Ready for a Single Traceability Solution?

Is the diamond world ready for a single traceability solution operating across the entire pipeline, from source to store?

Wes Tucker, CEO at Tracr, thinks so, especially following the announcement at JCK a couple of weeks ago that it was now actively recruiting partners.

Tracr's aim, it says, is to use digital technology to promote transparency and enhanced confidence in natural diamonds.

It is wholly owned by De Beers and currently has a million of its rough stones and 120,000 polished diamonds registered on its blockchain platform.

Tracr, based in London, has partnered with 33 sight-holding manufacturers and two major grading labs (GIA and GSI).

The rollout will continue across the midstream, Tucker tells me, but Tracr, which launched in 2018, is also very keen to get rival producers on board.

"That was its goal," says Tucker. "We started with inviting other producers to join, and we got quite far along. And then 2019 happened, which was not a great year for the diamond industry.

"And then 2020 happened, which was not a great year for anyone. And in the beginning of 2021, we made the decision to focus on diamonds discovered by De Beers, and their producing mines."

The company is now back to its original goal. Consumers are much more concerned about the origins of their diamond today than they were six years ago, not least as a consequence of the war in Ukraine.

And producers are coming to the realization that one way or another they'll have to implement some kind of provenance program.

"Provenance is not something that's going away anytime soon," says Tucker. "Producers just need to choose their method. Do they want to do it themselves? Do they want to partner with someone else?"

"Will rival producers sign up for a De Beers initiative?" I ask.

"Although we are wholly owned by De Beers, we are a separate legal entity with a separate governance structure, and a separate organizational structure. We have a lot of controls in place to make sure we can operate as an independent entity.

"Tracr was built to be both secure and private and, other than the Tracr technical support team, no-one, including myself, has access to the individual data stores or the participants on the platform."

Producers will have to do something in the provenance space, he says.

"I think producers are making the choice as to which one to go with, essentially, and they've been testing a few. We're actually built for producers given we're funded by a producer

"I guess the point on Tracr is they haven't really tested it because it's never been open to them. Hopefully this year, we'll be able to bring on a couple to really show them exactly what we have, which is, which we believe is quite special."

There are a number of other provenance solutions under development.  In what way does he believe Tracr's technology beats theirs?

"I just want to re-stress the fact that being the standard is not at the exclusion of anyone else. So that's not the goal here. The goal is not to make sure that we can eat into everyone else's business.

"Take Sarine as an example. They create data that is incredibly valuable. And we think that we can help take that data and let it flow along the value chain for them to find other ways of monetizing it. So there's definitely synergies.

"We start at source. Not a lot of our competitors start at source, they start at the manufacturing point, which is good and obviously, it helps. But it's not as powerful as the person that mined the diamond being the one that puts it on the blockchain."

What about Spacecode, the Swiss company that says it can chemically profile any stone to determine its mine of origin?

Tracr wants to be the trusted data layer for the industry, he says, which means it could work alongside other technological breakthroughs, including a Spacecode box that can tell the origins of a diamond.

"We are open to work with everyone in the diamond industry that has innovations because we're not going to do everything ourselves, he says.

"So we hope someone will come up with a box that magically gives every diamond in the world a number, because it makes our life a lot easier.

"Do I think that Spacecode or anyone else has created this box? And it's ready to go tomorrow? No, I don't think so. And I think reading the press releases even they don't say that it's available tomorrow.  

"If this box does magically give every diamond in the world a number, where are you going to write those numbers? Are you going to centralize them? Or are you going to put them on a distributed blockchain like we have?"

Have a fabulous weekend.