DECENTRALIZING PRODUCTS CERTIFICATES USING BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

OECD wrote in their report 2016 that up to 5% of imports are counterfeited goods. The report estimated this damage at EUR 85 billion (OECD/EUIPO, 2016). The presence of counterfeit products on the European market is on the increase, therefore the intervention of inspection bodies and authorities alone is not sufficient, consumers can make their contribution and support this process. 2003 started the EU a program “Rapid Alert System” as an information platform to publish alerts about dangerous products in the market. Over 2 000 alerts published by the system yearly. Thus, allowing local authorities to screen their market and take appropriate action should the same product be found (Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers (European Commission), 2018). In this paper, we propose the foundations of a new system for decentralizing product certificate based on blockchain technology which close the gaps of the unilateral published digital certificate. The decentralizing of product certification by using blockchain technology empowers consumers by easily verifying a product certificate, at the same time enable certification bodies to issue and sharing a certificate in tamperproof ways. This could be one of the important steps in the direction to reduce counterfeiting. The goal of this paper is to create a new category of applications in which the end-user identifies counterfeit product certificates and contribute to the fight against product piracy.