The Digital Product Passport Is Coming. VeChain and Rekord Are Already Building It.

How a production-ready partnership with one of the UK’s most respected manufacturing institutions is turning EU regulation into blockchain’s most tangible proof of utility.

The blockchain industry has spent years searching for a use case that transcends speculation. One that binds decentralized infrastructure to a regulatory mandate, a compliance deadline, and the daily rhythm of the real economy. With the European Union’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) now in motion and the first Digital Product Passport (DPP) enforcement milestones approaching, that use case has arrived — and it isn’t theoretical.

VeChain, together with strategic partner Rekord and the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), is laying out the infrastructure that manufacturers will use to comply. Not in a whitepaper. Not in a testnet. In production, at industrial scale, with over 300,000 DPP events already processed on VeChainThor.

This is what real utility looks like.

The Regulatory Certainty That Changes Everything

The ESPR, which entered into force in July 2024, is not a proposal or a consultation. It is binding EU law. Under its framework, every regulated product sold across the bloc’s 27 member states will carry a Digital Product Passport — a machine-readable record of its composition, origin, environmental impact, repairability, and end-of-life handling. The first mandatory DPPs take effect in 2027, with the EU Commission deploying a central DPP registry by July 2026.

The phased rollout is already underway. Batteries lead the way in February 2027, followed by textiles, furniture, tyres, and detergents. Iron, steel, aluminium, and electronics follow through 2028 and 2029, with construction products rounding out the schedule by 2030. Eight harmonised interoperability standards are expected to be finalised by 2026.

This is not optional. Manufacturers who cannot demonstrate DPP compliance risk losing access to a market of 450 million consumers. And the ESPR does not arrive in isolation — it lands alongside the EU Deforestation-free Regulation, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. Together, they make lifecycle traceability a market access requirement.

The implication is clear: the infrastructure to verify, record, and share product data at scale is no longer a competitive advantage. It is a prerequisite for doing business in Europe.

Why This Matters for Blockchain — and for VeChain

For years, blockchain’s promise in the real world has been discussed in future tense, but DPPs change that tense to present.

The characteristics that make blockchain valuable — immutability, transparency, tamper-proof records, decentralised verification — are precisely what the ESPR demands. Regulators need to trust that product data hasn’t been altered. Consumers need to verify sustainability claims. Manufacturers need a cost-effective way to record millions of data points without rebuilding core systems. These requirements do not merely suit blockchain; they practically describe it.

VeChain is uniquely positioned here. Launched in 2015 and operating as a public blockchain with 100% uptime since 2017, VeChain has spent a decade doing what much of the industry only talks about: delivering enterprise-grade blockchain applications in production. Walmart China uses VeChainThor to track food safety across its supply chain. BMW tested VeChain for vehicle data provenance. DNV, one of the world’s leading assurance companies, leveraged VeChain to digitise audits and certifications, launching several commercial products along the way. Lululemon China was another major brand to be announced among the organisations a presence on VeChain’s infrastructure.

This is not a platform looking for a problem. It is a battle-tested network meeting a market that is now compelled to find it.

Rekord: The Trust Layer That Makes It Work

Where VeChain provides the blockchain backbone, Rekord connects existing enterprise systems and on-chain verification.

Rekord’s API-first Proof Console converts raw operational data — production logs, supply chain events, sustainability records — into tamper-proof, audit-ready evidence anchored on-chain. The design philosophy is pragmatic: enterprises should not need to rebuild their technology stacks to achieve compliance. Rekord makes data streams verifiable with minimal integration effort, enabling manufacturers to secure documents, logs, and product events on VeChainThor without changing user experience or core systems.

The technology works through what Rekord calls the Rekord Kloud — a framework that transforms existing data flows into cryptographically provable records. Every product event receives a unique identifier linked via QR code, NFC, or RFID, with each scan revealing verified sourcing and production history. The data is privacy-preserving by design: regulators can verify compliance without exposing proprietary business information.

Rekord’s V1 API is live in production with full multi-chain support, and the first live transactions on the VeChain network are already flowing.

The AMRC: Manufacturing Credibility at the Highest Level

The partnership’s third pillar — the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre — brings something that no amount of technical capability alone can deliver: institutional credibility in manufacturing.

The AMRC is part of the UK’s High Value Manufacturing Catapult network, with nearly 100 industrial partners including Boeing, Rolls-Royce, and BAE Systems. It is one of the most respected manufacturing research institutions in the world, and its involvement signals that this is not a blockchain experiment looking for validation. It is a manufacturing solution that happens to run on blockchain.

In December 2025, the joint system processed over 100,000 DPP events on VeChainThor — positioning this collaboration among the first providers operating at industrial scale ahead of mandatory EU compliance dates. The AMRC has noted that this represents one of the first technology stacks capable of realistically meeting ESPR and DPP requirements at industrial throughput.

The significance of that statement should not be underestimated. Despite the urgency of approaching deadlines, most manufacturers remain in planning or pilot mode. As Rekord has observed, DPP roadmaps significantly outnumber the production-ready systems that will be live before enforcement begins. This partnership is built to close that readiness gap.

How the Technology Works in Practice

Understanding the system architecture reveals why this partnership is structurally sound rather than conceptually ambitious.

VeChainThor’s dual-token model separates value transfer (VET) from transaction fees (VTHO), keeping enterprise operating costs stable and predictable at high volumes. This is critical for DPP infrastructure, where millions of product events must be recorded economically. VeChain’s multi-task transactions enable single transactions to carry multiple operations — transfers, contract calls, data anchoring — reducing gas consumption compared to blockchains that require separate transactions for each task.

