seafood fraud.

A particularly important development: stronger emphasis on substantiating seafood origin claims.

As global supply chains grow more complex, verifiable documentation and traceability become essential to protecting producers, consumers, and fair trade.

https://t.co/7p32IOPyZG

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM ☕️

It’s another Fraud Friday:

Nearly $1 million in Pokémon and sports cards stolen from a FedEx truck in California.

But the bigger story is supply chain liability.

Who had custody? When did responsibility transfer? Who bears the loss? And what evidence exists when insurers, carriers, and customers disagree?

PSA has reportedly deactivated the stolen cards’ certificates and alerted marketplaces.

That’s an important distinction: authenticating an asset is only part of the equation. Establishing a verifiable chain of custody matters just as much.

Cargo theft isn’t just a security problem. It’s a trust, accountability, and liability problem.

And it extends far beyond trading cards.

https://t.co/oIquzzMlHf

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM 🔐

This week, a security incident involving India’s eMudhra exposed a surprising weakness in one of the internet’s most important trust systems.

To understand why it matters, let’s look at how that system works.

Every time you visit a secure website (HTTPS), your browser checks a digital certificate to help verify that you’re connecting to the intended website.

Those certificates are issued by organizations called Certificate Authorities (CAs).

They’re part of a global system called Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), which relies on a chain of trust:

• Root authorities trusted by browsers and operating systems
• Intermediate authorities authorized to issue certificates
• Individual certificates identifying websites

So what happened?

Researchers discovered that eight eMudhra intermediate certificates had private keys so weak they could effectively be guessed.

These keys were supposed to be generated using cryptographically secure randomness. Instead, their values ranged from just 4 to 237.

Why is that a problem?

An attacker with one of these private keys could potentially forge certificates that appear legitimate, undermining the system browsers use to authenticate websites.

Google and Mozilla moved to block the affected certificates.

There’s no confirmed evidence that these keys were maliciously exploited, but the incident illustrates something important:

The internet doesn’t just run on encryption. It relies on an entire ecosystem of delegated trust, secure processes, and independent verification.

And most of us interact with that infrastructure every single day without realizing it.

[Oveck @oveck]

gM 🐉

I had a plan.

Then I made a Nork.

That was 710 Norks ago.

Introducing NORKS.

710 individually created characters. One species. Absolutely no quality control over their personalities.

Welcome to the species.

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM ☕️

Manufacturing Monday 🇺🇸

Some encouraging news for American manufacturing this week:

🏭 $21B in semiconductor investment in NY
🚢 $3B shipyard investment in TX
🚜 $1B equipment manufacturing expansion in NC
⚙️ $700M new steel mill in CA

More domestic capacity. More resilient supply chains. More opportunities for American manufacturing.

Source: IMTS

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM ☕️

A product can be authentic and still be compromised.

Recent reports of tampered Ledger devices sold through a third-party reseller highlight a broader supply-chain challenge.

Even genuine products can be vulnerable after leaving the manufacturer.

Who handled them?
What changed?
What was verified?

This is why genealogical traceability matters.

The supply chain has a memory problem.

https://t.co/aZT6KbDbFy

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM ☀️

There are fewer than 1,000 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) worldwide, each capable of transporting roughly 2 million barrels of crude oil.

With shipping costs surging and security threats disrupting the Strait of Hormuz, smaller shuttle tankers are moving oil through high-risk waters before transferring it to VLCCs offshore.

Think about what that means for the documentation.

A shipment can change vessels, operators, and custody before ever reaching its destination.

Bills of lading. Certificates of origin. Inspection records. Quantity and quality attestations.

Every handoff introduces another point where information must remain consistent, authentic, and verifiable.

The cargo may change hands. Trust in its documentation shouldn’t have to start over.

This is why standards-based, interoperable verification infrastructure matters to global trade.

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM ☕️

Fascinating research from @NIST

By analyzing 4,563 drug samples across 17 states, researchers are identifying chemical fingerprints, tracking changes in composition, and studying how dangerous fentanyl adulterants emerge across geographic regions.

