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These problems explain why the industry began looking for electronic alternatives long before blockchain entered the picture. As early as the 1990s, electronic bills of lading were being used through closed, centrally administered systems. Broadly, the carrier would issue an electronic record containing the same information as a paper bill, and control over that record would be assigned to a single holder at a time via a secure message, private key, or registry entry. Transfer did not occur through physical delivery of a document but through the platform%u2019s intervention: the existing holder%u2019s control would be cancelled and reissued, or recorded in favour of the transferee, usually under a rulebook or user agreement accepted by all participants. In legal terms, these systems relied largely on contractual mechanisms to reproduce the transfer of rights and control that paper bills achieve more directly.Those early systems were innovative but limited. They relied heavily on the carrier or platform operator%u2019s involvement, so the electronic bill could not be negotiated freely or independently in the same way as a paper bill could. Their effectiveness also depended on all parties joining the same private system and accepting the same contractual framework, which limited interoperability and made legal recognition across jurisdictions uncertain. They reduced some paper-based friction but did not eliminate reliance on intermediaries or fully resolve concerns over fraud, system failure, or legal equivalence. That is why blockchain-based models later attracted such attention.Blockchain entered the story later, not as a synonym for the electronic bill, but as a more advanced technological answer to the same problem: how to make an electronic bill unique, trustworthy, transferable, and scalable. Broadly, blockchain is a particular type of distributed ledger technology. In a decentralised blockchain model, instead of a single central operator keeping the master record, transactions are recorded across a network of participants in linked blocks. Each block is connected to the previous one using cryptographic methods and maintained in a way that makes tampering extremely difficult to detect. In this context, a bill of lading can be represented as a unique digital token and transferred electronically, while preserving a verifiable record of who has control at each point. Many commercial electronic bill platforms remain permissioned, membership-based, or governed by platform rules, so decentralisation should not be overstated. Even so, the transfer no longer depends on couriers and physical presentation, but on digital control over a shared, verified, and hard-to-alter record.The practical appeal is clear. Blockchain can reduce dependence on a single intermediary by distributing the record across a network, although many commercially important permissioned systems remain governed and trust-based rather than fully decentralised. It can improve traceability, create an audit trail of changes and transfers, make unauthorised tampering harder, and allow the bill to be treated as a unique digital asset rather than a copyable file. It can also reduce the risk that cargo outruns its documents, provide a clearer record of who is entitled to control the bill, and support smart-contract functionality, meaning coded mechanisms that automate actions once preset conditions are May 2026 215Your trusted global maritime partner9/F Dorset House, Taikoo Place979 King%u2019s Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kongenquiries@wallem.comwww.wallem.comShip ManagementShip AgencyCommercial ServicesMarine ServicesVessel IT Services Scan QR code to visit our website