Blockchain Ecosystem for Thai Insect Industry: A

Smart Contract Conceptual Framework

Walaiporn Singkhamfu
College of Arts, Media and Technology
Chiang Mai University
Chiang Mai, Thailand
walaiporn.m@cmu.ac.th
Manissaward Jintapitak
College of Arts, Media and Technology
Chiang Mai University
Chiang Mai, Thailand
manissaward.j@cmu.ac.th
Muhammad Ahsan Ansari
Department of Computer Systems
Engineering
Mehran University of Engineering and
Technology
Jamshoro, Pakistan
ahsan.ansari@faculty.muet.edu.pk
Neelam Sanjay Kamthe
Training and Placement Department
Vishwaniketan iMEET, Khalapur
Khopoli, Maharashtra, India
neelamkamthe@gmail.com
Chayapol Kamyod
Brain Science and Engineering
Innovation Research Group
School of Information Technology
Mae Fah Luang University
Chiang Rai, Thailand
chayapol.kam@mfu.ac.th
Punnarumol Temdee
School of Information Technology
Mae Fah Luang University
Chiang Rai, Thailand
punnarumol@mfu.ac.th

Abstract— As the world population is increasing day by day,
providing food for this increasing population is a difficult task
due to climatic changes and related water shortage. To meet
the nutrition and food challenges of today, the world is
nowadays looking for a new food source other than animals
and plants as some of the most common food sources. As a
future perspective, the research community is now eyeing the
use of insects as a future food source. Despite some existing
markets, Thailand has the highest edible insect species in the
world. The disruptive technology has been playing the leading
role to promote competitiveness for small businesses recently.
It is, therefore, in this paper, a blockchain ecosystem for Thai
insect industry is proposed to create a credible and traceable
insect business in Thailand. Additionally, the smart contract is
mainly used for creating a transparent and reliable insect
business in the modern world.
Keywords—blockchain, insect industry, ecosystem, smart
contract
I. INTRODUCTION
With a growing population, a limited amount of
agricultural land and increasing no: of consumers, there is an
urgent need to find an alternative food source than the
conventional food sources which includes animal, plant and
aqua food sources. Another reason to search for an alternative
food source is due to the devastating effect of livestock
production on climate change.
The eating of insects, also known as Entomophagy is not
a new phenomenon for humans. The archaeological evidence
demonstrates that humans have evolved as an
entomophagous species. Over the past five years, a lot of
efforts have been made to introduce insects as a potential and
edible food source to deal with nutrition and food challenges
of the world [1]. Currently, insects are part of the traditional
diet of approximately nearly 2 million people, especially in
tropical and sub-tropic regions of the world [2]. The main
reason of adopting insects as the possible future food source
is the reason they can provide a good protein source with
significantly shorter life cycles than traditional livestock
[3,4].
The Global Insect Protein Market is expected to reach an
approximate CAGR of 16.5% during the next five years [5].
According to the United Nations in 2017, the world
population was 7.6 billion and is expected to reach 9.8
billion by 2050. To drive the market, the rising population
ultimately leads to a decrease in agricultural lands. The trend
of a protein-rich diet, the high cost of animal and plant-based
proteins is essential factors influencing the growth of the
market. For instance, beef contains 256 g/kg of protein on an
average, whereas house crickets contain 205 g/kg.
Mealworms contain unsaturated omega-3 as much as fish
and pork [6]. Because of these benefits of insect proteins, the
market is projected to increase.
The global insect protein market is segmented based on
type, product type, application, and distribution channel. The
insect protein market can be segmented into crickets,
mealworms, black soldier flies, grasshoppers, ants,
silkworms, cicadas, and others. Based on the region, the
global insect protein market is segmented into the Americas,
Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. The
insect protein market is dominated by the Asia Pacific owing
to the enormous increasing population.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Thailand accounts for 12%
market share [7]. Thailand is also one of the dramatically
growing markets of edible insect and insect protein in the
world. Edible insect industry in Thailand has high potential
growth. Like traditional Thai food, edible insect-based Thai
food is also famous in many countries across the world. It
contains a wide range of options and nutritious values.
