Watchmaking enters a new era with NFTs

ORIGYN, a Neuchâtel-based foundation dedicated to the identification and authentication of luxury goods, is collaborating with WatchBox, the world leader in luxury collectible watches, to produce utilitarian NFTs, which enable the ownership of luxury watches to become digitally negotiable, effectively freeing up secondary market liquidity.

Buyers of these watches, with their corresponding NFTs, will be able to have full confidence in the authenticity of the watch, and even trade in its digital ownership. This makes trading on the secondary market faster and safer for all parties involved. These NFTs also tackle the problem of counterfeit watches by acting as blockchain-based certificates of authenticity for luxury watches purchased on the WatchBox platform.

Watches certified as authentic by WatchBox will receive a digital certificate on the ORIGYN platform that can be validated by the watch's own biometrics, using advanced computer imaging and artificial intelligence.

This partnership will solve the problem of genuine luxury products being exchanged for counterfeits, by constantly checking authenticity throughout their lifetime. The Swiss watch industry alone loses $2 billion a year to counterfeits, and over 40 million counterfeit luxury watches are produced and sold every year.

Computer vision and artificial intelligence for authenticity

Having recently raised USD 20 million, Neuchâtel-based ORIGYN uses computer vision, machine learning and decentralized technology to certify authentic objects. ORIGYN's computer vision technology and artificial intelligence can detect details that the human eye cannot, and each watch is assigned a unique biometric fingerprint through this process. Once this unique biometric fingerprint has been created, an NFT containing all this information is issued.

Daniel Haudenschild, CEO of ORIGYN Enterprise, explains: "Once an object has a guaranteed certificate, the NFT becomes highly negotiable. Driven by consumer trends such as reuse and recycling, the secondary market for luxury watches has exploded and is expected to reach $29-32 billion by 2025. Authentication NFTs will make trading on the secondary market faster and safer for buyers and sellers. WatchBox is a leader in collectible watches that are guaranteed, authentic and of high quality, and we're delighted to be working with them to provide a digital guarantee of their services."

ORIGYN's Utility NFTs will provide consumers with guaranteed digital certificates of authenticity for luxury watches purchased on the WatchBox platform and access to a suite of services such as insurance, digital provenance, concierge service and access to exclusive communities. ORIGYN's utilitarian NFTs will be rolled out to WatchBox consumers in summer 2022.

Source: GGBa