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Comment by bitcoinbutter | Hacker News Reader

It's crazy to me that if I want to buy Ray Ban sunglasses off Amazon, I am routed by default to random third party sellers. I have purchased these once before and I'm almost positive that I received a fake product.

How can I know for sure though? How does Amazon know for sure? Since that experience I have looked at Amazon in a different light, and I've realized how difficult it is to source name brand products with confidence.

This is as good a time for blockchain as any. Register genuine products on a blockchain and have them scanned once they hit the Amazon warehouse to ensure they are authentic.

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How does blockchain help here? The database would be extremely large - too large to hold for any ordinary computer system.

The basic problem is solveable without blockchain by simply registering products by their serial number on the brand's website, which a lot of brands actually already do for higher priced products.

Then the scammers would just copy the serial numbers, you would have to link every number with a customer name

You don't need to link it to any customer details. The way it usually works is the website records every serial number checked, and warns you if somebody has already checked that serial number. For additional assurance the serial number can also be concealed with tamper-evident packaging, e.g. scratch-off paint.

D’Addario has a “serial number” check webpage for their guitar strings. If you enter an invalid (or previously used) serial number, supposedly (I’ve never had a counterfeit set) they’ll send you a genuine set for free.

Sure, some people will input fake serial numbers to get a free product, but they probably weighed the cost of counterfeit strings affecting brand image (if I don’t know mine are counterfeit, I’ll assume it’s D’Addario’s fault if they’re bad) with the cost of sending a free set of $5 strings.

Sorry, this doesn't seem to be the fabled, elusive use-case for the Blockchain Industrial Complex either.

> How does Amazon know for sure? Since that experience I have looked at Amazon in a different light, and I've realized how difficult it is to source name brand products with confidence.

You buy them wholesale from the manufacturer?

> Since that experience I have looked at Amazon in a different light, and I've realized how difficult it is to source name brand products with confidence.

This has been a solved problem for any legitimate business. The only other place I've seen such lack of quality control were at flea markets, which doesn't say anything good about Amazon.

They already have exactly that, minus the unnecessary blockchain bit. It's called Transparency.

The problem is that manufacturers need to opt into it and there is no way as a consumer to tell on a product listing whether or not the product is part of the registry.

https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency/learnmore

This the example I point out whenever an Amazon employee mentions letting customer QA 3rd party garbage.

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