- Things Labs has released its ProductID solution which is based on IOTA
- The solution enables the verification of product authenticity through a private key stored in an accompanying card
IOTA has proven over the years that their application is indeed very versatile and has even been used in several fields such as smart power and waste management.
Now, they have been used by Things Lab, who have developed ProductID, an anti-countrified and product identity tool which makes use of a digital signature that is imputed into goods with the key for the signature stored in the ProductID smart card’s internal memory while the public key needed to confirm the product’s authenticity is stored on the blockchain.
How it Works
To make use of the ProductID solution, the tag will need to be initialized and this is done by making use of a card reader which redirects the user to the initial card’s application which will be stored on the IOTA ledger along with the key and all product information such as its description.
In a demo video released for the product, a mug’s tag was read and the user was redirected to the mug’s webpage. Once on the page, the user can choose to verify the authenticity of the product or track its location.
Its information was then stored on the Tangle and it was given its own IOTA address. Once the initialization process is complete, it is logged to prevent any tampering and with the tag, all information regarding the product can be recorded.
If the tag is scanned again, the user is automatically taken to the validity page that verifies its authenticity. Along with this, the tag contains an internal counter that produces a unique signature and each time the tag is read, the counter increases and the signature produced changes. Should the tag be copied, the signature will be static because it doesn’t have the private key. Also, if the page is reloaded with the same signature, the counter will not increase.
The webpage for the product can only be accessed via smartcard and if the URL is typed without one, the user will be redirected to the Things Lab homepage.
For now, the writing operation is the only point at which any centralization takes place in the ProductID system, but full decentralization is expected to take place by the end of 2019.
