ICO Review: Arianee

Arianee is a blockchain network for connecting owners, assets, and brands. Their mission is to build the first perpetual, anonymous and trusted record of all the world’s assets, enabling a link between owners and brands. Furthermore, they want to be the leading protocol for the creation and transfer of digital certificates of ownership and authenticity for objects.

A competitive space, Arianee is going after a monstrous goal. While some blockchain entrepreneurs have tried to do asset authentication for art, collectibles, or real estate, Arianee is after becoming the universal protocol for all assets. That’s a pretty lofty goal, and as they’re looking to raise $2,738,531.25, here’s what we think of their whitepaper:

The Basics

The goal for Arianee is to offer the ability to add a new layer of trust in the certification of goods without disturbing the processes already in place for a brand. They aim to accomplish this by creating a certificate and allowing these parties to grant it to the original owner of a product.

Arianee aims to create a digital asset that’s linked to a physical product, which they consider their Smart-Asset. The Smart-Asset is then connected by a Smart-Link, which is connected to the owners, brands, retailers, experts, 3rd party developers, and 3rd party customers.

Problem For Owners

Arianne believes a concern for owners is misplacing or accidentally destroying relevant documentation for product registration. This creates a hassle when they want to sell or need to replace their item.

Problem For Brands

Brands maintain CRMs to record interactions between individuals and the brand’s employees or other communication channels. Since distribution networks are fragmented by nature, they’re often unreliable and in some cases, non-existent. This causes issues when brands are looking to open communication with a product’s current owner, especially if they’re trying to offer further incentives.

How Arianee Works

Arianee breaks down their platform  into the following components:

The Vault

The Vault is an online repository where owners can register all their products free of charge. Information entered by owners is stored on the blockchain, which assures it cannot be changed by a third party. While the blockchain is accessible by anyone, The Vault will specifically have user’s information encrypted using time-tested encryption methods.

Smart-Link

Smart-Link is a process that gives owners full control over who has access to their Vault. This includes who they share data with, as well as the authority of those people.

Community-Business Partner Toolkit

Arianee aims to integrate itself with legacy IT systems such as CRMs and ERPs, as well as other distributed ledger platforms.

Smart-Asset

Products registered on the Arianee blockchain are displayed as Smart-Assets, which is the list of all the products proof of ownership, authenticity, and other documentation, like warranties.

Brand Data Hub

The data hub is the center of brand interactions, including product life analytics, as well as three core modules:

1. The Product Registry, where brands manage authenticated objects.
2. The Communication Center, where brands reach out to product owners.
3. The Distribution Network Management System, which is where brands interact with the distribution networks.

How Arianee Works

The Arianee platform aims to serve three types of users: owners, brands, and a multitude of third parties. Here’s how they work:

Owners

1. Owners create a vault by generating a public key and create a private, which they’ll use to access the Vault.
2. Owners add a mart-Asset, which is registering the product to your vault and creating the first certificate.
3. The Smart-Asset is then sent to the brand for confirming authenticity with matching documentation.
4. After approval of authenticity, an owner may elect to get insurance on their asset as well.
5. If an owner wants to sell their Smart-Asset, they can get it appraised by an expert in the Arianee community. These individuals have a reputation score, as well as can add an appraisal certificate to the Smart-Asset.
6. If the owner wishes to service the product before selling, the servicing needs to be done by an authorized reseller of the brand.
7. Because resellers share information with the manufacturing brand, the brand uses its Smart-Link to send a message to the owner letting them know of new selections.
8. Finally, owners who find sellers can transfer their Smart-Asset to another Vault.

Brands

1. Register as a verified brand.
2. Initiate your Brand Data Hub, which is the center of the brand’s interaction with the Arianee platform the Product Registry, Communication Center, and Authorized Retailer Management System mentioned above.
3. Deliver a certificate of authenticity.
4. Grant authorized status to a retailer.
5. Send a communication to an owner.
6. Perform analytics.
7. Control the authorized retailer network.

Our Thoughts

Stripped down to the core components of asset management on the blockchain, Arianee does a great designing out a system that could scale. Although there are still some questions in regards to how they authenticate brands as well as how they plan to onboard new customers. However, their whitepaper does an excellent job of going through the details a lot of ICOs miss.

When you consider that Arianee is asking for a low dollar amount for a project that has massive potential, this is a relatively low-risk, high-reward scenario. Especially when you dig into the remaining technical items, this team certainly knows their stuff. Overall, this is a great project to get familiar with, as the simplicity of their solution might pull them towards the front of the blockchain asset-tracking path.