With all of this crap I talk about fakes - what would be a potential solution? I know this sounds cliche - but what about the blockchain?
I met with this company a couple of years ago...@chronicled - and they built a cool product around an interesting idea. Basically they would store all of the data surrounding a particular product (a pair of shoes) to the blockchain and they would effectively *implant* the key to that data on the product itself using implanted RFID chips. They ran a test run with some Nike/NBA jerseys but it doesn’t look like it panned out.
So why wouldn’t Nike jump at the opportunity to jump on the blockchain to solidify authenticity?
My first question - does Nike even care about eliminating fakes? Fakes obviously take a bit out of the coffers, but I suspect it’s really a non-factor in the regular course of business. Nike sells shoes for anywhere from like $30-250. And the VAST MAJORITY of those shoes will never need to be faked. Only a select handful every year are faked. Nike doesn’t sell shoes for $10k - RESELLERS do. Fakes don’t really hurt Nike as much as they hurt resellers. Why create a solution to a problem that they themselves don’t experience?
Secondly - I think...even it *seems* to be super cheap (I was told anywhere from 25 cents for an RFID chip to $2/per pair development cost, these costs would probably outweigh their supposed benefits (of which there are few).
Third - and I heard this from a Nike employee himself - the RFID chips aren’t as strong or as durable as they would like...yet. Imagine the hell you’d have to go through to prove a pair of $10k pair of shoes were legit just because a 25 cent piece of technology stopped work? Madness.
Fourth - Nike filed for a patent called ‘Cryptokicks’ - so they might actually have something like this in the works already. Whey pay someone else when they can build it themselves?
Anyway, an interesting discussion IMO...thoughts?