Nike's plan to prevent counterfeiting by securing products using blockchain
fastscience.tv
fastscience.tv
If that’s the intention, it would be much simpler to just make a database and print a code on each shoe (probably already done to some extent). Therefore when a user wants to know if a shoe is real or counterfeit, they could use the code on a website to find out if it was the genuine article.
That seems like it would have far more uptake and use than a cryptographic model requiring wallets.
IMO they are tracking ownership of each pair with the help of these tokens and once the real shoe is sold the token is transferred to someone else's digital wallet.
Putting a QR code on shoe is not really effective as it can copied/pasted on a different shoe etc.
what advantage does Nike gain for it being decentralized vs everything getting a QR code and you can verify with Nike that the person you are buying it from is the registered owner of said QR code.
Associating one QR code with one shoe is simply not the same thing. Nike doesn't have to make the whole ledger public through give the nature of blockchain, it can be assured that it has not been altered.
Also the thing is not stopping anyone from providing a wrong code. Unless every transaction concerning their shoes is recorded on the block chain, which it won't, and which brings privacy issues.
It's just shoes, no one will own or need to transfer 0.124 of those shoes.
1/ as long as the translation of the physical asset to a digital asset is vulnerable to attack, blockchain doesn't really add anything above a centralised database. The only time this is not true is if the underlying asset is itself cryptographic in nature.
2/ You could easily scan a QR code which looks the shoe up with Nike, and shows you the provenance. Blockchain doesn't add anything here, and it doesn't prevent you from owning the underlying asset (unless there's some weird licencing contract when you buy a pair of shoes, which I doubt).
Regarding point 2: I have never heard anyone tokenizing physical assets using conventional databases. Reason is multiple people may hold part of the value/asset, no one wants to trust anyone else.
The people who want to fake a certain shoe would just need to acquire an authentic one, then fake the shoe AND copy the QR / NFC data attached to the authentic one.
So if i buy this shoe and I want to check its authenticity i would scan the tag and the system would tell me: Jordan 5 Chinese New Year, size 11, owner: John Doe
Am I missing something ?
So you can technically sell a fake of physical, but you have to give up the ownership of the shoe (virtual). And therefore, can't sell a fake twice.
It's a shoe version of Cryptokitties.