Blockchain Fingerprinting Physical Objects
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Solution Overview
Problem
Centralized databases face issues such as single points of failure, dependency on network connectivity, limited access, and lack of data redundancy, which lead to inefficiencies and security concerns, particularly in tracking physical high-value commodities where authenticity is crucial.
Innovation Solution
A blockchain-based system for fingerprinting physical objects, where a mobile node scans objects, generates feature vectors, applies cryptographic hashing, and stores encrypted data using smart contracts on a blockchain, ensuring immutability and security.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a centralized database is used to store and maintain data, then data management and control are simplified, but the system has a single point of failure and limited access capability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the centralized database into multiple distributed nodes across a network. Each node maintains a copy of the data, eliminating the single point of failure. The system segments the monolithic database structure into distributed database instances that operate independently but maintain consistency through consensus mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates multiple copies of the data stored at different locations across the network. Instead of maintaining a single master copy, the system replicates data across multiple nodes, ensuring that if one copy is lost or corrupted, other copies remain available for recovery and continued operation.
2Quantity of substance
If a centralized database is used, then data redundancy is minimized, but data loss is difficult to retrieve and access is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements redundant data storage before any loss can occur. By maintaining multiple copies of data across distributed nodes in advance, the system creates a cushion against potential data loss. This proactive redundancy ensures that if data is lost at any node, recovered copies are already available without requiring complex restoration procedures.
3Reliability
If blockchain technology is used for tracking physical commodities, then security and authenticity are improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a fingerprinting module as an intermediary component that bridges the physical object and the blockchain system. This module captures physical characteristics of commodities, converts them into digital fingerprints, and stores these fingerprints on the blockchain. The intermediary simplifies the integration by handling the complex tasks of feature extraction and cryptographic processing, making the overall system more manageable.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces manual or mechanical verification processes with automated cryptographic verification. Instead of physically inspecting commodities or maintaining complex manual tracking systems, the system uses cryptographic hash functions and digital fingerprints stored on the blockchain for automatic verification of authenticity and provenance.
Data Source
AI summary
An example operation may include one or more of scanning, by a mobile node, a physical object to generate a scan data, extracting, by the mobile node, a set of features from the scan data, generating, by the mobile node, a feature vector based on the set of the features, applying, by the mobile node, a cryptographic hash function to the feature vector to produce a hash value, encrypting, by the mobile node, the set of the features with the hash value, and executing a smart contract to store the encrypted set of the features on a blockchain.