Wisekey

Non-Fungible Tokens make way in luxury watch space as first NFT timepiece heads to auction

Using Open.Sea NFT MarketPlace, the highest bidder will receive the high-end NFT watch with an embedded digital certificate using a secure element with a cryptographic public‑private key pair unique to each watch.

WISeKey International Holding, a Swiss based cyber security, IoT and AI platform company, confirmed it will auction the first ever secure luxury NFT watch on March 31.

Using Open.Sea NFT MarketPlace, the highest bidder will receive the high-end NFT watch with an embedded digital certificate using a secure element with a cryptographic public‑private key pair unique to each watch.

WISeKey says it is launching this auction to demonstrate its technology and encourage luxury watch brands to start using it to auction their high-end watches through WIS.Watch NFTs.

The company successfully launched this week its WISe.Art, a digital certificate of authenticity, a NFT for art pieces that will live forever on the blockchain, unchanged and unchallengeable, as proof of the buyer’s ownership.

WISeKey says the announcement generated strong interest from the luxury and art community and WISe.ART is now operation using OpenSea NFT MarketPlace.

This method secures watches using cutting-edge authentication microprocessors combined with identity blockchain technology, which together with on-the-ground measures ensures the authenticity of the artwork.

A WISeKey NFT is a unit of data on the blockchain, where each NFT represents a unique digital item, such as an artwork, audio, video, an item in video games or other forms of creative work. While digital files themselves are infinitely reproducible, NFTs representing them are traced on their underlying blockchains and provide buyers with proof of ownership.

Blockchains such as Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Flow, each have their own token standards to define their use of NFTs.

WISeKey, the first company in the world to use dual factor authentication combined with blockchain technology to secure luxury watches, currently protects over 2.5 million luxury watches.

Since 2010, WISeKey has collaborated with manufactures of luxury watches deploying this unique technology to integrate semiconductors tags powered with its VaultIC154 NFC secure element and provide brands with the ability of:

  • issuing a storage device comprising of a digital certificate of authenticity
  • checking, when required, the validity of the digital certificate of authenticity
  • modifying, when required, the status of validity of the digital certificate of authenticity.

Furthermore, WISeKey’s technology creates Watch Birth Certificates, digital identities which are analogous to birth certificates and can be converted into NFTs.  The Watch Birth Certificate is signed, or “certified” by a trusted authority and contains basic information such as date & time of manufacture (birth), company (parents), and type of product.

This digital identity, used throughout the watch lifetime, allows the watch to become a “Trusted Object” of the Internet, prove its identity and provide verifiable data.

The Watch Birth Certificate is based on a cryptographic public‑private key pair that is unique to each IoT device.  The public key for this key pair is part of the certificate and can be freely distributed, while the private key is used whenever the IoT device needs to verify its identity or to sign data to ensure cryptographic integrity.

It is the private key that represents the essence of the identity of the IoT device.

A WISeKey NFT virtual meeting involving stakeholders on the Art and Luxury Ecosystem will be held on April 14, 2021 at 9:00 am ET.

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