ONDC’s blockchain is a Made-in-India visioning of global digital public infrastructures
By Dev Chandrasekhar, Senior Fellow, Centre for Innovation in Public Policy
In the digital age, the foundational elements of trust and transparency have become vital to the integrity and success of global digital economies. Amidst this evolving landscape, ONDC’s Confidex, an instantiation of Dhiway’s CORD blockchain technology, emerges as a groundbreaking solution. It challenges conventional approaches by introducing a decentralised blueprint for fostering trust in digital commerce not only in India but the world over. ONDC’s blockchain is not just a technological leap—it’s a reimagining of how digital public infrastructures can operate at the scales of populations and entire nations, a paradigm shift from centralized control systems to decentralised trust mechanisms while ensuring continuous data assurance for citizen services and grassroots e-commerce.
ONDC, or Open Network for Digital Commerce, is India’s nation-scale initiative aimed at transforming e-commerce by creating an open and interoperable network that allows various platforms, service providers, buyers and sellers, regardless of their size, to connect and enable online transactions across different categories and geographies. The core idea is to democratise digital commerce, allowing buyers and sellers to interact freely without being confined to a specific platform or application.
How ONDC Confidex changes the game
ONDC Confidex is a transformative shift towards decentralised trust. Anchored in the blockchain’s nativity, this shift promotes a value exchange network of networks that enables the reuse of continuously assured data that is traceable, reliable, secure, transparent and immutable.
Confidex provides a transparent ledger that tracks every phase in the supply chain from production to end consumption. This level of detail not only fosters trust but also aligns with the broader vision of creating a global standard for ensuring product history’s authenticity—a core aspect of continuous data assurance.
In the realm of digital transactions, the reliability of data underpins the foundation of trust. Confidex enables data certainty, making each transaction verifiable and immutable. This paves the way for friction-free interactions within digital marketplaces, ensuring that every piece of data holds its integrity from the point of creation to consumption.
The digital economy is plagued with issues of forgery and duplication. Confidex addresses this head-on by creating unique digital records that are impossible to replicate or alter. This uniqueness, safeguarded by the blockchain, ensures a secure and dependable value exchange network. Security concerns have often undermined the growth of digital infrastructures. Confidex blockchain’s robust security protocols ensure that sensitive data is protected against breaches, emphasizing the system’s robustness at a population-scale. Since each transaction and record is openly verifiable, data is continuously assured, and transparency is omnipresent. This level of openness is critical for nurturing confidence among sellers, service providers, and customers.
Once data enters the blockchain, altering it is impossible. This permanence ensures that the digital records on this population-scale blockchain are reliable, the immutability fostering an unshakeable trust in the system’s integrity. By embedding these ratings and reviews firmly within the blockchain, Confidex guarantees the authenticity and reliability of consumer feedback, thus strengthening the foundational information that buyers and sellers use for improved decision-making.
What makes ONDC’s blockchain special
So far, the use of blockchain in population-scale digital public infrastructure has been shackled with the limitations of energy-consuming proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanisms that use hash identifiers. These mechanisms rely on complex mathematical problems or possession-based activities to validate transactions–actions that are not only energy exhaustive but also time-consuming and computationally heavy. This has significantly strained the inherent scalability potential of blockchain and left DPIs grappling with inefficiency obstacles posed by the traditional hash identifiers.
CORD draws on a fundamentally different consensus mechanism known as Proof of Authority (PoA). This innovative mechanism eliminates the heavy computational requirements associated with PoW and PoS by introducing verified identities or authorities that are responsible for validating transactions. Under the PoA consensus, validators or authorities are trusted entities established on the network, leading to energy-efficient and quicker transactions.
Moreover, CORD replaces hash identifiers with persistent identifiers. Unlike traditional hash identifiers, which change with every transaction, persistent identifiers remain constant. This adds an additional level of security and simplification for transaction tracing and data verification across the population-scale blockchain. Combining this with the Proof of Authority consensus mechanism, CORD provides a sustainable and scalable solution suitable for population-scale implementations.
By leveraging PoA and persistent identifiers, CORD opens the door for blockchain’s integration into digital public infrastructures. The reduced computational and energy demands coupled with increased security and reliability make population-scale blockchains not only a possibility but an efficient, sustainable reality.
Conclusion: Shaping the future of global digital trust
ONDC’s Confidex blockchain is not just a technological venture; it’s a global vision emanating from India, designed to reshape the foundational structures of digital commerce worldwide. By integrating the values of traceability, reliability, uniqueness, security, transparency, and immutability into the digital public infrastructure, Confidex is a testament to the country’s role as an innovator in setting new benchmarks for how global digital ecosystems can operate securely, transparently, and without friction.
