Position Paper - Trusted Digital Product Passports

Creating ecosystems of trust for a circular economy

Regen Studio took the lead in creating a groundbreaking position paper on Trusted Digital Product Passports (tDPPs) for FIDES, partly commissioned by the Dutch Blockchain Coalition.

This paper brought together a collaboration of TNO, GS1, Eindhoven University of Technology, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Quintessence Research, Warren Brandeis, Sphereon, Credenco, CMS lawyers and Wipro.

The paper describes an approach to a new policy concept by the European Union defined by the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). Standardization of DPPs is on it’s way and the insights in this paper should assist in designing them in a way that consumers can trust the information they are being presented. Moreover, it attempts to unite DPP system providers towards a future of adopted interoperability specifications.

Find the position paper through this link

The paper starts by defining a number of implicit drivers, being: Complexity of Supply Chains, Increase of Digital Data, Disruptions and Resilience, Preventing and Detecting Fraud, Responsibility and Sustainability, Improved Business Cases and the Need for Standardization.

Next, chapter shows the explicit driver of European legislation en regulation on the subject, providing the ESPR that resulted from the Green Deal as the legal framework for DPPs, with the delegated acts under the ESPR as the basis for DPP implementation in specific product groups. Regulations focused on reporting, including the CSRD, give further incentive for DPP use, and other EU data and privacy regulations, like eIDAS2, provide additional guidance.

A vision on Trusted Digital Product Passports

The document continues with a shared vision between the participants. A Trusted DPP (tDPP) is typically an open ecosystem with decentralized and permissionless structures for technology, data, and processes. Where trust at scale is essential, where there is no complete overview of the supply chain, where stakeholders involved in the future are hard to predict, where these parties have both shared and conflicting interests, and where no clear centre of trust justifies centralization, tDPPs provide a solid foundation for DPP design. This is generally the case for the complex network of supply chains. It is essential to integrate building blocks of self-sovereign digital identities for individuals, organizations, and objects to facilitate trust networks around the DPP. Additionally, the tDPP focuses on extensive interoperability within and beyond its own chain. The DPP must also have a certain degree of digital autonomy built in, to allow the selforganisation of complex trust networks. Finally, the tDPP looks beyond compliance, addressing the subjective aspects of trust by focusing on added value for end-users. This makes the system more resilient to abuse of power, more democratic, reliable, and easier to adopt in complex ecosystems. Designing with this vision in mind today can bring that future closer to reality.

Furthermore the position paper sketches some strategic horizons, draws up important criteria for developing tDPPs, discusses practical use cases and argues for certain architectural elements to be the fundament of DPP design, so that true trust ecosystems might emerge.

At Regen Studio, within our work on DPPs, we try to make this vision a reality. Come talk to us through info@regenstudio.world if you are also building trust ecosystems around products and want to apply DPPs in your own context.