Quantum Materials Corp. (fka QTMM)

[trevorbc]

Authenticity Counterfeiting is damaging to company brands, profits, and reputations as sub-standard products and intellectual property are presented to consumers as the real thing. By unlocking the ability to track items individually and maintaining an ironclad ledger that can’t be tampered with, blockchain has the potential to be a useful tool in verifying the authenticity of products in multiple industries.

Wine is one product that’s seen an increase in fraud that is difficult to detect and prevent. For fine wine in particular, it’s value in a sale or auction all depends on its verified authenticity, which had proven difficult to validate beyond initial production, meaning that “each time a bottled is presented for sale, it must be reassessed anew,” explains Maureen Downey, a “wine detective” and authentication consultant, in The Brand Protection Professional. Using permissible blockchain, which requires peer-to-peer consensus within the decentralized leger, the record becomes immutable and spans the longevity and global trajectory many fine wines take. This digital protection is bolstered by physical measures, such as embedding a thin plastic layer equipped with a serial code, providing a physical component to prevent tampering while connecting “the bottle and the blockchain.”

In connecting the physical product with the blockchain, a multidisciplinary team of researchers at Michigan State University is exploring the revolutionary application of partnering blockchain with nanotechnology and DNA, or “blockchain-nano-DNA,” as Dr. Evangelyn C. Alocija of the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering calls it. Initially, researchers considered the possibility of gold, silver, or magnetic nanoparticles as blockchain labels; however, these aren’t unique, which wouldn’t support an anti-counterfeiting system. MSU’s novel approach combines nanoparticles with DNA sequences to create and print a unique serial code for a product. This code can be embedded or printed, and later revealed applying a chemically based kit, which causes the DNA-nano code to shine under UV light. With this approach, products can be verified where digital coverage is lacking in the blockchain.

https://www.michiganstateuniversityonline.com/resources/acapp/brand-protection-potential-of-blockchain-technology/