Atix and Cardano Team Up With New Balance Against Fraud

This year, the Atix team joined the battle against fraud in the shoe industry. For this, we teamed up with Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK), their supported project Cardano and footwear brand New Balance.

The “New Balance Realchain” (NB Realchain) project is focused on the usability of Cardano’s blockchain to secure the authenticity of the shoe company’s products. More specifically, the famous makers of sports footwear will use this new service specially for their products of limited edition.

The challenge for Atix as part of this endeavour is to help assure the development and maintenance of a strong verification system that will allow, even if sold by third parties, to confirm the authenticity of the products in NB Realchain.

Pilot Phase

New Balance’s futuristic service is currently in a pilot phase. The shoe brand has already announced that the platform will serve customers allowing them to directly log their purchases directly on the Cardano’s blockchain.

For each purchase, the customers will receive a Realchain card with an integrated identity and security chip. The customer can then scan the card to prove it’s authenticity through a mobile app.

As first use case, the NB Realchain will be employed to cover New Balance latest launch, the OMNS1 basketball sneakers, before moving on to cover collector’s future editions. The service is already available for iOS and Apple.

New Opportunities

This is a very important first step into the mainstream adoption of blockchain for retailers.The possibilities already included adding distributed ledger technology for supply chain and product tracking in shipping, and now get broader with the verification of product authenticity.

The use of distributed systems in the retail industry it’s a field where Atix already counts with experience, developing solutions focused on providing an effective verification of processes from start to end.