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Remarkable brands create new culture; they reshape the attitudes of many consumers every day. But what happens when these brands get copied? It’s that time when a brand’s integrity gets destroyed and it ends up losing a large part of its value. For example, Nike is one of the most copied brands and its counterfeits generate a lot of cash. But a counterfeited product, in the end, is just a feeble copy of the original—something that can’t ever match the quality delivered by a genuine product.

Also, counterfeiting products not only breaks the economy worldwide but also has some dangerous consequences. A case in point: What’ll happen when fake medicines or airbags or airplane parts hit the market? Such a move will definitely jeopardize the lives of many. And the worst part is that it’s difficult to differentiate between counterfeit and genuine products. But the solution of this problem lies within the ever-evolving blockchain tech. That’s what Seal is all about. So, in this post, we’ll get to know more about Seal and whether this blockchain-powered product-authentication service is any good.

Seal analysis

Traditional product-authentication mechanisms

Right now, there are countless anti-counterfeiting methods available. Some of them include security threads, watermarks, color-shifting inks, micro-prints, product numbering, Moiré patterns, and invisible ultra-violet inks. All in all, anti-counterfeiting is almost a never-ending cat-and-mouse game happening between security specialists and counterfeiters.

Eventually, every single offline authentication method is likely to get compromised if there’s quite a big financial motive existing. Plus, all the methods that we’ve mentioned just now vary in their sophistication. One big problem is that specialized training is genuinely needed to analyze whether or not any anti-counterfeiting method is violated. So the future of product authentication exists online for sure.

Online authentication and its challenges

Yes, online authentication makes sure whether the products are authentic or not. However, even the online medium of authentication comes with its fair share of challenges. And the biggest challenge lies in the form of data that tells about a product’s authenticity. So this data-related challenge is quite simple to understand; suppose you have an electronic product whose authenticity is kept inside a data packet that’s stored in the product’s embedded chip.

Now, once that data code is cracked by the counterfeiters, it won’t be long to create a real-like copy of the product. That is, the data stored in the copies will even point to a valid product entry in the brand’s existing merchandise database. The main crux of the problem is data duplicity—if there’s a way to make sure that the data isn’t duplicated, it’s all okay. And it turns out that there’s revolutionary tech that ensures no counterfeit of the data will ever be created—that thing is called blockchain. And Seal too is bringing exactly the same thing. The team behind Seal is very interested in using blockchain tech to authenticate products online.

Blockchain is just one part of the solution

However, the entire solution that Seal is proposing doesn’t include only blockchain. Instead, there has to be a dynamic, NFC–compatible chip whose state changes every time anyone interacts with it. So just because the chip is dynamic, it won’t be possible for fraudsters to pass its counterfeit copy off as real—that’s because, in the end, the data on the chip will change every time a fraudster will try to make its copy.

So, the copied product’s chip will carry the info that’ll not be sync with what the real product’s embedded chip is having. All of this will eventually indicate that the product is tampered with. With blockchain and a dynamic embedded chip, Seal is working toward finding robust solution to protecting a brand’s integrity.

Making verification easier and simpler

It always happens that product authentication is quite difficult. However, the idea is that checking a product’s genuineness shouldn’t be difficult. Well, certainly you just can’t expect any consumer to look at a product’s minute details and search for any production anomaly. Considering everything, the anti-counterfeiting method must be not only tamper-proof but also effortless to perform. Seal plans to bring the best of both worlds to the crypto table. In simple words, Seal will make it quite easy for anyone having a smartphone to tell a genuine product from a fake one. And that’s what truly makes this project innovative just like every successful project present in the ICO list.

Seal innovation

Innovation is a must for every crypto project if it wants to be successfully in the already-crowded ICO landscape. You pick up any ICO today—SAMY, BunnyToken, DataBroker, Data Broker Dao, RootProject, Aktie Social, PodOne, Adblurb—and you’ll notice that they all are introducing innovation that’s constantly setting them apart from the rest. In this section, we’ll go through the real deal that’s making Seal fresh and new in every possible way.

Incentivizing the adoption

The simple way to disrupt the world of counterfeiters is just by developing the right conditions that’ll lead the brands to pick Seal. What’s happening right now is that almost every big brand is paying through its nose for brand protection and for legal costs every year. So, for brands, anti-counterfeiting is a complete cost center. How about if this cost center gets transformed into a profit center? Well, Seal will do just that. Every brand that’s part of this platform will make a small amount of profit whenever its products change hands. Every time the ownership is transferred, the brand will easily offset the chip’s cost and will make a profit instead.

The brand registered on this platform will create new revenue streams until the end of its product’s life cycle. With this platform, it’ll be simple for brands to show their support for the destruction of the counterfeiter market while making a profit. By incentivizing the adoption, Seal is likely to attract a lot of users in the coming time.

