For blockchain proponents, the technology’s ability to permanently record all the steps in a process is one of its biggest selling points.

This “breadcrumb tracking” has lots of uses, including ad tech verification and supply chain management.

Now, a Gibraltar-based firm has launched a service — based on the Ethereum blockchain protocol — that is optimized to provide a legal certificate demonstrating a specific chain of events.

The service was co-developed by the company, Evident Proof, and Microsoft researchers in the UK. The solution generates “an immutable provenance record where data cannot be destroyed or falsified,” the company says, for such uses as identifying counterfeit products or certifying a certain level of performance.

An Evident Proof token is issued when a customer stores the data, and then those tokens are employed to pay for the proof certificates. A series of APIs can connect the platforms to various data-generating operations, and there are tools so that customers can format their own certificates.

CEO Adrian Clarke told me that these “proof-seal certificates” can legally demonstrate that a shirt was made, say, in Kansas, or they can certify every step in the supply chain that led to the creation of a given dose of medicine. Obviously, this kind of demonstrable evidence could boost the marketing claims of a product.

An oil company that operates expensive machinery, he said, could show “100 percent verifiable and immutable” proof that it has maintained the circuitry, which it might need to show for legal proceedings or for warranties.

Clarke noted that some companies have begun looking at Evident Proof for verification relating to the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Under those European Union laws, an individual has the right to ask an organization to delete all her personal data, the so-called “right to be forgotten.” An Evident Proof certificate could provide evidence that such data was, in fact, erased.

While other blockchain-based startups also tout their ability to offer proof of transactions or processes, he said Evident Proof’s solution differs in that it has been set up specifically to generate legal certificates, it is scalable and it is intended for use by large enterprises.