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De Beers, the world's biggest diamond producer by the value of
its gems, has led industry efforts to verify the authenticity of
diamonds and ensure they are not from conflict zones where gems
may be used to finance violence.
"An immutable and secure digital trail was created for a
selection of rough diamonds mined by De Beers as they moved from
the mine to cutter and polisher, then through to a jeweler," De
Beers said in a statement.
Five diamond manufacturers worked with De Beers to develop the
blockchain platform called Tracr, which will be launched and
made available to the rest of the industry at the end of the
year, the company said.
The manufacturers involved in the pilot were Diacore, Diarough,
KGK Group, Rosy Blue NV and Venus Jewel.
The pilot was announced in January and had an initial focus on
larger stones. Blockchain is a shared database of transactions
maintained by a network of computers on the internet that is
best known as the system underpinning bitcoin.
"The Tracr project team has demonstrated that it can
successfully track a diamond through the value chain, providing
asset-traceability assurance in a way that was not possible
before," De Beers chief executive Bruce Cleaver said.
(Reporting by Zandi Shabalala; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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