Implementing Digital Product Passports using decentralized identity standards

Or how to use the “StandICT.eu Landscape of Standards for digital product passports”

Authors: Dr. Susanne Guth-Orlowski, Johannes Ebert, Ricky Thiermann

Introduction

This article is showing how to implement the digital product passport (DPP) with some standards mentioned in the StandICT.eu ‚A Landscape of Standards for digital product passports‘ [1]. Whereas the architecture diagram from the report is technology agnostic (see Figure 1), in this article we are concentrating on using decentralized technologies, such as W3C decentralized identifiers [2] and W3C verifiable credentials [3] to implement the digital product passport. It shows how those technologies, file formats, and protocols can be used to exchange supply chain data among industry players, authorities and end customers.

Figure 1: Architectural overview and areas of standardization for the DPP (Source: Dr. S. Guth-Orlowski)

In the following chapters we will describe what standards are needed for the decentralised approach and how they work. We show how W3C decentralized identifiers are created for all involved supply chain parties and products, how product and company information is issued as W3C…