TCF POST Special Report
A review of 31 studies finds blockchain’s strongest applications in material provenance, product authentication, audit readiness and environmental accounting, but warns that supplier costs, unreliable source data and limited evidence of better labour conditions threaten its sustainability promise.
Blockchain technology could strengthen traceability across fast-fashion and textile supply chains, but its capacity to deliver measurable sustainability benefits remains uneven, according to a new study published on October 10, 2026, in Challenges in Sustainability.
The review, Blockchain for Supply Chain Transparency in Fast Fashion: A Scoping Review of Primary Studies, Implementation Barriers, and Sustainability Pathways, by Haewon Byeon of the Korea University of Technology and Education, identifies clear potential for blockchain-enabled recordkeeping while challenging the assumption that greater digital transparency automatically translates into better environmental and social performance.
The distinction matters for fashion brands, textile mills, garment manufacturers and sourcing companies facing growing pressure to substantiate claims about material origin, production processes, recycled content and supply-chain responsibility.
Traceability is the clearest commercial opportunity
The study mapped 31 primary studies published between 2020 and 2025, selected from an initial set of 122 de-duplicated records. The research covered empirical investigations, surveys, case studies, pilot projects, prototype systems and conceptual technology designs across fashion and related textile-apparel supply chains.
The strongest evidence concerned blockchain’s ability to create tamper-resistant records, maintain product and material provenance, support authentication and improve audit documentation. These functions can help businesses follow materials across production stages and assemble more detailed evidence for sustainability reporting and product information systems.
The technology becomes more useful when integrated with other digital tools, including Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, radio-frequency identification (RFID), QR codes, enterprise resource planning systems and digital product passports.
One quantitative study reviewed by Byeon found that integrated IoT-blockchain capabilities had a stronger association with real-time supply-chain transparency, with a reported coefficient of 0.42, than blockchain alone at 0.27 or IoT alone at 0.31. The result supports an integrated digital-infrastructure approach rather than treating blockchain as a stand-alone solution.
Other individual studies reported that integrating blockchain with enterprise and management information systems reduced traceability times from days to hours and cut audit-preparation time by approximately 40%–60%.
A separate, bounded resource-tracking case reported a 15% reduction in waste, a 12% reduction in monetary costs and a 10% reduction in carbon footprint. These are findings from individual cases, not average savings established across the fashion industry.
Labour accountability remains the weakest link
The review identifies a significant gap between the technology’s ability to document product-related information and its capacity to demonstrate improvements in working conditions.
Environmental and economic indicators—including carbon accounting, waste tracking, audit efficiency and compliance documentation—were more commonly measured. By contrast, evidence of improved wages, occupational safety, labour rights or grievance resolution remained limited.
This exposes a fundamental limitation for fashion businesses using blockchain to support responsible-sourcing claims. A digital ledger may establish a record of a production event, certification or material transfer, but it cannot independently guarantee that the original information is accurate or that workers are treated fairly.
The study argues that social sustainability requires evidence beyond product-level records, potentially including anonymised worker surveys, wage-payment verification, grievance-channel use, training records and completion of corrective actions.
For brands preparing digital product passports, the implication is straightforward: documenting fibre origin, carbon performance and circularity is not equivalent to demonstrating social responsibility.
Costs and buyer power threaten supplier participation
Implementation barriers extend beyond technology. The review identifies interoperability problems, integration with legacy systems, inconsistent data standards, weak digital capabilities, training requirements and reluctance to share commercially sensitive information.
These challenges are particularly relevant to export-oriented manufacturing economies, including Bangladesh, India and Indonesia. Suppliers may be required to invest in software, digital identification, data capture and new operating procedures to meet buyers’ transparency demands without receiving a proportionate share of the commercial benefits.
The resulting imbalance could turn transparency into another compliance expense for manufacturers rather than a mutually beneficial investment. Brands may gain improved risk management, consumer confidence and regulatory preparedness, while factories shoulder much of the cost of producing and maintaining the required information.
The review also finds that many proposed blockchain systems remain at the conceptual, prototype or limited-pilot stage. Evidence from these environments does not necessarily establish effectiveness across complex, multi-tier sourcing networks, where subcontracting, fragmented data and limited visibility remain persistent challenges.
From technology adoption to measurable outcomes
For industry decision-makers, the study recommends starting with specific operational problems—such as fibre-origin verification, batch-level traceability, certification integrity, audit preparation or product-passport reporting—instead of adopting blockchain simply to demonstrate technological sophistication.
It also calls for interoperable standards, shared identifiers, supplier training, more affordable digital onboarding and stronger verification of the information entered into supply-chain systems.
Policymakers, meanwhile, should ensure that digital product-passport requirements address labour-related information as well as materials, emissions and circularity, while helping smaller suppliers meet data requirements.
The study's conclusions should be interpreted within its methodological limits. Although the review mapped 31 primary studies, full texts were unavailable for 48 of the 106 reports sought for retrieval. The author also did not conduct a formal risk-of-bias assessment, and the included studies differed in design, maturity and reporting quality. The review therefore maps the available evidence rather than establishing a definitive causal estimate of blockchain's impact.
For the textile and clothing industry, the commercial test is not whether blockchain can make supply-chain information harder to alter, but whether businesses can verify that information, use it to improve operations and distribute the costs and benefits fairly. Until stronger evidence emerges on supplier economics and worker outcomes, blockchain is best viewed as an enabling tool for transparency—not proof of sustainable production.
