Blockchain and Distributed Ledgers

From Bitcoin to NFT the technology that has been on everyone's lips for years and promises solutions to any problem.

Disclosure

Rights Chain is not a fintech company, it does not deal with cryptocurrencies, nor does it provide or manage financial services using blockchain, cryptocurrency or NFT tools.  The company also does not broker or buy or sell art of any kind, nor does it offer services in this field.

What is a blockchain

It is an agglomeration of different systems ranging from peer-to-peer technologies (for data exchange) to more or less complex cryptography and digital signature systems.

It is an electronic ledger in which small portions of data can be stored through a process called a transaction. A digital signature is affixed to each transaction, a process that gives that transaction a time stamp and makes it possible to verify at any time that the data has not been changed.

Since transactions are concatenated with each other in chronological order and through cryptographic mechanisms, changing one piece of data would compromise the entire sequence. For this reason, data in a blockchain ledger can only be added: it is not possible to change previously entered data.

A final feature of this electronic ledger lies in the fact that the data is shared among several 'nodes' that have a full copy of the entire ledger: thanks to this distribution, the attempted alteration of a single copy or loss of one of the nodes does not jeopardise the integrity of the data within it: in the first case, the tampered copy of the ledger would be automatically rejected by the remaining nodes, while in the second case, the data would still be accessible through the remaining nodes.

rcAuthority for Intellectual Property and Copyright

Rights Chain adopted blockchain technology in 2017 as the registry where records of works are stored. This is a private registry dedicated exclusively to the management of intellectual property, where the essential information of a work is saved:

  • Title of the original work
  • Date of registration
  • Fingerprint of the original file
  • Country of origin
  • Associated licence of use
  • Author's name or pseudonym

This set of information makes the registry effective for honouring, among other things, Creative Commons licence requirements or international standards based on the country of origin of the work.

The immutability features of the registry make the technology perfect for long-term data storage, which in the case of copyright or image rights requires a lifetime retention of certain information.

The ability to clone the registry between multiple actors has allowed us to create the first distributed blockchain registry dedicated to intellectual property and copyright, and to have the possibility to check whether a work has been registered, and if so on what date, through any of the partners who have joined the distributed ledger.

rcGovernance for Business

Since 2021, we adopted the same technology to keep track of digital data governance within the Rights Chain.

To ensure service excellence, we have adopted the Blockchain ledger to keep track of the most important operations in the business process such as:

  • management of our customers' token 'wallets' (required for job registration activities)
  • digital signature of invoices and official communications
  • tracking communications and their integrity to our customers
  • tracking of purchasing processes for products and solutions

Our Research & Development activities are focused on fully digital data management, and the ability to verify data integrity allows us not only to offer an excellent service but also to identify a problem and assess the impact it has had since it occurred.

Other Uses

Rights Chain has no plans, either now or in the future, to extend the functionality of blockchcian technology used for purposes other than those outlined above, such as, but not limited to, cryptocurrency.

We have had the opportunity to analyse and carry out case studies, applications or analysis of blockchain technology adoption scenarios in sectors such as:

  • Fashion
  • Pharmaceutical
  • Governance
  • Manufacturing
  • Supply Chain
  • Telecommunications

More information on our consultancy solutions can be found on our Corporate Services page.