AgriHandshake - Blockchain Based Smart Contract between Farmers & Vendors

Abstract

Agricultural trade in developing countries continues to depend on informal agreements, multi-tier intermediary networks, and centralized payment mechanisms, resulting in payment delays of 30–90 days, information asymmetry, and weakened bargaining power for smallholder farmers. This paper presents AgriHandshake, a blockchain-based smart contract platform enabling direct crop trading between farmers and vendors through an automated escrow payment mechanism deployed on the Ethereum network. The system employs a hybrid architecture that stores cryptographic state hashes and escrow logic on-chain while offloading trade metadata and delivery documentation to the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), reducing average transaction gas costs to approximately 85,000–210,000 gas units per operation. A Solidity-based escrow contract enforces a structured four-state machine (CREATED?FUNDED?DELIVERED?COMPLETED/DISPUTED) with a 72-hour automatic payment-release timer implemented via block.timestamp. Experimental evaluation on the Ethereum Sepolia testnet demonstrates average smart contract function execution latency under 15 seconds, end-to-end trade confirmation within 3–8 minutes including IPFS upload, and strong resistance to reentrancy and front-running attacks. Comparative analysis against eNAM, FarMarket, and AgriOnBlock confirms that AgriHandshake is the first platform to combine a dedicated escrow payment guarantee, decentralized off-chain storage, and a farmer-centric usability model within a single deployable framework.

Introduction

AgriHandshake is a blockchain-based solution designed to solve major inefficiencies in India’s agricultural trade system, where smallholder farmers often lose 40–50% of income to middlemen and face delayed payments of 30–90 days. Existing platforms like eNAM improve digitization but do not guarantee secure or timely payments, leaving farmers financially vulnerable.

The proposed system introduces a Solidity-based smart contract escrow on Ethereum that automatically locks vendor funds at the time of trade and releases payment only after verified delivery or a 72-hour timer. This ensures farmers receive guaranteed, timely payments without intermediaries. Delivery proof is stored using IPFS, creating tamper-proof evidence, while a dispute mechanism allows temporary freezing of funds if issues arise.

Key contributions include a hybrid on-chain/off-chain architecture that reduces gas costs, secure smart contract design with protections against common blockchain attacks, and a comparative analysis showing it offers a more complete solution than existing agricultural blockchain systems.

The literature review highlights that while blockchain has improved traceability and supply chain transparency in agriculture, most existing systems fail to address the financial transaction layer. AgriHandshake fills this gap by focusing on programmable, automated payment enforcement.

Conclusion

This paper presented AgriHandshake, a blockchain-based smart contract platform for direct, intermediary-free agricultural trade. The system introduces a Solidity escrow contract with a four-state machine, a 72-hour automatic payment-release mechanism based on block.timestamp, and a hybrid on-chain/IPFS architecture that reduces gas costs by approximately 65-70% vs. fully on-chain alternatives. Evaluation on the Ethereum Sepolia testnet demonstrated average transaction latency under 15 seconds, full trade cycle completion within 3-8 minutes, and a complete trade cycle gas cost of approximately 420,000 gas units. Security analysis confirmed effective mitigation of reentrancy, front-running, integer overflow, and data availability threats. Comparative analysis against eNAM, FarMarket, AgriOnBlock, and AgroBLF confirmed that AgriHandshake is, to the best of the authors\' knowledge, the first platform to combine a dedicated escrow payment guarantee, decentralized IPFS storage, automated settlement, and farmer-centric usability within a single deployable framework.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Aniket Ganeshappa Danekar, Ranjit Ambadas Darade, Ganesh Suresh Adsule, Parth Rajendra Dhage, Prof. Appasab Salunke. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.