Taking Veracity Protocol to the NFLPA Rookie Premiere—to protect 1,200 collectibles
Recently, Veracity Protocol got the opportunity to kick off its verification tech at the famed NFLPA Rookie Premiere Event in Los Angeles — where partners of the NFL Players Association are able to exclusively connect with 40 of the newest star players at their first major business and marketing event following the NFL Draft.
Adrenaline and excitement dominated the field, as these new stars — as well as our own team at Veracity Protocol (Jakub, Harrison, and Mike) — were pumped and excited to be chosen to experience it.
Rookie Premiere
So what exactly was Veracity Protocol doing at the NFLPA Rookie Premiere?
The NFLPA is running an anti-counterfeit initiative to protect its players’ rights and memorabilia authenticity. Among the other activities that took place at this event, the newly drafted players signed sports gear and other memorabilia products (helmets, jerseys, trading cards, etc.) which are then made available to fans and collectors around the world.
In sports memorabilia, authenticity is key. Combined with our anti-counterfeiting protection technology, we were ready to show how we can protect these products in real-time by creating digital fingerprints of each item and then verify their authenticity all with just a smartphone.
As far as our goals for the event, we focused on collecting as much data as possible on helmets, trading cards, footballs, and jerseys via our app and industrial setup. This helps us to improve the accuracy of our algorithms to protect these types of products.
The results
In just two days, we were able to digitally fingerprint and successfully protect over 1,200 autographed cards newly signed by the rookie stars themselves — including 19 different types of cards.
Our main goal at the event was to train the algorithms on these specific cards to make them as accurate to our standard as possible.
“Since this was all happening live on-site, people were most interested in the fact that it was even possible. It was an eye-opening experience to see people from various industries experience the technology first hand. To be able to demonstrate immediate security around the products was a big win for VP and for the NFLPA,” noted Harrison In, Project Manager at Veracity Protocol
With tech like this, you can imagine our team got a lot of questions. With more and more people coming in, the team was able to showcase our new approach to securing physical objects, and as many attendees said after each live demonstration, seeing is believing.
As for Jakub, our CEO, he felt that being able to bring the tech to the NFLPA was extremely rewarding and energizing, in addition to witnessing the great atmosphere of new superstars engaging with brands for the very first time.
“It was great to see our tech work even better than expected. We set out to demonstrate on trading cards and ended up doing live protection of helmets, footballs, and jerseys,” said Jakub Krcmar, CEO of Veracity Protocol.
Jakub continued by sharing that “The whole team has been working hard for moments like this. For me, this is a major confirmation of what we’re trying to accomplish and it is meaningful that people trust us and want to share our vision.”
With our tech now able to create digital fingerprints for NFLPA’s memorabilia and sports gear, we’re really excited to see where this is going.
Plans for the future
And yes, this is only the beginning.
By successfully testing our tech at this event, we’re now getting ready for more related projects and similar use cases.
Unfortunately, we can’t be more specific at this point — but once ready, we’ll definitely be sharing the news with you.
Follow us to stay tuned!
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Veracity Protocol Protocol brings a new security standard to combat counterfeits and fraud by fingerprinting physical objects — bridging the physical and digital world.
We use computer vision and machine learning to create an immutable digital fingerprint of any physical object based on its unique material structure.
Unlike tags, chips or markers that need to be embedded and can be cloned, removed or tampered with, our solution works with the item as is — it’s non–invasive, near 100% accurate and works with items’ surfaces even when damaged.
Anyone can then verify the authenticity in (sub)seconds with a smartphone or regular industrial camera as no proprietary hardware is required. See our demo video and presentation for more information.
