French luxury goods giant Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE (LVMH) is reportedly working with ConsenSys and Microsoft Azure to develop a blockchain platform for tracking its products, crypto media agency CoinDesk reports on March 26.
Dubbed AURA, the blockchain-powered platform is reportedly scheduled to go live in May or June 2019 with two major LVMH subsidiaries: Louis Vuitton and Parfums Christian Dior.
Louis Vuitton is French fashion house founded in 1854 and known for its signature LV logo, while Parfums Christian Dior is the perfumery and cosmetics line of other French fashion house Christian Dior.
According to the report, the AURA platform is based on JPMorgan’s Quorum blockchain platform, which is running on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.
When reached by Cointelegraph, a ConsenSys spokesperson declined to comment on the alleged cooperation within the initiative.
In the initial stage, AURA is expected to prove the authenticity of LVMH’s luxury products, allowing for the tracking of origins to the point of sale, an anonymous source familiar with the matter told CoinDesk. At the next stage, the company intends to explore the protection of creative intellectual property, as well as exclusive offers, events for customers and anti-advertising fraud, the source revealed.
In order to deliver the blockchain-powered platform, LVMH has reportedly hired a full-time blockchain team that has been working on the AURA project for more than a year, allegedly working with blockchain development entity ConsenSys and Microsoft’s Azure cloud service.
After AURA is successfully piloted, the project is planned to be extended to LVMH ‘s other brands, as well as eventually to its competitors, CoinDesk learned.
Recently, major United States-based postal carrier UPS has announced the launch of a blockchain-enabled platform to improve merchant supply chains. Dubbed Inxeption Zippy, the new blockchain project is developed along with e-commerce technology company Inxeption, and is set to improve the system of products distribution as well as to track the entire supply chain from product listing to delivery.
Earlier today, over 130-year-old liquor company William Grant & Sons also announced that one of their brands would release whisky on blockchain in order to confirm its provenance.