Alrosa Joins De Beers’ Blockchain Pilot Tracker

The world’s biggest diamond producer, Russia’s Alrosa, has decided to join forces with its main competitor, De Beers, in order to utilize the Dutch company’s blockchain platform called Tracr. The Russian giant will use the blockchain to track diamonds, Coin Telegraph reports.

At the moment, Alrosa and De Beers supply half of the diamonds in the world and their combined sales rose 12% in the last quarter.

Tracr was announced as a solution that can be used to track diamonds in an effort to improve the transparency of the market and to create more trust from the consumer. It creates a digital certificate for each diamond made by the company and it records any transactions and the characteristics of the diamond.

As the data is stored in the immutable blockchain, clients can verify the data before they buy the diamonds to be safer than they would do without this measure. There is also the issue that many people are not keen on buying “blood diamonds,” which are mined illegally in war zones and generally used to fund combat.

“Traceability is the key to further development of our market. It helps to ensure consumer confidence and fill information gaps, enabling people to enjoy the product without any doubts about ethical issues or undisclosed synthetics. Alrosa is glad to participate in testing Tracr, along with other market solutions. We believe tracing requires industry cooperation and complementation for the sake of a common goal,” said Alrosa CEO Sergey Ivanov.

Tracr was first developed by De Beers in a joint effort with Diacore, Diarough, KGK Group, Venus Jewel and Rosy Blue NV and first implemented in May. Some other companies like Signet Jewelers have also entered the partnership later.