Trustworthy Digital Product Passports based on Distributed Ledgers- A Review and Guidelines

Abstract

The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a cross-sectoral framework for sharing data across value chains to promote circular economy practices such as repair, reuse, and recycling. A key challenge is ensuring trust and integrity in DPP data, which is often fragmented among multiple stakeholders. Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) ofer a promising solution by enhancing data integrity, transparency, and reliability. However, a comprehensive understanding of how DLTs can support DPPs remains underexplored. This paper reviews academic and industrial initiatives using DLTs to build trustworthy DPP infrastructures. It identifies three core benefits of DLTs for DPPs: (1) tamper-proof data integrity for traceability, (2) peer-to-peer private data sharing without central authority, and (3) decentralized DPP lifecycle management, from creation to deactivation. Based on these findings, the paper proposes design guidelines to inform the development of DLT-based DPP systems that can support long-term trust and collaboration in circular economy ecosystems.