Award winning ScanTrust launches GoodChain Foundation

ScanTrust keeps on gaining momentum. The Vaud start-up just won 2 of the 3 jury prizes worth EUR 30’000 at the EU Blockathon 2018, the first-ever anti-counterfeiting blockchain competition in Europe by EUIPO, the EU office for intellectual property rights protection. Startupticker.ch contacted Justin Picard, ScanTrust’s CTO and Co-founder,  to learn more about these awards and what they mean for the company. 

As Justin Picard explains, the start-up award winning GoodChain solution impressed the jury, ensuring that consumers engage with brand owners for social causes while at the same time helping them identify counterfeit products. It also economically incentivises brands by combining social causes and anti-counterfeiting. The solution, which can be used for any type of product, uses secure and cost effective technology.

Every product is identified with a unique secure QR code, applied at the level of manufacture. When applying the QR code to a product, the brand makes a pledge for a certain number of “impact points” in relation to a social cause. Along the supply chain, certification bodies will check that the authentic product is moving through the chain and confirm this with a certificate which will allow customs to fast-track the goods through the system, creating efficiency gains.

When scanning the purchased product, the consumer can scan the code and donate the impact point to the social cause, which will be honoured by the brand transferring an agreed monetary value to the cause. The advantage for the consumer is their contribution to social causes, the one for the brand is the meaningful engagement with social causes and with their consumers. If a consumer cannot redeem their impact points, this means that the product is a fake and this fact is fed back to the brand.

Two Prizes worth more than validation

Aside from the prestige, the two EU Blockathon awards have strategic importance for ScanTrust. As Justin Picard explains “The fact that our blockchain-based solution won 2 of the 3 jury prizes (best solution for consumers and best for customs authorities) is obviously a strong validation that it matches the needs of the different stakeholders who are dealing with counterfeits. That being said, our solution is already deployed on the market. For example, Cambio Coffee, a leading Asian direct trade specialty coffee company, uses it  to deliver greater supply chain transparency within the coffee industry.” 

Launching the GoodChain Foundation

Speaking about ScanTrust next steps, Justin Picard explains that the trend they’re observing is that brands face increased competition and are losing market share as consumers prefer smaller, niche brands who embrace provenance, transparency and sustainability. To address this, together with their partner BigChainDB, ScanTrust is launching the GoodChain Foundation, which will be the world’s only decentralized platform that combines end-to-end product transparency with social impact.

The start-up will be doing a token sale (ICO) and announcing those details soon. Their token is a utility token used to access the GoodChain platform for tagging products with unique identifiers, pledge funds to and paying social causes, and for storing information in the blockchain. Interested readers can learn more by visiting thegoodchain.io.

(ES)