Many companies are building a strategy for digital asset release and branding, due to the evidently increasing rise in both cultural taste-making and profitability of digital assets—and this is influencing the manufacture of real apparel as well. The authentication of physical assets now has innovative and clever solutions to an old problem. Here's a survey of these new methods, and a look at how ensō will integrate these to modernize how physical fashion & digital apparel is released and sold.
Trust but Verify
Asset authentication is the process of verifying that an asset is genuine—necessary to lessen both consumer fraud and counterfeits of popular brands. This has always been done through a variety of methods, such as barcodes, NFC Chips, RFID tags, and watermarks. The scale of this problem in fashion is incredible, with brands losing nearly $450 billion annually. Yet in this age of digital apparel and 3D printers, we have new solutions to reach for, and it will be necessary for designers and consumers to learn them.
Pushing the Limits
Nike and its digital fashion brand RTFKT have launched a few collections this year, such as an AR hoodie and Cryptokicks. These incorporate an NFC chip that enables purchasers to connect it to a digital version of the apparel in the form of a non-fungible token. With this, owners of the shoes will have the ability to tie themselves to a digital twin, viewable online and on any future metaverse avatar.
Nike is approaching $200 million in revenue from these physical+NFT sales this year, yet think about why the buyer of the physical shoes will pay a large premium. The shoes are now:
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Authenticated
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Virtualized in 3D
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Digitally collected
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Eternalized on-chain
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Increasing in resale value with guaranteed scarcity
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Connected to an Ethereum address for further brand activations
It can’t be overstated how much this will change the industry over the next decade. The act of connecting luxury items on-chain leads to far more benefits than we thought, though it always starts with the hardware NFC authentication step.
Several players have already positioned themselves to support companies in this area. For example, the blockchains Arianee, GoodsID, and Aura were all launched by the LVMH group. Another company IYK is building toward a digital and physical world by tokenizing physical items and IRL experiences—which was used incredibly well and led to viral connections at DevCon 2022 in Bogota with POAP.
What’s next?
Asset authentication between NFCs and NFTs is here and will be increasingly needed for the fashion industry. In between the spectrum of luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada, to lifestyle brands such as Adidas Originals, Nike, 9dcc by GMoney, and The Hundreds, you can find examples of brands becoming more technical and (also more fun!) by adopting digital collecting.
Author:
ensō is a launch platform for fashion designers to onboard onto web3, and we believe any platform *must* incorporate these state-of-the-art asset auth tools for both physical and digital fashion. We are exploring ways to use this tech and partner with Azuki/Boson Protocol, Lens, IYK, and more.