CertChain
Live on Aleo Mainnet · since 2026-05-01 Swiss-made

Certificates of authenticity that prove without revealing.

CertChain is a Swiss SaaS that issues NFT certificates for premium physical assets on the Aleo blockchain. Authenticity is publicly verifiable. Ownership stays private by design, using zero-knowledge proofs.

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Mint cost
~0.003
ALEO per certificate
Privacy by
zk-SNARK
BLS12-377 / Marlin
Languages
5
EN · PT · ES · FR · DE
Architecture
Multi‑tenant
Tenant‑isolated keys, billing, KYC
01 — In short

What CertChain actually does.

CertChain turns a physical object — a Patek Philippe, a piece of high jewelry, a signed lithograph — into a unique on-chain certificate that proves it is authentic, who issued it, and who owns it. Three things matter: the certificate cannot be forged, ownership is provable without being publicly disclosed, and the system works at the scale of a SaaS (tenants, sub-roles, billing, KYC, multi-language UI). The issuance happens on the Aleo mainnet through a Leo program called certchain_certificate_v1.aleo.

Problem

Counterfeit goods erode brand value and consumer trust. Paper certificates and serial numbers are trivial to forge or transfer informally.

Tech

Aleo's zero-knowledge proofs let CertChain publish provable authenticity to a public ledger while keeping owner identity, history, and metadata private.

Outcome

Buyers verify in seconds. Brands recover the resale premium counterfeits had eroded. Owners keep their privacy intact through the chain of custody.

02 — How it works

From a physical asset to an on-chain certificate, in four steps.

1
Register

A verified tenant (jeweler, watchmaker, gallery, brand) creates an asset record with private metadata: serial, materials, photos, valuation.

2
Mint

CertChain calls leo execute on the certificate program. A zk proof is generated locally; only the proof and public outputs reach the ledger.

3
Transfer

On sale or gift, ownership moves through a signed transfer transaction. The new holder becomes provably sole owner; outside observers see only the proof.

4
Verify

Anyone can scan a CertChain QR or visit a public verify URL to confirm a certificate exists and is held by a valid owner — without learning the owner's address.

03 — Verticals

Where it moves the needle.

Four industries account for most CertChain deployments today. The pain point is similar across them; the economic effect of solving it is not.

Vertical Pain point today How CertChain helps Reference metric
Fine watches
Patek, Rolex, AP, IWC, Longines
 Estimated 30–40% of the global secondary market is suspect of counterfeits or undocumented refurbishment. ZK-verified provenance lets dealers and pre-owned platforms display a certificate buyers can validate without exposing the owner. +8–12%
Resale premium for certified pre-owned per industry data
High jewelry
GIA-graded stones, bespoke pieces, family commissions
 Paper warranties get lost or fade. Insurance claims rely on photographs and a 30-year-old grading report. A digital certificate held in the owner's Aleo wallet survives the paper. Insurance carriers can verify on-chain status in real time. ~40%
Reduction in post-sale fraud claims observed in pilot programs
Fine art & collectibles
Limited editions, signed lithographs, vintage cars
 Provenance is the entire value. A break in chain-of-custody can wipe out 30–60% of a piece's market value. Every transfer is recorded immutably; the chain-of-custody is verifiable by auction houses without exposing private collectors. 100%
Of transfers retain a verifiable proof, even across decades
Tokenized real-world assets
Equity rounds, fractionalized ownership, dividend distribution
 RWA platforms must reconcile transparency to investors with privacy of cap-table and dividend flow. The companion certchain_equity_v1.aleo program issues equity, distributes dividends, and supports voting — all with private holder identities. CVM 88 / Reg CF
Compliant per-investor caps enforced at platform level
04 — By the numbers

Built for production, measured in months not slides.

2026
Mainnet live since May

Programs certchain_certificate_v1 and certchain_equity_v1 deployed on Aleo Mainnet on 2026-05-01, after a multi-week testnet rehearsal.

~0.003
ALEO per mint

Measured in production: ≈ 0.00265 ALEO per certificate, ≈ 0.0033 ALEO per equity claim. Network fees absorbed by the platform via custodial paymaster (ADR-007). Tenants and end-users never touch ALEO.

5×
Languages, day one

English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German — every tenant page, every email, every error code. Built for cross-border SaaS from a Swiss anchor.

Concrete deployments
  • → Swiss watchmaker pilot — issued a four-figure batch of certificates for a limited-edition release. Resale market reported ~40% drop in fraud claims year-over-year.
  • → Brazilian fine-jewelry tenant — issued ~1,200 certificates in Q1 2026 across the BR domestic market; integrated with Stripe payment + PIX payout for cross-border buyers.
  • → RWA equity round — fractionalized ownership of an income-producing asset; 100+ investors, dividends paid out via claim_dividend in ~6 minutes per claim with full ZK privacy.
What you get out of the box
  • ✓ NFT mint + transfer
  • ✓ Equity tokenization
  • ✓ Multi-tenant SaaS
  • ✓ Sub-roles & teams
  • ✓ KYC pipeline
  • ✓ Stripe + PIX payouts
  • ✓ REST API + tokens
  • ✓ Outbound webhooks
  • ✓ Sandbox environment
  • ✓ Embed widgets
  • ✓ 5-language UI
  • ✓ SSE messaging inbox
05 — Questions worth answering

Frequently asked, precisely answered.

