Popular American footwear brand adopts Cardano to tackle counterfeits

Popular American footwear brand New Balance is seeking to utilize the power of Cardano’s blockchain technology to curtail its rapidly growing counterfeit problem. The announcement was made on Sunday by IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson at the Cardano Summit in Bulgaria. Hoskinson stated that the partnership will begin with a pilot program, but will eventually expand to a global solution. 

It is unknown what product lines will get advantage from the technology, or whether Cardano’s ADA token will have any involvement in the new scheme. This is the first time a major brand is adopting blockchain technology to help prove the authenticity of goods, helping to crack down on counterfeit items. 

New Balance, like many other footwear brands, has been a victim of copycats and counterfeits. The brand image is used to produce cheap merchandise. Back in 2017, a company was found selling shoes under the name of “New Boom.” The company had stolen designs from New Balance for which it was awarded. A Chinese court granted New Balance $1.5 billion in damages.

However, the company has very little information about how to manually verify the authenticity of its items. The partnership can help them to stamp out fakes. Neither New Balance nor Cardano has given any details about how this will be executed. It will likely involve tagging each authentic product with a unique cryptographic identifier that can be easily checked by the consumer. The manufacture date, location, and other important information can easily be found by storing the cryptographic identifier on a distributed blockchain ledger.