Blockchain-Based Wine Supply Chain Software with NFT Bottle Passports

Summary

INNERLUXES designed and developed a blockchain-based wine supply-chain management platform for a French wine-tech startup, helping it reach the market in just nine months. Each bottle gets an NFT "digital passport" on the Polygon blockchain, giving producers, distributors, and consumers tamper-resistant provenance and bottle-level traceability.

About the Client

The Client is a French supply-chain technology startup on a mission to promote transparency and combat counterfeiting in the premium wine industry. It set out to build a one-of-a-kind solution to streamline multi-tier wine supply-chain planning and give wine producers, distributors, and consumers full visibility into provenance and chain of custody, ensuring authenticity at every stage. The Client chose blockchain for a complete, tamper-resistant record of wine transactions, giving each bottle a tradeable non-fungible token (NFT) digital passport to facilitate en primeur sales and enable supply control at the bottle level.

The Client had a clear business idea but doubted its technical feasibility and lacked the in-house development skills to turn the concept into a product. It sought a reliable technology partner experienced in startup consulting, blockchain, and custom SCM software — and chose INNERLUXES.

Discovery Stage

INNERLUXES's blockchain consultants studied the Client's idea and devised a tailored discovery plan. To build a complete picture of expectations, end-user needs, and the competitive landscape, the team:

• Interviewed the Client's stakeholders to elicit detailed business and technical requirements.
• Explored the needs of all major user segments — winemakers, brokers, distributors, shops, restaurants, and consumers.
• Studied supply-chain participants' processes, including onsite sessions with a prominent winemaker to inspect day-to-day wine manufacturing, selling, and order-fulfillment workflows.
• Researched market trends and competitor offerings to sharpen the Client's unique selling proposition.

INNERLUXES then compiled a detailed requirements specification, mapped the project scope, and presented several architecture and tech-stack options with a cost-benefit comparison, recommending the most feasible approach for the Client's requirements and resource constraints. After the technical design was agreed, the Client received a comprehensive development plan — resource allocation, collaboration flows, cost and time estimates, and risk-mitigation steps — plus a market-entry strategy to maximize customer acquisition and speed payback.

Development Stage

To match the Client's priorities and release timelines, INNERLUXES split the project into two stages:

• Stage I — role-specific functionality for en primeur wine sales, order-fulfillment management, and blockchain traceability, so winemakers (the first party in the supply chain) could start at the next en primeur season and the Client could generate revenue sooner.
• Stage II — bottled-wine tokenization, stock control, and instant transfer of bottle digital passports during in-store selling, letting reputable shops and restaurants give consumers proof of origin and ownership and opening an additional revenue stream.

INNERLUXES assigned a fully managed team — a project manager, a business analyst, a solution architect, a UX/UI designer, three PHP developers, a Golang developer, two React developers, an iOS developer, an Android developer, a QA engineer, a DevOps engineer, and a data engineer — working in Scrum with one-week sprints for agile planning and fast feedback. The designer created clear user journeys, a role-based UI kit reflecting the Client's brand, and intuitive analytics dashboards. INNERLUXES delivered the MVP focused on en primeur wine in just 2.5 months, then evolved it into a full solution with major releases every two weeks; over the following four months, the Client received a ready-to-use SCM product with these key components:

• A blockchain database on Polygon (an Ethereum sidechain offering lower transaction costs at equal performance) storing an immutable record of multi-party supply-chain transactions.
• A PHP back end automating order processing, collaborative fulfillment planning, creation of bottle digital passports, and supply-chain control — including tracking at bottle, carton, and pallet levels via QR codes, NFC, and RFID — with four APIs to integrate with B2B customers' SCM systems.
• A blockchain back end with an asset-tokenization mechanism that converts bottle passports into NFTs and Golang smart contracts that automate NFT transfers and on-chain data entry, coded to enforce transactions when gas is minimized to cut costs.
• A data analytics engine (on Amazon QuickSight, ready for later AWS AI services) to analyze, forecast, and report supply-chain variables such as sales, finance, and fulfillment.
• AWS cloud storage for supply-chain metadata (bottle images, delivery instructions, shipping documents) to avoid costly on-chain storage.
• Role-specific web interfaces for supply-chain participants (winemakers, brokers, distributors, and more).
• iOS and Android apps for field workers (vineyard, warehouse, and shop staff) to report supply-chain events and manage passport transfers on the go.
• Native consumer apps for iOS and Android to verify provenance and manage a digital-passport portfolio — native builds chosen for a top-tier experience for premium-wine buyers.
• An admin panel for the Client to manage accounts and access rights, track payments, and analyze user behavior.

INNERLUXES used proven frameworks, prebuilt UI components, and cloud services to speed delivery and ensure quality. The blockchain layer was first built and tested locally on Ganache (an Ethereum simulator) to avoid costly smart-contract changes on the live Polygon network, with automated functional testing in parallel with development and manual testing of smart contracts to rule out logic gaps and vulnerabilities. When the Client requested mid-project changes affecting access provisioning, passport traceability, and price analytics, the team adapted quickly without delays or budget overruns, delivering documented code and test reports monthly, biweekly progress reports, and real-time access to project-tracking tools. INNERLUXES delivered the ready-to-launch en primeur solution and continued with Stage II.

Key Outcomes for the Client

• A fully functional blockchain wine supply-chain solution delivered in nine months.
• Reduced project investment thanks to advice on optimal design and pragmatic planning.
• Lower maintenance expenses and gas fees thanks to a cost-effective tech stack.
• Strong potential for high user adoption through role-specific functionality and convenient UX/UI.
• Reduced startup-failure risk thanks to a well-researched market-entry strategy.

Technologies and Tools

Back end: PHP (Symfony), Golang, Polygon, Ganache. Front end: React.js, Material UI. iOS: Swift, SwiftUI, MVVM, Combine, REST API. Android: Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Coroutines, Dagger/Hilt, Retrofit, Firebase. Cloud: Amazon RDS, SNS, S3, EC2, ECR, EKS, QuickSight, AWS IAM, Firebase Cloud Messaging. Project management: Jira, Confluence.