Each answer is sourced from the platform's own documentation (ADRs, runbooks, the deployed Leo programs). Cite freely.

What is an NFT certificate of authenticity?
A unique on-chain record that ties a physical asset (a watch, a piece of jewelry, an artwork) to a verifiable digital identity. Unlike a paper certificate, it cannot be forged or duplicated, and ownership transfers are cryptographically provable. CertChain issues these on Aleo Mainnet using the Leo program certchain_certificate_v1.aleo, with each certificate tied to the owner's Aleo wallet address.
How does Aleo's zero-knowledge proof differ from Ethereum NFTs?
Ethereum NFTs are public by default — owner address, transaction history, and metadata are visible to anyone. Aleo records the same proof of authenticity but keeps the owner, the transaction, and any sensitive metadata private by design via zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs over BLS12-377). Anyone can verify a certificate exists and is valid; only the owner can prove they hold it. This matters for high-value assets where ownership privacy is itself a feature (insurance, security, family estates).
Can a certificate be transferred between owners?
Yes. Transfers happen on-chain through the certchain_certificate_v1.aleo program. The current owner signs a transfer transaction; the new owner becomes the sole holder. The transfer is provable but the parties' identities remain private to outside observers. CertChain also supports custodial transfers (the platform signs on behalf of the user) for users who don't want to manage their own keys.
What happens if the physical item is destroyed or lost?
The certificate can be marked as burned through the burn record on the Aleo program — a one-way operation that signals the certificate is no longer associated with a redeemable physical asset. The history remains on-chain for forensics and insurance purposes, but the certificate cannot be transferred or resold. Tenants control burn permissions per their internal policy.
How is privacy preserved on a public blockchain?
Aleo executes program logic off-chain and submits only a zero-knowledge proof and a public output to the network. Inputs marked private (owner address, asset details, valuation) never appear in plain text on the ledger. The validator network confirms the proof is mathematically valid without learning what was proven. CertChain takes advantage of this for owner addresses, transfer history, and tenant-specific metadata — only the certificate's existence and authenticity status are public.
Which industries benefit most from on-chain certificates?
Four verticals account for most CertChain deployments: fine watches (where 30–40% of the secondary market is suspect of counterfeits and ZK-verified provenance commands an 8–12% resale premium); high-end jewelry (where a Swiss-grade certificate replaces fragile paper warranties); fine art and collectibles (where chain-of-custody is the entire value proposition); and tokenized real assets (where certificate-backed equity rounds need both transparency and investor privacy).
What is the cost per certificate?
On-chain mint cost on Aleo Mainnet is approximately 0.00265 ALEO per certificate — about a tenth of a US cent at typical token prices. CertChain's SaaS pricing wraps this into prepaid credits (one credit = one mint), with bulk discounts. The platform absorbs the underlying ALEO funding through a custodial paymaster pattern, so tenants and end-users never need to hold or buy ALEO directly.
Is this regulated as a security?
A certificate of authenticity itself is not a security — it represents proof of ownership and provenance, not a financial claim. Equity tokenization, the second product line, uses a separate program (certchain_equity_v1.aleo) and is structured to comply with applicable securities regulation per jurisdiction (CVM 88 in Brazil up to R$15M / 12mo, Reg CF in the US up to $5M / 12mo). Investor-side caps and KYC are enforced at the platform level.
Can I integrate CertChain with my inventory or ERP system?
Yes. The platform exposes a REST API with sandbox and live tokens, plus outbound webhooks (sale.queued, sale.minted, sale.failed, mint.minted, mint.failed) signed with HMAC-SHA256 for verifiable receipt. Common integrations include Shopify, ERP exports for batch issuance, and POS systems for sale-time minting. Documentation is per-tenant under the API & Tokens panel.
Is CertChain open source?
The Aleo Leo programs (certchain_certificate_v1.aleo and certchain_equity_v1.aleo) are deployed on Aleo Mainnet and their source is auditable through the Provable / Aleo program registry. The SaaS platform code is private (Swiss-Vision GitHub organization). Architectural decisions are documented as ADRs (currently ADR-001 through ADR-012) and runbooks are versioned alongside the code.
06 — Built on

Standing on verifiable shoulders.

CertChain is not a research paper — it ships on top of public, peer-reviewed cryptographic primitives. Below are the sources that matter.

aleo.org — the L1 protocol
Foundation, validator network, Leo language reference, mainnet documentation.
provable.com — the developer platform
Public explorer (api.explorer.provable.com), program registry, transaction lookup.
Marlin: Preprocessing zk-SNARKs (Chiesa et al., 2019)
The succinct proof system underlying Aleo. IACR ePrint archive.
Zexe: Enabling Decentralized Private Computation (Bowe et al.)
The conceptual ancestor of Aleo's privacy model.
BLS12-377 / BLS12-381 elliptic curves
Pairing-friendly curves used by Aleo for proof generation and verification.
schema.org/Product
Structured data vocabulary used in CertChain's certificate metadata.
Zero-knowledge proof (Wikipedia)
Background reference for the cryptographic primitive at the core of CertChain.
CVM Resolution 88 (Brazil — equity crowdfunding)
Regulatory frame for the equity tokenization product line in BR.

Issue your first certificate in an afternoon.

No Aleo wallet required to start. Tenant signup, sandbox API token, and a test mint take less than 30 minutes.

Start a tenant → See live certificates