Breitling Goes Live With Ethereum-Based System to Put All New Watches on the Blockchain

Oct 15, 2020 at 08:16 UTCUpdated Oct 15, 2020 at 08:22 UTC.The actual Breitling watch given to James Bond in the 1965 film "Thunderball" apparently wound up being sold at a car boot sale for £25.

Such mysterious circumstances could never befall a Breitling watch from today thanks to the long, immutable reach of the blockchain.

Announced Tuesday, Breitling is the first luxury watchmaker to offer an Ethereum-based digital passport for all its new timepieces.

Expensive watches have always come with physical certificates of authenticity and international warranty, but there needs to be a standardized way to transparently track the service history and any repairs to the watch, according to Breitling's chief digital and technology officer, Antonio Carriero.

In recent years, the market in pre-owned watches has grown to about $20 billion, roughly half the size of the new luxury watch market.

Breitling has chosen to work with track-and-trace blockchain Arianee, which has connections to Swiss luxury brands group Richemont, the owner of Cartier, Dunhill, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Montblanc and others.

Arianee's protocol uses a system on Ethereum involving so-called non-fungible tokens, a way of water-marking an individual object, such as an expensive watch or even conferring individual authenticity on a digital work of art.

Breitling wants the entire industry to work together, said Carriero, to build a global standard for digital certificates and an API that customers will benefit from instead of working in silos.

"Everything Breitling has developed to integrate Arianee with its e-warranty system is available for free to anyone who wants to use it," he said.

Proof of authenticity is a novel and compelling use case for blockchain that stands apart from most enterprise uses of the tech - which are often about replacing some existing system.