The Chinese Supply Management platform Vechain (VET) is beginning to make its NFC chips available for review. Although it is unlikely the chips will prove entirely immune to interference, first responses are positive, with no successful tampering reported so far.
The bear market has been painfully severe for virtually all altcoins this year, and price movements have not been any different for Vechain. The China based supply chain management & financial services project has been busy with development of its chain and other products, however. From showing off its first prototype near-field communication (NFC) chip in October 2017, they have now reached a point where they can produce enough chips for independent reviewers and testers.
Identity on the Blockchain
On the supply chain management side, the goal of Vechain is to combine the immutability of blockchain with their own proprietary NFC chips. These chips are attached to products during production and given a digital identity.
At any point before or after sale, the authenticity of the item can be confirmed using Vechain’s own free app. As every chip comes with its own unique identity, customers can be sure the product is genuine and has not been tampered with just by scanning the item’s chip and view its entry on the blockchain.
Steadily Increasing Demand in China
Demand for something like Vechain’s services is high in China, where forgery is rampant, even for relatively cheap items such as medicine and baby milk. Packaging, even taste can be faked if the economic incentive is large enough, but Vechain hopes that counterfeiters will find it a little harder to circumvent the company’s NFC chips.
The chips are now in the later stages of development, and Vechain has recently begun to make them available for review by testers and crypto journalists. Realistically, there is no counter-counterfeiting measure that is going to be impossible to defeat, but first impressions are looking very good, with no successful tampering reported so far.
The chips are durable enough to survive transport and casual handling of the items, but break very easily if you try to remove them from the item. And ultimately Vechain does not need to make it impossible to defeats its chips, only difficult enough to make counterfeiting involving the chips unprofitable. And so far it’s looking pretty good on that front.
