TrueOrigin at VIIE 2023, the Vietnam International Innovation Exhibition
THE TECHNOLOGY EXHIBITION
The Vietnam International Innovation Exhibition 2023 (VIIE 2023) ran for five days, from 28 October to 1 November 2023, chaired by the Ministry of Planning and Investment and organised by the NIC together with respected partners. It was a large international event bringing together around 300 leading technology companies from Vietnam and abroad across many important fields, including semiconductors, environmental technology and cyber security.
Alongside the big names, many other participants in the innovation ecosystem took part: state agencies, research institutes, expert and academic networks, investment funds, and organisations that advise on and support innovation.
A small object that seems ordinary and familiar to everyone — the anti-counterfeit seal — carries a fundamental problem: "the anti-counterfeit seal itself gets counterfeited". A problem that looked unsolvable for more than 30 years has now been solved completely by TrueOrigin.
With iSeal authentication technology the anti-counterfeit seal becomes a bridge between the digital space and the physical world; here blockchain (BC) is one of six important technical components used to authenticate the NFC chip.
If an NFC chip is secure in itself, why add authentication at all?
NFC communicates over radio at close range. Close still means a distance, and the exchange still runs between A and B. If C steps in between and answers B exactly as A would, B cannot tell the real from the fake — put plainly, C impersonates A and B has no way to detect it. The chip is therefore only a carrier of information that itself needs protecting against what C does.
Blockchain here is not used to mint coins; the problem is a counterfeited anti-counterfeit seal. Technically, an algorithm is chosen because its properties fit the application: identifying with blockchain is better in the same way that quicksort sorts quickly.
Combining NFC and BC also takes method. If you simply lean on the security of the NFC chip, the result is no different in substance from QR code + BC: the BC decorates the QR code and the NFC decorates the BC. Decoration, because it adds nothing — with it or without it the problem of the counterfeited seal is still unsolved.
iSeal = NFC + BC is a new principle. The plus sign is shorthand for the principle of combination: a digital signature from the blockchain changes and is written back onto the NFC. Recording that change makes the seal itself change and join in the interaction — and the stronger the interaction, the stronger the link.
Why must it change?
Because anything static can be copied. An identity that can be copied is a one-to-many identity, and can be forged. Life and all things change constantly. I today am not the same as I was yesterday, and yet I am still myself, one to one, because I move along with everything else. Anyone who copies who I was yesterday is copying something already out of date and of no use.
Change and movement are philosophical principles, universal laws of things, long distilled in the older cultures of the East; put into practice in iSeal it is simple enough — compare the data and the stamp on the seal with the latest version held centrally to verify it, and stamp a new mark each time it is opened. That comparison also reveals which version C copied the information from.
THE SEMINAR
Also within VIIE23, the Vietnam Blockchain Association held a seminar on "Promoting innovation and managing risk in blockchain applications". Mr Trần Đình Ngọc, CEO of Onyx, brought TrueOrigin into the discussion on "Blockchain in traceability", sharing knowledge, reducing risk, avoiding wasted resources and, above all, addressing the identity of things.
It was the first frank, many-sided discussion of traceability between practical need and the people who build the technology. The purpose of tracing origin is plainly to establish who is responsible: whoever it came from carries the responsibility. The discussion ran on to what blockchain contributes — preserving culture in a product's story, or playing a part in the authentication process.
TrueOrigin is built around the user, an easy experience and dependable authentication. As a technology developer working to that end, TrueOrigin presented the principle of combining blockchain with NFC in a new way that detects and prevents forgery, completing the purpose of traceability with genuine authentication — origin authentication — at a price that suits products of medium value and above.
Touching a real concern for many manufacturers and for those who issue products and stand behind their promises, TrueOrigin drew a great deal of interest from the partners at the seminar.
source: the TrueOrigin team