Holistic Tracking of Products on the Blockchain Using NFC and Verified Users

Tracking the history of products and its parts has become a common way to detect many incidents of counterfeit. However, once a product leaves the manufacturing process, reliably capturing changes that a product undergoes becomes even more challenging. Anti-counterfeit solutions using blockchain technology promise several benefits. For example, updating the blockchain is only possible if a transaction is signed with the correct private key. To assure the confidentiality of such a key, it can be stored on an NFC tag in a way that only the tag can read it. By incorporating such a tag into a product, anyone possessing the product can connect with it and transactions for the blockchain can be signed by the tag. To regulate which kind of updates a user can perform, we suggest that users must be verified and to update a product’s history on the blockchain valid user credentials must be provided. This way various actors such as service providers or authorities can be enabled to report changes of a product to the blockchain and the capabilities of other user groups can be restricted at the same time. As a result, holistic tracking of products throughout their lifespan can be achieved.