Certificates of Authenticity: Ensuring Integrity in the Digital Age
Contributors: Cameron Stow, Stephanie Lynch
In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, the rise of AI and the proliferation of fake news have eroded societal trust, making developing secure and reliable methods for authenticating digital assets and verifying information crucial for restoring integrity in our interactions and transactions. These issues bleed into industries like fine art, where trust is delegated to pieces of paper in order to authenticate and verify ownership over valuable art pieces. As the digital realm expands, so too do the challenges associated with ensuring the authenticity of digital assets. This article explores the role of Certificates of Authenticity (COAs) in addressing some of these challenges and what advantages arise when implementing COAs in different industries.
What are Certificates of Authenticity (COA)?
In the last article, we discussed how Decentralized Identities (DIDs), a unique identifier secured by a private key, allows individuals to have control over their data and share it selectively. DIDs are the foundation of unlocking the full potential of COAs, more specifically, blockchain-secured digital COAs. So what is a COA?
A certificate of authenticity is a document that verifies the authenticity of a product or asset. COAs are common practice among artists to verify the components of an art piece, including who the artist is, the material or process used, when it was created, etc.¹ These certificates are an instrumental part of the fine art supply chain, but the process is becoming antiquated. Current COAs are just slips of paper you receive when purchasing an art piece, putting you at risk of losing or damaging the COA and potentially devaluing or rendering the art piece worthless, particularly as the COA can often stand in as instructions or license to recreate a piece of art.
A New Kind of COA
While COAs offer artists, collectors, galleries, and institutions a way to verify and authenticate ownership and provenance of an art piece, there is concern that the COAs themselves can be manipulated, stolen, or lost. In order to better secure COAs and ensure the authenticity of art, AliceNet and Valence have taken the initiative to move COAs on-chain and create a more secure way to verify the provenance of art.
By creating blockchain-backed digital COAs, we provide a secure and immutable record of an asset’s history, enabling stakeholders to authenticate and verify assets confidently. Leveraging the security of blockchains like AliceNet, these records are resistant to tampering, ensuring the integrity of their information. This provides a great solution to the antiquated system currently used in the fine art space, but COAs have much more potential.
Expanding the Horizon: Other Applications of COAs
Beyond the art industry, the potential applications of COAs are vast. Partnered with our DID solutions, COAs unlock meaningful utility in healthcare, media, publishing, data analytics, and more. We are seeing large organizations adopt new forms of verification methods and COAs can play a large role in enhancing security. For example, Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting firms, has integrated blockchain technology to streamline its verification processes through digital credentials to improve the efficiency of Deloitte’s Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) verification processes.²
Other applications include integrating these systems into politics, polling data, and news.³ COAs and verified credentials can help combat the spread of disinformation by providing a reliable means to authenticate content and information, verifying the source of that information, and if the information is factually accurate or has been manipulated in any way. This gives consumers peace of mind that their information is transparent and true to the source.
In conclusion, digital COAs will play an increasingly significant role in ensuring the integrity of assets and information. Leveraging AliceNet technology, these tools offer a promising approach to addressing the prevalent challenges of fraud and misrepresentation.
[1] Format Magazine. (2019). The importance of certificates of authenticity. Retrieved from https://www.format.com/magazine/resources/art/certificates-of-authenticity
[2] CoinTelegraph. (2023). Deloitte integrates blockchain for digital credentials. Retrieved from https://cointelegraph.com/news/deloitte-integrates-blockchain-for-digital-credentials
[3] Wired. (2024). Brace yourself for the 2024 deepfake election. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-generative-ai-deepfake-2024-us-presidential-election/
