De Beers Group and GIA Enhance Cooperation to Strengthen Consumer Confidence in Natural Diamonds

GIA, (Gemological Institute of America) will join Tracr, the world’s only distributed diamond blockchain platform that starts at the source. GIA’s participation in Tracr will see the world’s leading diamond grading laboratory include an immutable record of the provenance of polished diamonds in its diamond grading reports for the first time as the industry continues to progress towards a unified approach for provenance assurance.

Consumers purchasing a diamond traced from the source by Tracr and graded by GIA will receive a GIA grading report with enhanced information about the provenance of their diamond. As De Beers Group registers more diamonds on Tracr, which are then traced through the value chain, the cooperation between GIA and Tracr represents a step-change in the diamond industry’s ability to provide provenance assurance at scale for consumers.

GIA’s participation on the Tracr platform builds on an agreement between De Beers and GIA to deepen cooperation in support of consumer confidence in natural diamonds. As part of this effort, GIA will explore how to incorporate additional information about the positive impact of natural diamonds with its natural diamond grading reports. GIA and De Beers have a long and successful track record of working together in areas that advance the industry and protect consumers’ interests, including the identification of laboratory-grown diamonds and diamond treatments.

Ryan Perry, Acting Executive Vice President of Strategy & Innovation for De Beers Group, said: “As the issue of diamond provenance rapidly grows in importance for stakeholders across the diamond value chain, having immutable data about a diamond’s journey from the source on grading reports is a major step forward and will underpin consumer confidence. We are delighted to see GIA – the largest provider of diamond grading reports in the diamond industry – join Tracr and lead the way. We have always believed in the importance of having a single provenance solution for the diamond industry, and Tracr’s leading technological solution and ability to operate at scale are extremely important for meeting emerging needs in this area. We look forward to bringing more key industry players on board with Tracr in the near future.”

Pritesh Patel, GIA Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, said, “Ensuring consumer confidence by providing trusted, impartial information about their diamonds is at the core of GIA’s consumer-protection mission. Working with De Beers to bring others in the industry to Tracr will expand the reach and positive impact of the platform.”

Tracr is the world’s first fully distributed diamond blockchain platform that starts at the source and operates at scale. Tracr has registered more than 1 million rough diamonds at source and 110,000 diamonds at the manufacturer level securely on their dedicated Tracr instances.