NFT-Based Luxury Watch Certificate: How It Works

Folks who trade used luxury watches know how important it is for your watch to come with a certificate. Typically in the form of a credit card-sized plastic or a folded piece of paper with a serial number, the name of the first owner, and the date of purchase, the watch certificate is an important determinant of the watch’s resale value.

This is so because of authenticity. By matching the serial number stated on the certificate and the serial number engraved on the watch case, a buyer will be relatively well assured that the watch is authentic. This is not foolproof because it is still possible to manufacture a replica of a watch, and then print a fake certificate.

Can Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) save the day?

Here’s a demo of how it might.

The Scenario

An imaginary watch manufacturer, BreitLex has decided to switch to issuing NFT tokens to replace paper-based watch certificates. To do this, the company developed BreitLex-NFT, a Smart Contract to mint a BreitLex NFT token for every new watch it manufactures.

When John buys a watch from BreitLex, the ownership of its corresponding NFT token proves that he owns it. If John decides to sell the watch to Mary a few months later, he can hand the watch, and concurrently transfer the…