The What?

fQR Weave is a new generation of the well known quick responze (QR) standard. Using Arweave blockchain. fQR or Fingerprint QR, will be the best alternative of QR as an anti-counterfeit solution

QRs And Anti-Counterfeit:

Search the Internet for QR codes and authentication or counterfeiting keywords and you will get plenty of results, whether links to solution providers selling anti-counterfeiting solutions based on QR codes or announcements from brands having adopted QR codes to protect their products. Actually, “protecting their products” rather than “protecting their customers” may very well be the key element to understand and evaluate.

QR codes are widely adopted primarily because they are extremely cheap, and because of their visual aspect they give the feeling of something cryptic, hence secure. The production cost of a single code is basically zero, which may be one reason brands keep on adopting it even today. The problem being that the reproduction cost of such a code is also zero. When using 2D codes based on standards (ISO/IEC 18004), anyone can create the exact same codes and associate them with fake or counterfeited products, or generate codes that follow the exact same content logic as yours.

The replicated or fake code can lead the consumer to a fake website, or just replay real identities leading to the original company systems. The way “anti-counterfeiting” detection works, seen from the brand or its service provider’s side, is by detecting when the same identities (identifiers coded in the QR code) are replayed multiple times within suspicious time periods or geographic areas. This behavior would trigger an alert showing that there is a high probability your product or its identity has been counterfeited. However, it must be very clear that the consumer is not protected at all: it will take several identity replays until, as a brand, you realize something is wrong, which means there are always a number of your consumers buying a counterfeited good, thinking it was genuine because of its QR code, who will get a very bad product experience if not even a lethal one.

The solidity of the detection system is one where the solution providers don’t want to openly discuss about their detection algorithm to not make the counterfeiters’ life easier. This is called “security by obscurity” which following Wikipedia’s definition is a security system that “may have theoretical or actual security vulnerabilities, but its owners or designers believe that if the flaws are not known, then attackers will be unlikely to find them”. In other words, this may very well be called wishful thinking.

fQR... The Solution:

Instead of the traditional QR codes and their downsides, even those claiming that their algorithms can help fighting counterfeit, they still not fully trusted as long as their backend's algorithms and codes are not open source for the public.

fQR Weave is here for that reason, a transparent solution built over arweave.org blockchain, any user with a mobile, can verify the fQR on any product with the fQR Reader (open source)

Usually, product's metadata are printed or even "glued" on. Retailers, third-parties, and even shops can manipulate the informations with ease using several tricks. From the other side, QR codes are more often used to redirect its reader (with scanning) to a website, displaying a text, etc...

Here where fQR give comes with a better solution with the help of web3.0 and Arweave blockchain .

Each fQR 2D code will be unique with immutable data. With other words, every fQR is actually the ID of a arweave data transaction:

The standard QR code are similiar for every x product: that means all the chocolate bars share the same QR code. But with fQR, each chocolate bar will have its own "fingerprint", its own hash as the form of a QR code, and this feature, adds more complexility to duplicate a product's QR code.

Taking advantage from blockchain's core, each product owner should have an arweave wallet to generate his fQR codes. Hence, owner's wallet will be marked as verified wallet, which will help the customer to verify the legitimacy of the product by himself via fQR Reader. If anyone with arweave wallet tried to generate same fQR data in the intention to counterfeit, he will face those block:

• it will not match any legit fQR as its form is different (hash: ID)

• unability to generate fQRs from the verified wallet address

• Each product has an unique fQR

• unability to change immutable fQR's data

A Real Life example:

After the brief explanation about how fQR Weave works, let's explain how it can help in our daily life.

Almost everybody goes to the supermarket to buy the needs, and we often fall victims of store's cheating, specially small and unknow / personal owned markets. But with a product holding a fQR Weave, retailers cannot:

• Change the exipry date

• Sell offers (like buy 1 get 1 offer)

• Change official market's price

• Change country of origin

• And more...