Digital Product Passports: Use Cases Framework and Technical Architecture Using DLT and Smart Contracts.

Abstract

Digital Products Passports (DPPs) are digital documents accompanying individual product items and carrying data pertaining to product's life cycle; material and methods used in manufacturing, product distribution network, carbon footprint and environmental impact, context and time of use, and other. DPPs were first introduced in the EU Green Deal and are envisioned as a tool to facilitate the transition to a Circular Economy. Data stored and carried on DPPs will help inform policy making as well as consumer behavior. However, the wide scope of use cases and market sectors under consideration pose significant challenges in deriving a generic DPP system design. This makes difficult the development of corresponding standards, which in turn hinders market stakeholders from onboarding the use of DPPs. We address this problem by means of a DPP use case framework that captures the core underlying structure of DPP use cases that is common in its many application areas. We also present a technical architecture for DPP systems based on Distributed Ledger Technologies and Smart Contracts and provide the code for a working prototype. We conclude by discussing future extensions of this work, particularly with respect to evaluating the performance of our implementation.