Certificates of Authenticity

Open the piece under Dashboard → Products and choose Issue certificate. At the moment you issue it, the certificate takes an immutable snapshot of the piece, so later edits to the listing never change what the certificate says.

• A serial number is assigned automatically, counting up per maker.
• An optional edition for limited runs, shown as No. 7 of 25.
• An optional owner name, a note, and the piece dimensions, all of which appear on the certificate.
• An optional buyer email, so the new owner can claim the piece into their own account. See Ownership below.

When a piece sells online and does not have a certificate yet, BladeOS reminds you in your notifications to issue one, so the buyer can verify what they just bought. Nothing is issued automatically; the choice stays yours.

Issuing produces a printable card carrying a QR code, the serial number, and your maker’s mark. Print it from the Certificates area and include it with the knife when it ships, the way a gallery piece travels with its papers.

The QR on the card opens a public verification page at /verify/{token}. That page is free for anyone in the world to view, now or years from now. It shows the piece, who made it, and, crucially, your trust score and verified badges. That verified-maker standing is what makes the certificate mean something. Only issuing costs anything; verifying never does.

The QR uses a long, unguessable token rather than the piece’s public web address, so a certificate cannot be conjured just by knowing the product link.

A certificate can belong to a person, not just describe a piece. When you issue one with the buyer’s email, they receive a private message, Claim your Certificate of Authenticity, with a link to Claim this certificate. Claiming is free and needs only a free BladeOS customer account.

• Once claimed, the piece appears in the owner’s My pieces area, and the certificate records who owns it now.
• The claim link is private to that one person and expires after 30 days.
• If the buyer later signs up with that same email, the piece attaches to their account automatically, with no link to click.

When a certified piece changes hands on the secondhand market, the current owner passes the certificate along. From My pieces, they open the piece, choose Transfer ownership, and enter the new owner’s email. BladeOS sends that person a private claim link, and ownership moves only when they claim it, not when the link is sent.

• An optional sale price, date, and private note can be attached. Those stay private between the two owners and never appear on the public page.
• While a transfer is waiting to be claimed, the piece shows Transfer pending, and the owner can Cancel transfer at any time.
• A revoked piece, or one currently marked lost or stolen, cannot be transferred. Mark a piece recovered first.

The public verification page carries a Provenance timeline: forged by the maker on the day it was issued, then a Changed hands entry for each time the piece has been claimed by a new owner, followed by a count of recorded owners.

To protect everyone’s privacy, the public timeline shows only dates and the current owner’s initials. Names, emails, and sale prices are never shown to the public; the owner sees the fuller history in their own My pieces view.

Both the current owner, from My pieces, and you as the maker, from Dashboard → Certificates, can report a piece lost or stolen, with an optional note. A red warning, Reported lost or stolen, then shows on the public verification page to warn anyone considering it secondhand, until someone marks it recovered. Reporting and recovering are free for both the owner and the maker.

Everything you have issued lives under Dashboard → Certificates, where you can reprint a card or open its public page. If a certificate should no longer stand, for a returned or reworked piece, you can revoke it. A revoked certificate still resolves, but clearly reads as revoked to anyone who scans it.

• Issuing and revoking certificates is a paid feature; see the plans article for what your plan includes.
• Everything an owner does is free and needs only a free customer account: claiming a piece, transferring it to a new owner, and reporting it lost or stolen.
• Verifying a certificate is free for everyone, forever. Your buyers and their future buyers never pay to check a piece.