My uncle's factory almost closed last year, not because of poor business, but because cash flow was completely blocked. A batch of goods took 8 days for approval in the bank—downstream payments were delayed, while upstream payables were being urged, forcing him into a 2 million yuan funding black hole, and he had to resort to high-interest loans.

That day he called me: "Can the blockchain technology you're researching speed up the bank's approval process?"

I couldn't answer him at the time. But today I suddenly realized that maybe this is a very good question—because it hits the true gold mine of blockchain. We often hype various DeFi concepts but overlook the market that truly sleeps on trillions of dollars: **Supply Chain Finance**.

And some emerging on-chain data platforms are trying to pry open this long-locked door using distributed verification mechanisms.

**01 | Absurd Reality: Banks Have Money, Companies Lack Funds**

There is a very ironic phenomenon in the global supply chain finance market: on one side, massive lendable funds in the banking system cannot find reliable projects to invest in; on the other side, thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises struggle to operate due to financing difficulties.

What separates them? A thick wall of information.

Take a batch of goods from the factory to overseas stores as an example. The entire chain requires handling documents including: purchase contracts, quality inspection reports, production certificates, shipping bills of lading, insurance certificates, packing lists, customs declarations, tax records, storage receipts, logistics tracking information, delivery receipts, and payment invoices...

More than a dozen documents, five different formats, at least three languages, scattered across eight completely different information systems.

If a bank wants to lend? First, it must send personnel to spend three days verifying each document. Then, two more days to authenticate their authenticity. By the time verification is complete and funds are available, the goods have long been shipped to the port. The financing process only begins when the company urgently needs money.

This is why the global supply chain finance market has a **$1.5 trillion financing gap**—not because there is no money, but because the cost of organizing information and verifying it takes too long.

**02 | Technical Solution: From "Manual Verification" to "On-Chain Confirmation"**

In traditional models, each intermediate step requires manual intervention for verification and endorsement. Purchase contracts need to be verified, logistics information confirmed, payment certificates checked. This process is not only slow but also costly and error-prone.

But if these key information nodes are stored on the blockchain, and distributed verification mechanisms are used to ensure data authenticity, the situation changes completely.

For example, once a bill of lading is on-chain, logistics companies, cargo owners, and banks can view it in real-time—no more faxing, scanning, or emailing back and forth. Once production certificates, quality inspection reports, and payment records are on-chain and confirmed, they become tamper-proof—allowing the bank's risk control department to significantly reduce review time.

Some platforms are exploring standardization schemes for legal and logistics data, with the core idea being: represent each link in the supply chain with a unified data format, then quickly verify authenticity through on-chain mechanisms.

What’s the result? The original 8-day approval process could be shortened to 24 hours, and the repeated back-and-forth document verification could be completed in one go.

**03 | Market Reality: This is a Truly Trillion-Dollar Opportunity**

A number worth emphasizing repeatedly: the global financing gap for small and medium-sized enterprises is **$1.5 trillion**. This is not an empty figure but a real, daily problem of financing difficulty.

In comparison, the entire DeFi market's locked assets are only a few hundred billion dollars. But supply chain finance? It’s a traditional financial sector that has been used for a long time, with a scale far beyond imagination.

Banks in Europe and America, Chinese trading companies, Southeast Asian factories—all are in this market. If the financing cycle can be compressed from a week to a day, the efficiency of the entire financial chain will double.

This is not a speculative opportunity hyped in the crypto space but a real application scenario that can improve actual business operations.

Now I want to hear what my uncle has to say—maybe next time, he won’t just ask if approval can be sped up, but will actually use these tools for financing.