This is one of the few usecases of crypto that kinda make sense. If those certs were on a blockchain, Rolex could fold and people in the future might still be able to check for authenticity.
There's more steps involved that I'm not sure could be solved, like, who controls the authenticity Oracle? Is it an API that gets pinged? Do you have to pay a gas or network fee to check authenticity? Could a smart contract be made to automate the work? Maybe it could work like credit card chips, which give out a one-time code to the retailer, who then gets it checked by an online service... except somehow replace the web API with a smart contract.
For larger scale operations, tagging individual items with NFC chips might be cost prohibitive.
So the idea would be to create a giant file of every Rolex transaction made in the future. And then search through that file for a given NFC tag to determine authenticity. Doing all of this in case Rolex goes out of business and can no longer maintain a hypothetical authenticity server?
Couldn't agree more. Supply chain verification is inherently authority-based... if only at some point in the creation of the internet we had invented a system for verifying authoritative claims on things ;) Not to mention that with certificates... Rolex can totally disappear into the wind, yet you can still verify the certificate provided you know Rolex's root. And all this for <$300M year in mining fees!
>Rolex could fold and people in the future might still be able to check for authenticity.
That's why I mentioned distributing the file over IPFS so that it could be easily backuped by anybody forever. If eventually there's no longer any interest in this database it could be lost to bitrot of course, but this is also true of blockchains.
> Rolex could fold and people in the future might still be able to check for authenticity.
Well, what if Rolex folds and sells their private keys, and an unscrupulous buyer then starts minting Rolex NFTs for fake watches? What if this happens surreptitiously, and not out in the open?
Further, it's far more likely at the moment that Rolex will exist 50 years from now than that Ethereum or Bitcoin will.
There's more steps involved that I'm not sure could be solved, like, who controls the authenticity Oracle? Is it an API that gets pinged? Do you have to pay a gas or network fee to check authenticity? Could a smart contract be made to automate the work? Maybe it could work like credit card chips, which give out a one-time code to the retailer, who then gets it checked by an online service... except somehow replace the web API with a smart contract.
For larger scale operations, tagging individual items with NFC chips might be cost prohibitive.