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Blockchain can fix our broken relationship with the material world

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Could blockchain make us more conscious consumers? Jessi Baker, founder of Provenance, certainly thinks so.

We know surprisingly little about most of the products we use every day.Even before reaching the end consumer, goods travel through an often vast network of retailers, distributors, transporters, storage facilities and suppliers that participate in design, production, delivery and sales, yet in almost every case these journeys remain an unseen dimension of our possessions.

The creation, exchange and use of material things, however, has many potential negative consequences: environmental damage, exploitative extraction, unsafe work conditions, forgery and the huge amounts of valuable material wasted at the end of product life. Our relationship with the material world is broken.

But still, it’s clear the narrative around the things we buy is important to us – it is why the story behind brands are so vital and intoxicating to the tribes that follow them. It is why, to date, we have supported a fundamentally unsustainable system because we “think different” or believe “you’re worth it”....