VeChain’s third-party fee delegation means application users never need to hold tokens. Manufacturers and solution providers can sponsor gas fees through smart contracts, eliminating the friction that has historically prevented enterprise blockchain adoption. For a factory floor operator scanning products into a DPP system, the experience is indistinguishable from any other enterprise software.

Rekord’s layer sits above this, translating IoT sensor data, production line outputs, and supply chain documentation into structured, verifiable records. AI microservices automate risk assessments and compliance checks, turning what would otherwise be manual auditing into instantaneous, data-driven verification.

The Hayabusa mainnet upgrade, launched in December 2025, introduced full Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus, revamped tokenomics, upgraded staking and upgrades to EVM compatibility. These updates ensure VeChainThor is not only technically capable of supporting DPP infrastructure at scale, but is also interoperable with the broader Web3 ecosystem and compliant with MiCA regulations, making it one of the first protocols to proactively meet EU crypto-asset regulatory requirements.

The Market Opportunity: Numbers That Demand Attention

The financial dimensions of this convergence are staggering.

The global Digital Product Passport market, valued at approximately USD 186 million in 2024, is projected to reach USD 1.78 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 45.7%, according to MarketsandMarkets. Grand View Research estimates the market reaching USD 1.23 billion by 2030 at a 34.9% CAGR. Either way, the growth trajectory is exponential, driven entirely by regulatory mandate rather than speculative demand.

Zoom out further and the picture becomes more compelling. The broader blockchain technology market is projected to grow from USD 33 billion in 2025 to USD 393 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 64.2%. The enterprise blockchain segment alone is expected to reach USD 145.9 billion by 2030. Blockchain in supply chain management — VeChain’s original domain — is projected to reach up to USD 9.56 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 49%.

The tokenization of real-world assets, which encompasses DPPs as a subset, carries a potential market value of USD 10 trillion by 2030 according to BCG estimates. VeChain’s own positioning brief identifies a combined USD 46 trillion opportunity at the intersection of sustainability and tokenization markets by 2030.

These are not speculative figures. They are projections grounded in regulatory timelines, compliance deadlines, and the operational realities of global supply chains.

The Economic Impact: From Compliance Cost to Competitive Advantage

The introduction of mandatory DPPs will reshape the economics of manufacturing and trade across Europe in ways that extend well beyond compliance.

For manufacturers, DPPs create a digital twin of every product — a persistent record that follows an item from raw material sourcing through production, distribution, use, repair, and eventual recycling. This data, once captured on-chain, becomes a foundation for circular economy business models: secondary market platforms can verify product authenticity and condition, recyclers can identify material composition without destructive testing, and consumers can make purchasing decisions based on verified sustainability credentials.

The ripple effects across the economy are significant. Insurance and warranty providers gain access to verifiable product histories. Financial institutions can assess the environmental risk profiles of manufacturing portfolios. Trade finance mechanisms can be automated through smart contracts triggered by verified supply chain events. SMEs, which the EU estimates will be most impacted by compliance costs, can leverage shared blockchain infrastructure rather than building proprietary systems — lowering the barrier to entry and levelling the competitive landscape.

For the broader blockchain industry, DPPs represent something arguably more valuable than any single market figure: proof of concept at civilisation scale. When hundreds of thousands of manufacturers across 27 countries are recording product data on-chain to meet legal requirements, the conversation about blockchain’s relevance to the real economy is settled.

What This Means for VeChain’s Mission

VeChain’s 2026 Manifesto laid out the case plainly: in a market that often resembles a casino, VeChain is fighting for utility. The Rekord and AMRC partnership is perhaps the most concrete expression of that fight to date.

VeChain has always maintained that blockchain technology should not exist in isolation — it must be leveraged alongside IoT, AI, and established enterprise systems to deliver measurable, real-world impact. The DPP infrastructure being deployed with Rekord and the AMRC embodies this vision precisely. It combines IoT data capture, AI-powered verification, and blockchain-based immutability into a system that manufacturers can adopt without technical upheaval.

With over 14 million on-chain addresses, nearly 50 million VeBetter actions, 5.2 million users, VeChain enters this phase with the momentum to deliver. The Hayabusa upgrade has prepared the protocol technically. The Rekord partnership has prepared it commercially. The AMRC collaboration has prepared it institutionally.

The Bigger Picture: Blockchain’s Inflection Point

The EU’s DPP mandate may well be remembered as the moment blockchain moved definitively from the speculative economy into the productive economy.

Not because the technology changed, but because the world caught up. The demand for transparent, verifiable, tamper-proof records of how things are made, where they come from, and what happens to them at end-of-life is now codified in law. And the infrastructure best suited to meet that demand happens to be the technology that has been building toward this moment for over a decade.

VeChain, Rekord, and the AMRC are not waiting for that future. They are already delivering it — one verified product passport at a time.

VeChain is the world’s leading blockchain platform for Web3 applications with real utility and use cases. Learn more at vechain.org.

Related Reading:

• VeChain & Rekord Partner To Deliver Digital Product Passports & RWA Infrastructure For EU Market
• VeChain’s 2026 Manifesto: The Fight for Utility in a “Casino Market”
• The VeChain Renaissance 2025 Roadmap: Evolving Greatness
• VeChain’s Renaissance: Why Hayabusa Matters
• VeChain, Rekord & AMRC Launch Production-Scale DPP Infrastructure for the EU
• VeChain Powers Quality and Sustainability Initiatives for BMW, Walmart, UFC, and More
• Building Rekord: The Future of Verifiable Data

The Digital Product Passport Is Coming. VeChain and Rekord Are Already Building It. was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.