The World Gold Council (WGC) has invested in aXedras, and the WGC CEO will join the board of the Swiss blockchain startup that provides supply solutions for the precious metals sector. The investment was part of aXedras’ Series B funding of an undisclosed amount.
In March, the WGC and London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) announced a joint initiative to use blockchain as part of the Gold Bar Integrity Programme. Two startups were announced as solution providers, aXedras and Peer Ledger.
“The WGC recognises that initiatives like the Gold Bar Integrity Programme require industry-wide collaboration but also significant funding to ensure success,” David Tait, CEO, World Gold Council.
“This project is essential to improve market infrastructure and that is why we’ve invested in aXedras. We have committed to return any and all commercial revenue earned from this investment back into the industry, for the benefit and positive development of the global gold market.”
Nowadays, most product traceability solutions have two criteria, authenticity and sustainability or, in the case of mining, ensuring the gold is responsibly sourced. aXedras addresses these with its Bullion Integrity Platform that uses digital twins and R3’s Corda enterprise blockchain technology. This means that each participant in the supply chain, whether a miner, refiner, trader or vault, keeps control of its own data, and only shares it with the parties it chooses.
A digital twin can be tied to the data in numerous ways. aXedras uses AI and OCR to assess five identifiers, the metal type, weight, finenes, serial number and brand. Additionally, there are numerous providers of security features which could include invisible markers. aXedras plans to support many of these.
The joint WGC, LBMA initiative is not the first to track the gold supply chain. Tradewind Markets performed its first gold provenance transaction in early 2020 with the Royal Canadian Mint. The same year, the Australian government-owned Perth Mint created a joint venture with Security Matters that uses chemical markers. Additionally, there are numerous ventures that tokenize gold.
