2026-05-16 · 7 min read · All articles

Why dpp.gs Bets on Open Standards Instead of Blockchain

When the EU started writing the ESPR delegated acts in 2023, blockchain pitches flooded the room. We spent six months evaluating them. Then we built on GS1 Digital Link and plain JSON Schema. Here's why — and what that means for you if you put your product data on dpp.gs.

The standard we picked: GS1 Digital Link

GS1 Digital Link is the URL format the EU Commission and the CIRPASS pilot picked as the default carrier for DPPs. The Battery Regulation Annex VI is explicit: QR code with a GS1 Digital Link URL. Same standard already runs US retail (the Sunrise 2027 initiative replaces UPC barcodes with QR codes carrying these URLs) and is recommended by CEN/CLC/JTC 24 for ESPR. Our resolver passes the official GS1 conformance test on every release.

Why not blockchain

Three reasons. 1) Consumers don't have wallets. Every blockchain DPP we've seen requires the end user to install MetaMask, store a seed phrase or trust a custodian. None of that survives a 10-year passport lifetime, let alone scale to grandparents and second-hand markets. 2) Gas costs. Even on cheap L2 chains, updating a DPP (changed warranty, new repair, ownership transfer) costs money. Multiply by 1 billion EU products and the math collapses. 3) Lock-in disguised as decentralisation. Each blockchain DPP stack has its own SDK, its own NFT spec, its own indexer. Migrating off is harder than off a SQL database — there's no JOIN you can run, you have to rewrite the contracts.

What "open" actually means here

Three concrete artefacts under MIT licence on GitHub: @dpp-gs/schemas (JSON Schema for product / materials / SVHC / battery with regulation citations on every field), dpp-gs-openapi (the OpenAPI 3.1 spec for our REST API — generate clients in any language), and the GS1 Digital Link URL format itself which works on any DPP platform. If you ever leave dpp.gs your QR codes keep resolving (they're just URLs), your data exports to CSV in one click, and we keep your passports live for the 10-year retention window ESPR Art. 14 requires.

Where blockchain still might fit

We're not anti-blockchain. There are two narrow places where on-chain might earn its complexity: ultra-high-value goods (luxury watches, fine art) where the chain's auditability is worth the consumer-wallet friction, and B2B supply-chain attestation where every counterparty already has crypto-native infra. The Arianee folks do the luxury case well. For the 99.9% of EU products in the €5–€500 range — fleece jackets, batteries, electronics, furniture, textiles — a database and an open URL format is the right answer.

Our promise

Your GTIN is yours. Your data is yours. No lock-in. We bind ourselves to it by publishing the schemas, the API spec, and the resolver behaviour. The moment any of these stop being open is the moment we lose our wedge against Arianee, against the inevitable Big-Three SaaS clones, and against your own scepticism. So they stay open, and you can audit them tonight.