What's on the Menu: Blockchain as a Real-time Logistics Tool in Student Markets

Clarity and transparency are vital to customers in small to midsized marketplaces, especially in metropolitan or walkable areas such as college campuses. It has been observed in local student marketplaces that there are items that are frequently mislabeled or unlabeled. In addition, items often show up sporadically and in different locations at random times. The uncertain nature of these items and their attributes can lead to a gross drop in engagement and sales within the campus community, even if the marketplace believes it is the only feasible outlet. Therefore, in this paper, we are seeking to rebuild trust between marketplaces and student consumers by creating an approachable and transparent solution utilizing blockchain technology. In our suggested model, before adding any new product, a list of reputable approvers compiled by members of student unions verifies the product and approves or rejects it. Once a product receives a certain number of approvals, it is added to the chain. We deployed our model on a second-layer blockchain made up of nodes inside university infrastructure to lower the cost and increase efficiency. We designed a small prototype of our proposed model and deployed it on the Sepolia test network to show that our proposed model is feasible.