Introduction

Traceability and tokenization has become an important use-case for blockchain technology for businesses, governments and consumers all around the world. Through the process of building the Palmyra Platform we have also noticed an increase in major commodity import markets where governments are beginning to request businesses to comply with traceability rules (e.g FDA in the United States for Food Safety or the EU for deforestation compliance).

This is no longer a matter of if the technology should be implemented, but when.

What is Winter Protocol?

The Winter Protocol is a simple open-source turn-key solution for traceability and tokenization technology developed by zenGate Global. It is specifically tailored for eUTXO blockchains, agnostic to the standard used for recording traceability data.

This includes various APIs and toolsets aimed at customizing traceability and tokenization solutions for all sorts of applications.

Winter Backend Cardano enables you to:

• Upload traceability metadata to IPFS (Inter-Planetary File System)
• Tokenize data references on the Cardano blockchain
• Update existing tokenized references
• Delete (burn) tokenized references when no longer needed

The application exposes a REST API for interacting with the Cardano blockchain, handling all the complexity of transaction building and submission.

Documentation Structure

This documentation is organized into the following sections:

Trace Events - Overview of all event types supported by Winter Protocol for capturing different stages in a supply chain.

Guides - Core concepts about blockchain traceability, IPFS, tokenization, and getting started with your first record.

Setup - Instructions for installing and configuring the application, including requirements, environment variables, and running the application.

Deployment - Best practices for deploying the application locally or to cloud providers like Google Cloud.

Best Practices - Security, key management, and operational guidelines.

FAQs - General and technical frequently asked questions.