SUKU is the link between open finance, traceability, and transparency — through their trio of product offerings, SUKU OMNI, INFINITE, and DeFi, they connect companies with conscious consumers and enable supply chain finance.

The INFINITE by SUKU service and application is a digital identity issuance and management platform designed for sneakers, apparel, and other physical or digital accessories. It addresses a lack of trust between brands, customers, and secondary market participants. With a need to create scalable, cost-effective, and verifiable product ownership, SUKU evaluated various distributed ledger technologies and ultimately chose the Hedera Token Service (HTS) on the Hedera public network.

The Hedera Token Service (HTS) enables SUKU to create non-fungible tokens on-ledger and incorporates their digital identity into physical tags, which are held and transferable by a product’s owner. With Hedera, SUKU can increase trust between brands, customers, and secondary market participants; it reduces counterfeit fraud in secondary marketplaces while increasing adoption and usage.

Lack of trust between brands and consumers in online marketplaces

With counterfeit goods becoming increasingly common in secondary marketplaces and online outlets, participants wonder whether a product is truly authentic. Counterfeit goods cost the U.S. economy an estimated $600 billion a year, or 3 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.¹ SUKU needed a way to ensure that brands and customers can guarantee a product’s authenticity.

SUKU evaluated various permissioned and permissionless blockchain frameworks to power its INFINITE platform for product authenticity — they took issue with gas costs associated with deploying and trading NFTs. SUKU had initially evaluated Ethereum as their first choice to power its platform; however, they ran into high transaction costs, lackluster performance, and uncertainty long-term governance stability (forking).

“The increasing demand for NFTs combined with digital authenticity of collectibles, digital art, and DeFi confronts the industry with unprecedented technological challenges,” said Yonathan Lapchik, CEO at SUKU

Scalable, secure, and inexpensive product authenticity for digital and physical goods

The INFINITE by SUKU application enables consumers to scan and verify that a specific product — whether it be a sneaker, article of clothing, piece of art, or anything else — is authentic. SUKU generates authenticity certificates as NFTs using the Hedera Token Service (HTS) and ships physical tags to customers that can be held or embedded into physical products.

A real-world use case and company that leverages INFINITE by SUKU to better engage their customers is LegitGrails. Online marketplaces and over 5,000 customers trust LegitGrails to bring authenticity to any product, from luxury bags to sneakers. Once a customer has verified the authenticity of a product, they are able to take their certificate of proof to INFINITE, where a specialized NFC tag is activated and sent directly to the user.

Brands, customers, and retailers using INFINITE by SUKU, powered by Hedera Hashgraph, can authenticate physical and digital products in real-time. Hedera brings greater trust to all ecosystem participants, resulting in greater customer adoption, retention, and satisfaction. Trust between users increases the propensity to participate in secondary marketplaces and reduces costs associated with fraudulent transactions and the sale of counterfeit goods.

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/1...