IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson announced a partnership with sneaker manufacturer New Balance at his Cardano Summit in Bulgaria. The stated goal? To ensure that New Balance shoes are authentic using Cardano’s ledger.
In the video below, Hoskinson offers a tidbit about the planned partnership.
“How about we just announce something right now? Do you guys want an announcement. For a little while we’ve been working with a shoe company,” he said. “Do you guys know New Balance? We’re working on an authentication product with the Cardano blockchain.”
New Balance will be announcing more news on October 14, Hoskinson said. He pointed to the New Balance partnership as an interesting example of possible mass adoption. He also expects to see more additions to the platform over the next year.
“In terms of new features and functionality I think there are two that we really have to make sure get into the Cardano 2020 roadmap,” he said. “One is the ability to embed metadata – DIDs (decentralized IDs) – and deal with contingent settlement inside of the system these are two things that are just so important to comply with FATF regulations and to also allow us to have a more compelling experience with exchanges and regulated actors and also will help us become the dominant platform for security tokens.”
He also noted Cardano may soon have Ethereum interoperability.
“IOHK is collaborating with New Balance on an authentication pilot project. This is a consumer-level verification solution which will allow purchasers to confirm the authenticity of footwear on the distributed ledger,” said Tim Harrison of IOHK, Cardano’s parent company.
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