Magic mushrooms, hemp and kratom can now be certified with Avalanche blockchain

Thousands of certificates proving the authenticity of roughly $275 million worth of psychedelic mushrooms, hemp and kratom have been minted as NFTs, according to a statement.

Using the Avalanche blockchain, goods certification startup Blockticity said it has minted NFTs designed to certify the authenticity of products tested by ACS Laboratory, the companies said in a statement. ACS Laboratory is the largest hemp and cannabis lab in the eastern U.S., it also said.

Kratom has been considered an herbal medicine that some claim to possess opioid-like properties.

So far, ACS Laboratory and Blockticity have minted a total of nearly 37,000 non-fungible tokens which each act as a Certificate of Analysis, or COA, for the products, the companies announced. The plan is to mint another 120,000 COAs for mostly cannabis products, they also said.

The process involved ACS Laboratory first testing the products and then issuing a COA. Then Blockticity created a QR code of the COA which it minted as an NFT using Avalanche's C-Chain.

The idea is that Blockticity's COA NFTs will make both the tracking and verifying of products' authenticity more efficient and trustworthy.

Blockticity's business strategy is predicated on the idea that fraud is rampant in the "certification industry," and the issue is exacerbated by ineffective methods of tracking goods across multiple supply chains. "Fraudsters can exploit laboratory COAs through QR code tampering, visual modifications, and data alterations," the companies said. "Blockticity's solution aims for COAs to have consistent, verifiable proof by anchoring them to Avalanche."

Global supply chain

The aim is to expand beyond this particular initiative with ACS Laboratory and expand to "consumer electronics, apparel, agriculture, seafood, and other sectors," according to Blockticity, which said additional projects are expected to debut later this year.

"Blockticity's primary goal is to harness web3 for tracking products across the global supply chain,” the company's CEO Mike Coner, said in the statement. “We use Avalanche because it enables on-chain product authentication while safeguarding client metadata and offering a scalable solution for the worldwide economy."