Using mass spectrometry, compounds can be identified in seconds.

This is an extraordinary example of how analytical science, traceability, and timely data can help reveal patterns that would otherwise remain invisible.

The implications extend well beyond illicit drugs, from public health to supply chain intelligence.

Research: https://t.co/4qO5WMMCrs

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM ☕️

Manufacturing Monday 🏭

95% of U.S. semiconductor equipment and materials spending goes to suppliers headquartered in the U.S., Europe, or Japan.

Yet only 68% is tied to production in those regions.

That 27-point gap highlights a critical challenge: knowing who supplies a product isn’t the same as knowing where it was made.

As semiconductor supply chains grow more complex, traceability, provenance, and verifiable documentation become increasingly important.

Source: @SIAAmerica

[Blockticity @blockticity]

🔗 https://t.co/FHISHIGOBf

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM ☕️🐟

Something fishy was happening in the global tuna trade.

@CBP uncovered a scheme where tuna caught by foreign-flagged vessels was shipped to another country for minimal processing, then imported into the U.S. under a different country of origin to avoid applicable tariffs.

The numbers:

🐟 $8.5M in estimated lost revenue identified

💰 $1.3M in additional trade remedies across 789 entries

⚖️ $8.9M in expected penalties

Here’s the catch: Cleaning and repackaging a product doesn’t necessarily change its country of origin.

Traceability matters. Provenance matters. And the integrity of trade documentation matters.

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM! ☕️

While part of our team is in Washington, DC this week for @ASTMIntl meetings, our COO had the opportunity to attend a fantastic lecture yesterday by Dr. Eugene Spafford (@TheRealSpaf) of Purdue University.

“AI: Cybersecurity Panacea or Existential Threat?” is a timely discussion as emerging technologies continue to reshape how we approach security, trust, and digital infrastructure.

A big thank you to Spaf and @cerias for making these important conversations accessible to the broader community!

🔗 https://t.co/xT9kvdS48e

[CERIAS at Purdue U. @cerias]

Wed. Oct. 7th, 4:30pm ET: "AI: Cybersecurity Panacea or Existential Threat?" - Dr. Eugene Spafford, @TheRealSpaf CERIAS, Purdue University https://t.co/C5cni4nPEw

[Raoul Pal @RaoulGMI]

This is a big deal and urgently needed

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM from DC 🇺🇸

Back with ASTM International this week for F49, working on the standards behind trusted, verifiable information across global supply chains.

Standards first. Infrastructure follows.

(📸 : Minh Phan)

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM.

It’s a strong ‘Manufacturing Monday’. 🇺🇸

The latest ISM data shows U.S. manufacturing expanding for the ninth consecutive month.

September Manufacturing PMI: 54.5

New Orders: 55.3
Production: 56.7
Employment: 52.7
Backlog of Orders: 51.1
Prices: 77.9

Five of the six largest manufacturing industries expanded during the month.

But more manufacturing also means more materials, suppliers, testing, certifications and documentation moving through increasingly complex supply chains.

As manufacturing scales, so does the need to establish what a product is, where its inputs came from, whether requirements were met and whether the evidence supporting those claims can be trusted.

Manufacturing capacity matters.

So does the integrity of the data behind it.

[Blockticity @blockticity]

GM.

Let this sink in… 🥁

In May, @CBP seized 93 ceramic sinks at the Port of Norfolk bearing counterfeit certification marks.

Four months later, officers at the same port seized another 1,000 ceramic sinks bearing counterfeit UPC certification marks.

That’s 1,093 sinks where the mark meant to signal conformity couldn’t be trusted.

Counterfeit certification isn’t just a branding problem. It undermines the trust infrastructure behind global trade.

A mark only works if you can verify who issued it, what it applies to, and that it hasn’t been tampered with.

[Art Blocks @artblocks_io]

Today we're announcing ABX, a free and open-source protocol for documenting anything digital on the blockchain, powered by Art Blocks.

Bring your own wallet, or sign up with an email. We'll even cover your gas.

We're starting with @Base, other chains coming soon™. 

https://t.co/dpm60CcHkW