There are many products that could be decentralized apps, but not necessarily many that should be. Trace is a new player in an industry with a public consumer product grown and sold by trustless entities. Offering a fresh perspective to the cannabis industry, the company recognized the need for data on vendors and transactions to be decentralized information.

As the hemp and recreational cannabis industry makes gains in the US and Canada, there is an increasing need to validate claims made by growers and producers while supporting a seamless supply chain between business entities and consumers. However, these businesses often face inefficiencies when attempting to verify product origin, strain, extracting methods, and test results.

Trace had a strong vision for how their product could solve eminent industry problems. When they came to Fueled, they sought more than just mobile design and development; they needed an entrepreneurial partner. Fueled re-examined Trace’s product vision, re-scoping an MVP that focused on cannabis cultivators and testers to bring their initial product to market with the core user base.

Fueled built a prototype to address the product concept. The team went onsite in Vermont, leading focus group user-testing with cultivators, extractors, testers, and distributors to validate the Trace problem statement and product offering. We found that facilitating a trusted transfer of data collected at each step of the supply chain is nearly as important as the data itself.