Going much beyond anti-counterfeiting

Seal is much more than a simple, conventional anti-counterfeiting ecosystem. With this network, a user will get a bundle of other services. Below, we’ve given the low-down on each of these additional services.

Verifying product authenticity

This service has been already implemented by the core development team. Through this service, the registered consumers usually analyze whether a product is authentic or not.

Registering ownership

The service has been implemented, now. With the help of this service, the consumer can claim a product’s ownership without any hassles. This service is much needed when consumers are looking forward to claiming the insurance of a product.

Tracking parallel trade

With the help of this service, the brands will track the product’s origins and analyze where they are getting sold.

Transferring ownership

Thanks to this service, the consumers can simply transfer a product’s ownership. The service is already implemented across the ecosystem, enabling the brands to earn a great amount of money through the consumers found in the secondary market.

Creating product recalls

This service is apt for all those brands who want to develop a product replacement or a product recall. The recall or replacement is usually done by letting the consumers know when they can scan a faulty product.

Theft prevention

This network has its own built-in service that allows the consumers to mark a product stolen or lost. Because of this service, the product will trigger and display a custom message whenever it’s scanned somewhere.

Product analytics

Seal’s this service easily offers time- or geospatial-enabled product analytics to different brands in real time. Through the analytics, a brand can reshape its strategies so that they’re more productive.

Custom integration

The platform even has a service to allow the brands to use different tailored APIs that’ll redirect consumers or traffic to a custom source such as a website or an app.

Seal ICO Details

Seal tokens are used for paying for several services used by brands and consumers. The range of supported services will increase as the platform will improve and evolve. The existing version of Seal app already gives the users some great facilities such as ownership registration and authenticity checks. We’ve already covered the entire suite of services the platform will support or is supporting right now. In the future, these native crypto tokens will be used by the brands to pay to consumers for performing several activities.

Other Seal ICO important facts

Ticker: SEAL

PreICO price: 1 SEAL token = USD 0.068

Sale period: From April 8, 2018, to April 22, 2018

Crowdsale price: 1 SEAL token = USD 0.08

Bonus: Available

Platform: Ethereum

Accepted currency: ETH

Minimum investment: 1 ETH

Soft cap: 3,000,000 SEAL tokens

Hard cap: USD 33,000,000

Country: Netherlands

Whitelist/KYC: KYC

Restricted areas: USA and China

Token utility

Value Creation

The value of Seal’s network is attached to the brands that are registering their products on it. Every service present on the network will cost a specific service fee. Brands usually decide on the cost of ownership transfers so that everything suits the products, brand image, and strategy to a tee. The more value the network will capture by protecting the chips, the higher the value of the whole ecosystem becomes.

Network effect

The development team behind Seal believes that the network effects will improve a token’s utility by a wide margin. The utility of these tokens will increase as more brands will continue to adopt the platform. The network effect will easily improve the value of Seal tokens as consumers will begin using these tokens. As more tokens are distributed among the brands and consumers and as more on-platform services are developed and deployed, the network effect will kick in. And the best phase of the network effect will come when the products of the registered brands will start penetrating the secondary market. That’s exactly when the consumer adoption of these tokens will successfully reach to a whole new level.

Token proceeds

Like every big ICO project—such as TokenLend, CryptoLoans, Omnitude, Ternio, Dentix, LocalCoinSwap, ShopIn, Phoneum—Seal too has its own planned road map that’ll let the investors know where the token proceeds will go. Here’s how the funds raised from during Seal’s token sale will be divided.

Initial startup: 6% funds

Marketing: 17% funds

Business development: 28% funds

Operations: 18% funds

Legal: 8% funds

Engineering: 23% funds

Token allocation

The total tokens generated by the platform will be allocated in the following way.

Token sale: 41% tokens

Team and advisors: 12% tokens

Influence: 7% tokens

Future operations: 22%

Future R&D: 17%

Seal team

Seal is built by a team based in Amsterdam. The company that’s building this platform has a chief goal of restoring the faith among the consumers for different brands. The platform is quite beneficial for every single brand that’s having a large number of heavily vested consumers. Really, the team is quite passionate about what it’s doing. Seal was established by Bart Verschoor, founder and chief executive officer, of the platform. Bart is a dealmaker and an astute international business manager. Bart built the platform from the ground up with Joris Verschoor who’s the chief tech leader and a visionary; Joris has started coding since he was six-year-old—that’s quite a feat.

Summarizing Seal

Seal is a quite robust brand-authentication system that revolves around blockchain tech. Apart from the blockchain-enabled platform, it’s been monetized with the help of its own native crypto coin—and that’s seriously a plus for anyone who’s looking forward to monetizing their efforts spent on the ecosystem. To streamline the whole interaction between users and brands and to make sure that mobility remains intact, the platform uses high-quality NFC chips and a user-friendly app. After going through all the finer details of the project, this ICO is quite a thing and can seriously check all the problems of counterfeiting once and for all. However, it’s always good to visit the website before making a final investment decision.