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Comment by colineartheta | Hacker News Reader

How does having a “digital twin” of the physical object prevent the object from being counterfeited?

You shouldn't be able to transfer the NFT yourself. Each transfer should be attested by an official dealer (for a transfer fee).

The digital owner of the item needs to be synchronised with the physical owner of the item. The authenticity then can be confirmed by crypto.

Synchronized how? Confirmed by whom?

This has the same oracle problem that all these blockchain-for-X dreams do.

Synchronisation is the hard part. I suppose there are a few different ways to do it. One way would be to use a hardware that holds a private key in a secure chip, and whoever has access to the physical watch can sign a message with that key to point to an arbitrary address. This can then be submitted to the blockchain. Confirmation is easy, as the blockchain takes care of that. It would be emitted by a verifiable/trusted public key. If the address is not Rolex's address, the item is fake.

How do you "print" the association in the physical object? What would prevent this association to be faked?

The devices can ship with an embedded hardware security module that holds a private key. The private key has its public key whitelisted by Rolex, and can be used to sign a message transferring the ownership to the current owner's public key. If you can do this transfer action, the device is legitimate. Of course you'd need to check that the public keys/addresses match Rolex's.

To me, it sounds like no manufacturer will ever implement this because 99% of end users have no chance of learning how to use it

That's fair, and manufacturing and UX could very well be a challenge. But the technology does work

At first i thought this was a pretty well done satire, but after reading over it multiple times, i am not sure.

And it imo says more about the general state of discussion of crypto/nft, rather than about your comment specifically.

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