ERI: Authenticity & Ownership Verification on Base

The Problem: COUNTERFEITING AND TRUST

Counterfeiting is a global crisis, costing industries like electronics, fashion, and pharmaceuticals $2.3 trillion annually. Consumers and manufacturers face significant challenges due to the lack of transparent, tamper-proof systems to verify product authenticity and ownership.

• Consumers often purchase high-value or critical products, such as pharmaceuticals, relying solely on the seller's credibility, with no reliable way to confirm authenticity.
• Manufacturers are vulnerable to retailers introducing counterfeit goods into the supply chain, eroding trust and brand integrity.
• Ownership verification is cumbersome, often requiring physical receipts that can be lost or forged. Without a robust solution, proving ownership demands excessive effort and often remains unresolved, leaving both consumers and businesses exposed.
• Existing solutions like barcodes and RFID are centralized, susceptible to fraud, and fail to provide ownership tracking.

In Africa, counterfeit goods constitute 13.6% of imports, undermining consumer trust, stifling economic growth, and posing significant risks to safety and brand reputation.

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Our Solution: ERI

We’re building a decentralized platform on Base that enables anyone to verify the authenticity and ownership of physical and digital products — cryptographically, transparently, and trustlessly.

• Manufacturers issue and sign EIP-712-based digital certificates for each product.
• These certificates are embedded into the product via QR codes.
• Consumers can scan a product’s QR code to verify:
  • That the certificate is genuinely signed by the manufacturer.
  • That the product has not been claimed or duplicated.
• Once verified, the consumer can claim ownership on-chain — creating an immutable, user-owned proof of possession.

The entire process is powered by Base’s infrastructure, ensuring scalability, affordability, and strong privacy guarantees.

Core Features:

• Intuitive, Web3-native frontend for manufacturers and users.
• QR code generation for product-level authenticity.
• On-chain ownership registry — enabling transfer, resale, and post-sale services.
• Cross-device UX with fast, wallet-integrated interactions.

This system removes trust from the equation — replacing it with math, cryptography, and open verification.

• For consumers: it's peace of mind.
• For manufacturers: it's brand protection at scale.

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Market Opportunity

The need for product authenticity and ownership verification is growing exponentially — driven by global losses to counterfeiting, rising consumer demand for transparency, and the digital transformation of supply chains.

Global Opportunity:

The anti-counterfeiting market is projected to exceed $5 trillion by 2030 (Research and Markets), as governments, brands, and consumers demand secure verification systems.

African Focus:

Africa is disproportionately affected by counterfeiting — with 13.6% of imports being fake.

• Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa are key hotspots, especially in consumer electronics and pharmaceuticals.
• There’s a massive unmet need for tamper-proof verification tools across these regions.

High-Impact Vertical Focus:

• Electronics – Smartphones, accessories, and consumer gadgets often targeted by counterfeiters.
• Pharmaceuticals – Life-saving drugs are frequently counterfeited, leading to health crises and eroded trust.
• Luxury Goods – High-margin items (watches, fashion, etc.) demand provenance and proof of authenticity.

Target Users:

• Manufacturers – Protect their brand and prove authenticity at scale.
• Retailers – Build trust and avoid reputational damage.
• Consumers – Confirm they’re getting what they paid for and prove ownership when needed.

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Conclusion

This is not a niche problem — it’s a global trust crisis, and ERI provides the cryptographic infrastructure to solve it.

Built on Base, ERI delivers:

• Transparent authenticity verification.
• Immutable proof of ownership.
• A scalable and secure foundation for future supply chains.

ERI is the future of authenticity and ownership.

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PROJECT INFO.

Project GitHub Repo:

• https://github.com/eri-repo/ERI-Contract

Contract Addresses:

• Ownership Contract: 0x4500c12bfE76fC6C350c3021B5dcAD532fd1D211
  -- https://sepolia.basescan.org/address/0x4500c12bfE76fC6C350c3021B5dcAD532fd1D211#code

• Authenticity Contract: 0x3720f8B79B5E504E511EcEFb505b7f29ffCE73f5
  -- https://sepolia.basescan.org/address/0x3720f8B79B5E504E511EcEFb505b7f29ffCE73f5#code

Challenges and Lessons Learned

We encountered several challenges during development, but two stood out the most.

1. EIP-712 Implementation
   Implementing EIP-712 was one of the toughest parts. Getting signatures generated off-chain and verified on-chain proved tricky, but we eventually solved it.

2. On-Chain Architecture
   In this version, we aimed to maximize decentralization by storing large amounts of information directly on-chain—essentially treating the blockchain as the database. While this created performance and architectural headaches, we managed to overcome them.

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What’s Next

• Improved Performance: The next version will be faster and more cost-efficient.
• Base Name Integration: We plan to integrate Base Name for better usability and identity management.

Contract Addresses:

• Ownership Contract: 0x4500c12bfE76fC6C350c3021B5dcAD532fd1D211
  -- https://sepolia.basescan.org/address/0x4500c12bfE76fC6C350c3021B5dcAD532fd1D211#code

• Authenticity Contract: 0x3720f8B79B5E504E511EcEFb505b7f29ffCE73f5
  -- https://sepolia.basescan.org/address/0x3720f8B79B5E504E511EcEFb505b7f29ffCE73f5#code