Over the past few days, working models of VeChain’s NFC chips have been circulating the Internet. Retailers and independent sellers can attach the chips to products, and potential customers can then scan the product with their smartphone. The blockchain will then return a message that verifies the authenticity of the product.
VeChain has been promoting these for some time, at least since last October, but now some users have been able to get their hands on a real product.
Tamper-Proof Labels
One writer has obtained a few chips in the form of adhesive labels. The labels are tamperproof: they cannot be removed in one piece, making it impossible to transfer a chip from a legitimate product to a counterfeit one.
[Image source: DeStift.nl]
Custom-Made Buttons
On Twitter, Crypto Shark shows a different NFC chip that was custom-made by VeChain. This one is a button-like chip attached to a polo shirt:
Here’s some context relating to my previously uploaded video demonstrating a real-world implementation of #blockchain #iot #nfc #rfid technology with @vechainofficial technology for @SharkCIA (thread) and a new video showing the chip being scanned pic.twitter.com/PNEzCoHOhe
— Crypto Shark (@CryptoShark) August 24, 2018
When asked what the costs would be for an independent business that wanted to use the chips, Crypto Shark speculated that most of the cost would come from “the gateway device used for enrolling the chips,” noting that “the chips themselves are inexpensive.”
The Supply Chain Craze
Although VeChain’s product is close to becoming useful in the real world, it is not without competition. The Seal Network is another blockchain project specifically devoted to using NFC chips to fight counterfeiting. Thinfilm, meanwhile, offers a “dual-ID” NFC tag that can determine if an item, such as a bottle of wine, has been opened.
VeChain is specifically designed for supply chain management, and NFC chips (along with other technology) can be used to display any product data the blockchain can provide—for example, a scan could return a map of the journey that an item has taken during shipping.
And these retail-oriented tags are just one of many of VeChain’s undertakings. Most recently, VeChain has made an effort to trace vaccines in order to solve an influx of defective medicine in China. Thanks to VeChain’s recent mainnet launch, we can expect to see many more of these initiatives as the platform continues to mature.
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