Published on the 29/05/2019 | Written by Jonathan Cotton
The end of conflict diamonds? Or just more blockchain fever? The race to track diamonds from mine to matrimonial token…
You know you’re going mainstream when even Louis Vuitton is getting in on the action: The designer – or Louis Vuitton parent company LVMH at least – has announced it will soon be dipping an immaculately finished Hockenheim loafer into the still unplumbed blockchain depths.
This week the luxury brand multinational announced that, in partnership with Microsoft, it will be rolling out Aura, a blockchain network for the authentication of its products – the Louis Vuitton and Perfumes Christian Dior brands.
Louis might be onto something. Blockchain tracking seems like a good match for shiny, pretty, high ticket items, as well as those particularly prone to theft and counterfeit. But what about those most precious and unnecessary items of them all: Diamonds? Could blockchain help eliminate conflict diamonds from global markets?
Blockchain tracking seems like a good match for shiny, pretty, high ticket items, as well as those particularly prone to theft and counterfeit
There’s certainly plenty ready to wager on it.
Australian startup Everledger, for example, has created a blockchain-based solution for tracking diamonds and colored gemstones, among other things, across both the supply chain and the diamond’s lifetime (which is, presumably, forever).
As far as supply chains go, the diamond industry is a complicated one. From mining company, to the sale of rough cuts, to manufacturing to trader to retailer, it’s a process that paper and PDF can’t cut, but one that blockchain tech might. The Sydney-based startup has now collected, organised and encrypted the provenance of more than two million diamonds in just over three years.
In 2018 the company secured US$10.4m in funding and recently announced the inclusion of Oracle’s enterprise blockchain platform into its provenance establishing product.
“With an increasing consumer consciousness and a vocal demand for transparency, our work is focused on engaging entire business ecosystems to provide consumers the ability to make fully informed purchasing decisions,” says Everledger founder and CEO Leanne Kemp.
“The inclusion of Oracle Blockchain Platform in our offering enables us to deploy more innovative products and solutions for our customers globally, in particular with improved time to market for business intelligence reporting solutions.”
And innovate is something Everledger will have to do to remain competitive as there’s plenty of competition in the space.
Tracr has a comparable diamond tracking platform and Russia-based Bitcarat launched in January. Earlier this month Diamond Standard, a blockchain product that seeks to create “the first fungible diamond commodity”, also launched.
Whether blockchain is the panacea for every supply chain tracking issue remains to be seen, but diamond tracking does seem like a good fit for the tech.
In an industry where value is based on perception and where shoppers are increasingly intolerant of products that push ethical boundaries in their production, blockchain tech just might supply the sufficient customer confidence for an industry with something to prove.
