Augmented Reality Authentication Tags

Consumer behaviour is trending towards less in-person interactions and transactions as more people work remotely. This presents greater threats for bad actors claiming to own something that they don’t. Of course, you can prove to someone from a remote location that you physically posses or control something by turning on your web camera. But it is not efficient to have many people turn on their web cameras at the same time in a mass Zoom-like party.

Proof Of Possession & Control

Blocktag offers another way for people to prove they have physical possession or control of tagged items like documents, tickets and works of art in seconds without manual human supervision. How this works is they will use their phone cameras to scan an item’s original tag. This action causes one or more virtual floating planes to appear in the Augmented Reality (AR) world on your phone. The planes are programmed to appear at specific locations in 3D space relative to the tag.

To prove that someone possesses a tagged item, the planes are programmed to follow the translation/rotation of the tag. People can orientate their phones until the phone camera fits within the plane to authenticate.

To prove that someone can physically control the tagged item, the planes are programmed to follow translation/rotation of the phone. The planes are always at a fixed distance away from the phone’s point of view. They have to orientate the item in their hand to fit the phone camera within the plane to authenticate.

Proof Of Proximity

Proof of possession/control can be extended for people to prove that they are physically at a place that they claim to be. This is useful at indoor locations where GPS is unable to give an accurate position. This is also more reliable than GPS as a phone’s GPS data can be altered so that the phone appears in a different location. A technique commonly called GPS spoofing. Blocktag is spoof-proof. People can scan a Blocktag sticker tag attached at an indoor location to authenticate they are physically close to the tag’s registered GPS location. This is Blocktag’s proof of proximity feature.

Proof Of Ownership

Proof of possession/control can also be extended for people to prove that they own something when the item’s tag serial id is linked to the tag’s transaction records on a blockchain. This is Blocktag’s proof of ownership feature for physical Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

ChunMing Chin
Cofounder, Director of Engineering
Blocktag Inc