The problem Forge solves

The market cap of counterfeit products in the world is 1.8 trillion dollars, which is too huge a number to be ignored.

Our proposed solution tackles the problem of counterfeiting of products head-on.

Problems we solve:

1. Our solution removes the need for the consumers to first buy the product in order to check the authenticity of the item. They can do it on the spot, without spending a dime.

2. The consumers don't have to trust on the word of mouth of the seller, but the product itself. So, no more manipulative sellers to cheat innocent customers.

3. Our solution will also help brands to cut costs that they usually put in for fake product awareness campaigns.

4. Targeting the pharmaceutical and farming sector will not only help them monetarily but it will also benefit the common public as they will then get original medicines and fake-fertilisers and fake-chemicals free fruits and vegetables.

Challenges we ran into

1

We were adding the secret Id on the blockchain, which if scanned, marks the product as sold on the blockchain. The problem was that all the data is publicly visible on the public blockchain. The challange was to find a way so that secret Id do not gets exposed before the purchase.
The solution we found is that the owner will add the hash of the hidden key on the blockchain, and whenever consumer is going to buy the product, he/she will call the buy method of other contract which when get the secret Id, hashes it first then send it to the original contract as internal transaction. Then the original contract checks whether both hashes are equal or not. In this way if someone tries to send the hash of secret key in the transaction then it will get rehashed, so solving our problem.

2

We have put the control to purchase in the hand of the consumer, so that seller can not fool him/her by not scanning the secret Id. This brought a new problem, customer transaction fees, which is considered a major barrier in the adoption of the blockchain technology. This problem is tackled by using GSN on the contract so that consumer do not have to pay the transaction fee at the time of purchase(scanning secret Id, which marks the product as sold on blockchain).

3

The Challenge of adaptability and accessibility is resolved by using Portis, Matic and GSN. This combo together provides so seamless experience to consumer that he/she doesn't have to go through any hassle at all.
Portis makes them do sign transactions by just requiring email and password like traditional web.
Matic provides layer 2 solution to make transactions extremely cheap and extraordinarily quick.
GSN helps the consumers to not go into the nitty gritty details of blockchain and do free transactions.