What Archives can teach you about Digital IDs and Blockchain
Since I was 19, I’ve worked with objects and collections. First, as a work-study student at my university’s art museum, and later in educational, curatorial, and leadership roles within museums, cultural institutions, and brands.
It wasn't just the intoxicating beauty of objects that captured attention, but also an object’s (digital or physical) story - who made it, why, when, where, and how did it end up here (how was it acquired). An object or artwork with ‘visual velcro’ continues to capture a viewer’s attention with its context. This is the magic stuff! The stories of the individual’s who commissioned a piece of art, the inspiration a designer referenced in creating a digital object, the innovation in new materials - whatever it might be, an object’s context is about as interesting and in some cases, as valuable as the work itself.
In the field of Information and Library Sciences and Museum Studies, a lot of academic thought, documentation, and organization is given to this part of an object’s profile
While the result of this documentation process is referred to by all sorts of names, for the sake of this article, let’s call it an ‘Object ID.’ ‘Object IDs’ are in fact unique identifiers and while they exist in the physical world and on physical objects, they also translate into the digital collection management systems used by curators, registrars, and archivists to track the objects within any given collection.
An ‘Object ID’ acts as the ‘primary key’ that unlocks all the possible information about a specific object, especially within a relational database.
Knowledge unlocked with this key includes (but is not limited to):
Title
Name of Artist/Designer/Maker
Creation Date
Physical Location and location history
Materials
Metadata (tags)
Description
Dimensions
Inscriptions
As seen on/in or worn by
Provenance
Relationship with other objects within the collection
Digital Assets related to the object (photographs, scans, etc.)
Acquisition notes
This trove of contextual knowledge becomes an index that relates to this one specific object. A grouping of these, an indexed network, holds exponential value for a variety of reasons.
You can ‘click into’ the artist/designer/maker to see what other objects they’ve created.
You can search locations and see all of the objects housed in one location.
This interconnectedness provides a rich web in which a user can extract value. This technical practice has been in use for a long time (c.1970s) and continues to be honed and refined. With the advent of blockchain technology and the broader concept of “Web3,” my mind inherently saw the value of blockchain through an archival/informational sciences/museum lens. This approach to blockchain technology, utilizing nods from archival practice and marrying the application to consumerism, physical goods, and collectibility is gaining traction within the industry (for good reason).
The utilization of on-chain possibilities holds even more information, knowledge, and value - which could be transparent, searchable, used to authenticate, and even as a token to engage with a community. In a phygital world, the applications are endless. Here are three companies in this space NOW and applying (at least at some level) the tenets of archive practice in a blockchain world.
TrueTwins: Product Level Data for Business Acceleration. Go beyond the circular economy and traceability, the digital passport technology provides a new level of product data amenable to accelerate business across the value chain.
EON: whose tagline is One Digital ID – infinite possibilities. With a single Digital ID for every item, power new business models, customer experiences, sustainability, and intelligence.
CollectID: Where end consumers can easily verify the authenticity of a product by scanning it with their smartphone. Brands and clubs (sport) can place digital content on their merchandise products and turn them into a communication channel.
At Enwoven, we’re working to solve how brands can leverage their authentic brand stories and assets (think: beginning at concept) for Web3, integrated directly from Enwoven to on-chain. While providing a 2D/3D index, tracing provenance, demonstrating authenticity, and claiming IP-based on the unique Digital ID on-chain and in the Metaverse.
Regardless of where things net out on the topic of Web3, if archives have taught us anything about the topic - receipts (refinement and documentation) are being kept!
