Digital Product Passports for Circular Supply Chains
2. Federated data, signed claims. Source-of-truth data stays with the issuer. The DPP carries signed claims, not the underlying records. This preserves industrial confidentiality, reduces datareplication cost, and matches the W3C VC and UNTP pattern [ 9 ][ 7 ].
3. Vendor-neutral identifier resolution. Identifier and resolution endpoints must be operable on multiple infrastructure providers. A single failure or a single commercial dispute must not silence a product’ s DPP.
4. Open source by DNA. Openness is a structural property of the architecture, not a procurement preference. Every layer in the interoperability stack has at least one open source reference implementation; proprietary alternatives must publish a conformance mapping to the open specification at the same layer to participate. This design choice eliminates vendor lock-in by construction, lowers the cost of entry for SME participants, enables community audit of the trust and identity logic, and accelerates cross-sector adoption. The FIWARE Data Space Connector v2, Simpl middleware, and W3C DID / VC reference implementations are concrete open source instantiations of this principle across multiple layers of the stack [ 22 ][ 24 ].
5. SME-tiered compliance. A DPP system must offer a low-friction tier for small economic actors. The pilot evidence is consistent with the literature: SMEs face disproportionate IT, training, and finance burdens, and a DPP system that requires every supplier to operate at OEM IT maturity will fragment the supply chain it was designed to integrate [ 18 ].
5.2 IMPLEMENTATION READINESS, A COMPARATIVE MATRIX
The implementation readiness of these principles is uneven across the two pilots. Table 5-1 summarises the picture and answers the editorial request to articulate business benefits in terms of implementation readiness, interoperability, supply-chain value, and gaps.
Dimension Battery pilot Textile pilot
Regulatory clarity
Data-model maturity
Supplier onboarding speed
Traceability coverage
SME readiness
Cross-consortium interop.
High: Reg 2023 / 1542; hard 18 Feb 2027 deadline
High: CX-0143 + GBA; completeness ~ 55 % → ~ 88 %
T1 ~ 10 days( API); T2 / T3 ~ 6 – 8 weeks
~ 70 % of regulated-material BoM mass to verified origin
Low at T2 / T3 mineral suppliers
Partial: CX ↔ GBA recycled-content boundary
Medium: delegated act 2027, enforcement ~ 2028
Medium: 125 data points; ~ 28 consumerresolvable
T2 finishers / dyers slower; assisted web forms
~ 500 SKUs tagged; PCF blocked on methodology
Low at T2 / T3 finishers and dyers( often no IT)
Partial: Trace4Value ↔ CIRPASS-2 ongoing
Identified gap
Recycled-content boundary mapping( CX Carrier-to-credential bridging at vs. GBA vs. EU Reg) retail / return Table 5-1: Implementation-readiness matrix across the two pilots.
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