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This paper aims to investigate the emergence of blockchain-enabled traceability in complex multi-tiered supply chains, focusing on the perspective of upstream suppliers. Blockchain technology receives attention for its potential to enable better traceability and thus sustainability risk management, yet there is limited empirical evidence on how actual implementation unfolds. We aim to understand how blockchain adoption unfolds in practice, particularly in critical mineral supply chains that are critical to the sustainability transition yet linked to severe environmental and human rights risks and to explore the role of traditionally non-focal firms in this process.

Adopting a process-based case study design, our research is grounded in data collected through participant observation (>12 months) within an upstream mining company, supplemented by interviews and document review. Our study employs the complex adaptive systems (CAS) lens and uses an abductive approach for data analysis.

In our case, blockchain-based traceability in the cobalt supply chain was co-constructed over time, fundamentally driven by a large upstream supplier but enabled through supply-chain-spanning collaboration with like-minded downstream actors and successive expansion into the opaque midstream, enabled through a stakeholder alliance forum and formalized in the blockchain. We find, however, that visibility, standards, trust and follow-up capacities need to exist in their own right, ideally prior to blockchain implementation.

Our paper provides empirical insights from an upstream (vs downstream) perspective and investigates blockchain’s implementation (vs potential) to complement and ground existing research. Further, we extend the CAS framework by emphasizing agency and visible horizon of traditionally non-focal firms.