De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver has announced that the company will be investing in a new digital platform powered by blockchain technology that will provide a single, immutable record that traces a diamond’s individual journey through the value chain.

In a blog post uploaded on December 4, Cleaver wrote that the platform will help the industry respond to the changing expectations of consumers and the evolving perceptions of what is required to strengthen confidence in the product.

Describing the blockchain as a highly secure digital register that creates a tamper-proof and permanent record of interactions – in this instance, a diamond’s path through the value chain, Cleaver said that it would help “maintain a record of the activities that have taken place, the order they occurred in, who they occurred between and what they involved”.

He adds that it can also verify activity on the chain without needing to reveal sensitive details to the wider community”, thus combining “transparency with privacy of sensitive information”.

Further, the platform will be immutable, while also being open and independent so that the information regarding any diamond is accessible to all. Cleaver stresses that De Beers will ensure that the new platform will also be a collaborative and shared resource, but entirely secure. He adds that “participants in the ecosystem can build applications for various uses, whether that’s as a trading platform, financial assurance tool or consumer-facing solution”.

No time frame has been defined for the actual launch, with Cleaver stating that the technology is new and the industry to which is it being applied is a complex one. He concludes that “we have more work to do before we are ready to launch the platform”.