Thailand’s edible insect and insect protein industry are
currently estimated at $24.2 million in 2018, the value of
which is estimated to be worth at $56.8 million by 2023,
registering a CAGR Of 18.6% during 2018 to 2023 [7].
With the growing demand for sustainable food sources
and severe concern about environmental safety, the edible
insect is considered as viable over other accessible food
sources. Edible insects and insect protein industry in
Thailand are hindered by the growth of other protein types
and improper regulations concerning the food safety and
types of insects that can be used across various industry
segments. However, with the rising popularity and growing
awareness about the health benefits of insect protein, the
market revenue of edible insect and insect protein is
estimated to grow at a rapid pace in the coming years.
As mentioned before, insects possess a vast potential to
be a portion of food for humans as well as feed for animals.

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Even though, in several countries, especially Southeast Asian
countries, insects have been widely adopted, one of the food
sources. However, the disgust factor of considering insects as
food is still present. Furthermore, the limited availability of
insects in markets and lack of regulations regarding insects
as food or feed is a significant barrier of adopting insects as
major food source. Therefore, a framework is needed for
wide adaptation of insects as a food source to successfully
tackle the food challenges of today. It is, therefore, in this
paper, a conceptual framework is being proposed for creating
an ecosystem of adopting insects in a food source. To create
awareness and to deal with all concerns of the general
market, the utilization of blockchain technology is being
proposed for a credible and transparent ecosystem.
For this paper, the insect industry in Thailand is mainly
focused. According to the increased demand all over the
world, the ecosystem connecting all actors are required. To
enhance the competitiveness of Thai insect industry, this
paper thus proposes the blockchain ecosystem for Thai insect
industry. Using smart contracts, self-enforce agreements are
established. The business transaction in the ecosystem is safe
in a real-time manner. Notably, the traceability can be done
automatically by the utilization of smart contracts in the
ecosystem.
II. LITERATURE REVIEWS
This section presents some literature reviews as
followings:
A. Blockchain and Smart Contract
Similar to the Internet, blockchain is a generational
technological transformation for how businesses transact
with one another [8]. From tracking and transferring digital
money or inventory to post-financial settlements and smart
insurance contracts, blockchain has much potential to
transform business industries and applications. Technically,
blockchain technology enables distributed public ledgers that
hold immutable data in a secure and encrypted way and
ensure that transactions can never be altered.
At the first stage, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are
the most famous examples of blockchain usage [9].
Currently, Smart Contract is widely implemented to
transform many industries into digitalization [10]. The
implementation of Smart Contract covers ranges of
applications. Since the blockchain technology becomes more
mature and affordable, there is a much different complexity
level of implementation of the smart contract recently. From
simple applications such as digital value exchanging, basic
smart contract, multiparty smart contract, distributed
autonomous business units, and distributed autonomous
society. For digital value exchanging, the use case example is
that the family member sends some bitcoins to some family
members. The use case example of the basic smart contract is
that the landlord remotely locks a non-paying tenant out of
the apartment. The well-known example of a multiparty
smart contract is seller lends buyers fund to buy a house. The
sample case of distributed autonomous business units is that
unit of cooperation issues its bonds, and buyers monitor
payments via a shared ledger. For the distributed
autonomous society, a group of settlers from different areas
establishes self-enforced agreements.
Blockchain technology provides the different impacts to
different areas such as agriculture [11-13], healthcare [14-
16], property [17], transport and logistics [18-19], insurance
[20-23], financial services [24-25], utilities [26-27], etc. For
example, it generally provides high cost and social impact on
the agriculture area. It can be seen that blockchain provides a
high-cost impact on financial services and insurance. For
healthcare, it provides high revenue and cost impacts. For
utilities, it is demonstrated that blockchain can provide high-
cost impact.
