Under the aegis of a consortium, LVMH has managed to rally two competitors to its Aura blockchain, which targets the luxury industry from the perspective of traceability.
It’s now official: a consortium was constituted around Aura. Among the founding members of this Swiss non-profit organization, there is LVMH. But also Prada Group and Richemont. The rallying of the latter two is the real news. They are in fact competitors of the first, the only one behind the project which gave its name to the consortium.
We learned of the existence of the said project in March 2019. A few weeks later, LVMH made it official, taking advantage of the VivaTech trade fair. The technological base already existed for a long time. We find traces, among others, in a GitHub repository.
Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior were the first brands to use Aura. The objective: to ensure the traceability of their products throughout their life cycle. The means: “digital twins” represented in the form of non-fungible tokens. Of type ERC-721 as it happens. And stored on Quorum. This (semi) private Ethereum implementation has been in the hands of the American company since last summer. ConsenSys. It is based on the Microsoft infrastructure Azure.
Several other houses of the LVMH group now offer services based on this substrate. Hublot, for example, to allow its customers to verify the authenticity of a watch by taking a picture of it. In general, we are told, all participating brands will develop “their own experiences”. And especially, ” [conserveront] Their data. An important element for Prada Group as well as for Richemont, which more particularly involves its Cartier house.
Aura, Arianee or both?
Richemont plays on a second table, with his house Vacheron Constantin. She joined another association – from France – whose luxury industry appears to be the main target: Arianee. Its value proposition? Also a certification system on tokens ERC-721. This “tamper-proof digital passport” is nevertheless based on a proof of authority protocol developed directly on Ethereum.
Arianee’s story dates back to 2016. But it was in 2019 that the association emerged… with VivaTech as a showcase there too, at the end of May. A few days earlier, the alliance with Vacheron Constantin was become official. Its first field of application: the Les Collectionneurs range of vintage watches.
It did not take long for Vacheron Constantin say its ambition to make Arianee “a standard protocol for the luxury industry”. His last communication public on the subject dates back to November 2020. Information: by the end of 2021, all of its watches will be certified in this way.
On the side of Breitling, another house to use the protocol, we recently claimed the passage of the milestone of 100,000 certified watches. All those produced after October 13, 2020 are supposed to be affected. Their “digital twin” makes it possible, in particular, in connection with the warranty program, to transfer ownership, monitor repairs and take out loss / theft insurance.
On the Aura Blockchain Consortium side, we have three compasses: authenticity, responsible sourcing and sustainability. The idea being, beyond the services provided to customers, to stem counterfeiting. Which, it is estimated, causes luxury brands to lose tens of billions of dollars a year.
Main illustration © DR Aura Consortium
