Canada’s Lucara Diamond – the company that found the biggest diamond in more than a century- has taken a new step towards modernizing and guaranteeing the quality of precious gem by employing blockchain technology.

Lucara Diamond Corp., which in 2016 discovered a 1,109-carat stone, has announced the acquisition of Clara Diamond Solutions, a digital platform that sells rough diamonds, agreeing to pay 13.1 million shares, which were worth $29 million. Clara is a digital platform that applies both cloud and blockchain technologies to match rough diamond production with the demands from manufactures and to track diamonds as they move through the supply chain.

The Vancouver-based miner joins much larger rivals like De Beers and Russia’s Alrosa PJSC in exploring the use cases of blockchain technology. De Beers said last month it was testing the pilot of a virtual ledger that would reassure buyers that stones are real and aren’t funding terrorist conflicts. Such systems may be applied in guarding banks against fraud in an industry shrouded in secrecy, where loans are often based on paper invoices.

“We believe that Clara will not only modernise the entire diamond sales process but unlock additional value for all participants across the diamond market,” Lukas Lundin, chairman of Lucara, said.

The (diamond) mining company also announced the appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer, Eira Thomas, a diamond industry veteran and one of Lucara’s co-founder, which will be replacing William Lamb. Lamb steps down from his executive position after 10 years of service.

The company says it will use the newly-purchased platform to sell some of its own output in coming months before expanding to third-party production.

Diamond producers are starting to look into blockchain to improve the process of tracing diamonds. blockchain systems are starting to become intensely used in supply chain management as they can make the process run more smoothly by permanently recording each transaction on the blockchain, thus increasing transparency.