Fastwong
1658
Fundamentally I think there is a misunderstanding between tracking (ledger) of a item and authentication (identification/verification of an item)
Feb 18, 2022,15:40 PM
Let's walk through your scenario. Say someone brings in a Patek watch to a dealer to resell. How does one identify the watch to validate it against this "ledger"? SN#? Those can be changed/duplicated. NFC chip? Those can be copied and coded at home. The only thing off the top of my head that might work is micro imaging which is something used in the art world but paintings and sculptures are often single contiguous items, for a watch where parts swapping for service or other reasons is common and easy, I'm not sure that's practical and again we're talking specialized hardware. None of the authentication piece has anything to do with blockchain or tracking.
Lets say we figure that out and now have an authenticated piece we want to check with Patek about for its history or provenance. First, I Think we can agree that we Patek to be the authority of this piece. We actually do not want other entities outside PP authoring or validating the ledger so if the tracking is held in confidence in house to PP, there's no need for blockchain tech, all you need is a basic tracking system. No different than the cars or houses, simple reliable systems have existed forever to track ownership, service, tax history, etc without the overhead of blockchain which is a highly wasteful technology if no distributed publishing and validation to the chain is needed. We all have titles to our cars and homes without blockchain, PP can issue a certificate of origin without it too. It is not a technology problem.
Ok, fine, we have free energy and the time to waste, lets say we do a blockchain based ledger instead of a traditional one. Now who maintains this lost/stolen registry? Patek must if they are to be the authority on the ledger but how do the verify their information is legitimate? Say I call Patek and tell them my watch was stolen. But how do they verify I actually had legal possession of the watch and that it was truly stolen? Maybe I never even owned the watch, I just saw the SN# online, filed a lost/stolen report for that SN# with PP, and then in a month or so I call the authorities to let them know I saw the watch which I filed as stolen being advertised online and would like it back. Can this all be sorted by interviews, validating police reports, etc etc? Sure. Insurance companies do it all day long, but it is a massive undertaking and a whole new capability. I don't think PP wants to build a claims and investigations department to manage inputs into a unnecessarily complicated and cpu intensive blockchain tracking unverifiable and easily replicable SN#'s.
There's too many points easy points of failure in this from the ease of replicating serial numbers to franken watches and ultimately the inability to vet lost/stolen reports, all having nothing to do with the underlying technology whether it is blockchain or not. I think it's easy to fire new tech at old problems and assume it is a silver bullet for everything but once you step out of the digital into the physical world implementation of these things is more complicated. The application of technology meant for digital transactions does not easily translate to physical goods and I think it's important that this is understood because otherwise it can create a false sense of security where there is none.