Lowe’s is now selling blockchain power tools that won’t work if stolen

“A product’s NFT undergoes a status change when it is either sold by Lowe’s, if it has been stolen, or if its status is unknown.”

Lashing tools

Retail giants have been brainstorming all kinds of ways to combat theft — and big box hardware titan Lowe’s is now pushing those efforts to the limit.

The biggest minds at Lowe’s Innovation Labs have been working on the company’s recently unveiled “Project Unlock,” Insider reports, which will use cheap radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and – wait for it – NFTs on the blockchain to activate certain power tools at the till.

If that sounds like DRM for power tools, it really is. Products included in the program will be embedded with an RFID chip containing a serial number. When a specialized scanner detects the chip, it enters its unique activation key.

It’s what’s known as ‘point-of-sale activation’, and unless your newfangled drill is checked out using a specialized RFID scanner, it’s totally useless.

Instead of using more intimidating methods such as locking down all valuable products in store, Lowes sees Project Unlock as a much less impressive alternative.

“We believe there are better ways to deter theft than locking products,” Lowe’s announced in a video announcement, quoted by Insider.

However, it is currently unclear which tools this system will be used with.

Blocked chain

Lowe’s isn’t the first to experiment with these kinds of anti-shoplifting methods. Its biggest rival, Home Depot, tried a similar system that used Bluetooth instead of RFID back in 2021.

But this is where the latest project gets even wilder. According to Lowe’s Innovation Lab senior director Josh Shabtai, each product is associated with a pre-stamped NFT.

“A product’s NFT undergoes a status change when it is either sold by Lowe’s, if it has been stolen, or if its status is unknown,” Shabtai said Cointelegraph.

“All this information is publicly visible to customers and merchants since it is recorded on the Ethereum blockchain,” he added. “We have essentially built up a purchase authenticity for Lowes’ power tools.”

So in other words, a customer’s purchase is recorded — without personal information, Lowe says — on the blockchain via an NFT. That database can be checked by anyone, including the dealer itself and law enforcement.

In theory, this is meant to help customers buying a used tool see if it was stolen — making the bold assumption that anyone buying something cheap would care where it came from, let alone know about Lowe’s system.

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