Everledger’s Pioneering Blockchain Work for Diamonds

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Businesses are constantly faced with pressures to meet consumer demands and yet delicately balance their business objectives. One of the major shifts is the increasing consumer demand to know more about what they purchase.

Within the diamond industry, consumers are seeking more information on their stones and the assurance of authenticity. There has been a gap in the industry to meet this need, which is fundamental to consumer confidence.

This is where Everledger developed the pioneering idea of how blockchain can play a role. While several years ago, the world was obsessed with only one use of this nascent technology for cryptocurrency, Everledger did something different with it, enabling businesses to bridge that gap in a secured, authenticated and immutable manner.

The core characteristics of blockchain serve well to effectively provide industries with a solution to meet consumer demands, bringing benefits to both businesses and consumers.

Starting off with diamond provenance tracking (and subsequently other high-value assets), Everledger quickly expanded the use of blockchain to include certification authenticity amongst others.

Today’s announcement of the use of blockchain technology to deliver secure, digital diamond grading reports to consumers for the first time, is another milestone for Everledger and the diamond industry. The grading reports are issued by leading independent diamond grading authority, GIA (Gemological Institute of America), for the T MARK diamond brand by renowned jewellery group, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group.

Over the past two years, the development work to build this was always focused on meeting specific customer requirements from the data verification to usability, as well as ensuring the highest-level of security. These are integral to the success of the working platform as a service built on Hyperledger Fabric and has always been Everledger’s priority.

For two industry giants to lead the way in collaborating with Everledger to provide customer diamond grading reports is a strong testament to the viability of underpinning the customer reports security using blockchain technology. The Everledger solution platform, secured by the IBM Blockchain Platform, serves to further increase the consumer confidence and assurance of their purchase of the trusted T MARK diamond brand.

The T MARK diamond grading information from GIA will be recorded directly to the blockchain. Clients of T MARK will then receive a permanent and immutable blockchain record of their diamond’s GIA grading information, accessible through the T MARK app. This means T MARK customers will be securely linked to their diamond’s grading report.

This marks the first of many real-world applications that will bring the benefits of blockchain directly into the hands of the consumer. Indeed, our industry-first work for effective real-world applications of emerging technology has been well-proven over several years and we at Everledger look forward to our continued work for further expansion.