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AFTER MORE THAN 18 MONTHS OF THEORIZING and tinkering, Maersk Line and IBM Corp. announced the formation of a joint venture to apply blockchain technology, a distributed ledger that creates a transparent and indelible trail of each transaction, to global trade and transportation.

The venture, which had been rumored for some time, will use blockchain to, in the companies’ words, “provide more efficient and secure methods” for conducting global trade.

The announcement means that “a beta version involving all players of the ecosystem along a specific trade lane can be launched,” said Michael J. White, former president of Maersk’s North American division and the head of the new venture, in an e-mail.

Copenhagen-based Maersk, the world’s largest container line, and IBM, based in Armonk, N. Y., began work in June 2016 to build technologies that would be relevant to the process.

Since then, various corporations, marine terminal operators, and government organizations such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection have piloted the platform.

The venture, which will be open for members across a trading network to join, will allow Maersk and IBM to market the process to a broader range of commercial and government interests, the companies said. The venture is subject to various government regulatory approvals, and it has yet to be named. It is expected to start six months after regulatory clearance is received, the companies said.

The companies said they are encouraging other shipping lines to join, noting that container flow data considered proprietary would not be visible unless the ship line wanted it to be. In an interview at the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual conference in New York, Karl Haller, partner and global leader for IBM’s Consumer Center of Competency, compared the joint venture’s platform with a big distributed database with functionality that’s constantly enabled so no user can change any details without those actions being logged for all to see.

Blockchain’s name comes from parties in a transaction adding “blocks” of information to the extended chain. The blocks identify as much information as the stakeholders deem necessary for the transaction to progress and be completed. Fraudulent activity would be virtually impossible because the transaction would represent a single view that would be shared and witnessed by all participants.

A transaction can move forward free of hackers and the need for so-called trusted third parties such as lawyers, bankers, and other intermediaries who’ve historically filled overseers’ roles. At the core of a blockchain’s appeal is the development of self-executing, or “smart,” contracts that would not require a third party’s validation. Contracts could be converted to computer code, stored, then replicated on the system and supervised by a network of computers that run the blockchain. Smart contracts enable the exchange of money, property, shares, or anything of value in a transparent and con-flict-free way, while avoiding the services of a middleman, according to supporters of the blockchain process.

GAINING TRACTION

Originally utilized to support the bitcoin cryptocurren-cy, which buyers and sellers use to execute transactions outside of the normal banking ecosystem, blockchain is gaining interest across multiple industries, not the least of which is transportation and trade. The “Blockchain in Transport Alliance” (Bi TA), a group created in the U.S. to develop industry standards, has received 975 applications to join and has 175 members, according to Craig Fuller, a transport IT (information technology) executive and the group’s co-founder. It is by far the largest industry-specific blockchain association, Fuller said.

Maersk and IBM said blockchain could revolutionize the ocean shipping industry, which moves about $3.2 trillion worth of goods worldwide and which has been a notable laggard in digital development and implementa-