Blockchain technology provides decentralized consensus
and enlarges the contracting space through smart contracts
[28]. Generally, the smart contract is a computer protocol
intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the
negotiation of a contract [29]. More specifically, smart
contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the
agreement between actors being directly written into lines of
codes across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network.
Smart contracts allow credible and safe transactions without
third parties [30]. These transactions are traceable and
irreversible. For this paper, the smart contract is proposed to
ensure the safety and tractability of Thai insect industry.
B. Thai Insect Industry
According to the location and environment, the research had
shown that there are more than three hundreds of edible
insect species in Thailand. As a result, Thailand has the
highest edible insect species in the world [31]–[34].
Accordingly, Thailand is the country that has been
developing the most top insect-containing product in the
Asia Pacific since 2004 [35]. Besides, Thailand becomes
one of the countries that increase the world market share
which is around 12% that produce edible insect product or
protein [5]. Consequently, there are lots of market and
demand from many European countries due to the EU
regulation 2017. The market is expected to be the second
largest region in the global insect protein market for fish
feed [7]. Therefore, the insect business are growing and
Thailand has high potential to become the leading country
for producing and support edible insect product to the world
population.
III. THE PROPOSED FRAMEWORK
Based on various advantages and features of the
blockchain technology and smart contract, the future smart
agriculture business can benefit from this technology.
According to the exponential growth rate of insect industry
or business in Asia-Pacific and European countries especially
the business insect in Thailand. The authors purposed the so
called the Insect Blockchain Eco System (IBES) as presented
by Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. The Proposed Blockchain Eco-System for Thai Insect Business
The blockchain technology was delivered into the
proposed framework not only because of its security
(payment, structure, smart contracts) but also traceability
function due to its distributed database and reference which
can prevent identity fraud and provide food safety and origin.
As mentioned in the previous sections, the insect business
will become an optional and potential protein source for both
human and economic animals. Therefore, traceable insect or
production source can increase the customer confidence that
they will receive a qualified product. From Fig. 1, there are
some main actors and connections all among them. The
connection represents two different types of smart contracts,
including smart contract and smart local contract. The detail
of each actor and connects are described as follows.
A. Actors
The EcoSystem will be built as a platform or applications
that create a link to provide a connection with all business
dimensions such as financial, consumers, network, suppliers
and other B2Bs (business to business).
B. Connections
The platform would provide a seamless connection between
all partners by using a secured and robust blockchain smart
contract. The Local Smart Contract will be linked the local
insect production or suppliers. This process is to register and
identify local suppliers and provide traceability of the
original insect production. Besides, the leading smart
contract will link other business dimensions together when
the product is moved to another business dimensions.
C. Discussion
The purposed business framework aims to apply the
blockchain technology and its features to support a new
business model and business growth by integrating digital
technology into the purposed model. However, many factors
need to be carefully studied and planned before
implementing this framework due to there are many
challenges such as the law and regulations of insect
production and export which involve food and quality
control department. Therefore, cooperation and agreement
between business partners are essential for building a new
business with digital technology. In other words, the concept
and implementation phase for the framework may be a bit
difficult due to the technology is entirely new, and there are
plenty of questions that need to answer for the investors.
Therefore, possible risks and plan need to be carefully
designed and analyzed before implementing the system.
IV. CONCLUSION
The paper proposed the blockchain ecosystem framework
for Thai insect business. The context involves the connection
of potential business partners through blockchain technology
features. The utilization of smart contracts all among actors
are employed to ensure that all agreements are self-enforced,
safe, and traceable promptly. Therefore, the framework
demonstrates the possibility of applying blockchain to
promote new and sensitive insect product, which could be
considered as a future protein source of the world population.
However, many factors need to be carefully planned before
implementing the framework to reduce the risks of this new
business model.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was partially supported by the ERASMUS
CENTRAL project. We thank our colleagues from CGC and
Aarhus University who provided insight and expertise that
greatly assisted the research. We would also like to show our
gratitude to Prof. Ramjee Prasad for initiating the project and
Prof. Peter Lingred for sharing his wisdom with us during
the course of multi business modeling.
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