The IOTA Foundation has achieved a significant milestone by successfully completing the final phase of the European Blockchain Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP), marking a pivotal step in advancing secure, scalable, and sustainable distributed ledger technology (DLT) for Europe’s digital future. Alongside fellow finalists Chromaway and Billon, IOTA developed pre-commercial prototypes for Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Management and Digital Product Passports (DPP)—two critical use cases designed to support cross-border transparency, traceability, and compliance across industries.
This initiative, funded by the European Commission, is part of a broader vision to strengthen the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI)—a decentralized network enabling trusted digital interactions between public institutions, businesses, and citizens. With EBSI now evolving into EUROPEUM-EDIC, the next-generation European Digital Infrastructure Consortium for Blockchain, IOTA is positioning its innovations at the forefront of this transformation.
The IOTA-EBSI Solution: A Scalable, Sustainable DLT Architecture
At the heart of IOTA’s contribution lies a robust, open-source solution built on the Tangle, a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-based distributed ledger technology. Unlike traditional blockchain architectures, the Tangle enables feeless transactions, high scalability, and energy efficiency—key attributes for large-scale public infrastructure.
Core DLT Layer: Stardust-Powered Tangle
The solution leverages the Stardust upgrade of the Tangle protocol, which introduces EVM-compatible smart contracts and enhanced tokenomics. It operates under a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism managed by a Decentralized Coordinator (DeCoo), with participation from EU member states and institutions. This ensures regulatory alignment while maintaining decentralization and auditability.
Key components include:
- IOTA Node Extensions (INX): Facilitate seamless integration with external systems by recording identities and audit trails on the ledger.
- Single Endpoint Core Node: Simplifies deployment and interoperability across diverse environments.
- Tangle Tree Sharding: A novel data partitioning architecture that enables exponential scalability through hierarchical parent-child Tangle structures.
👉 Discover how next-gen DLT is shaping Europe’s digital infrastructure
Satellite Systems: Interoperability and Traceability
Complementing the core layer are satellite systems that connect third-party platforms via IOTA-EBSI connectors. These systems feature an Auditable Item Graph (AIG), a powerful tool for tracking digital twins of physical or digital assets throughout their lifecycle. The AIG supports rich metadata, verifiable credentials, and standardized vocabularies such as schema.org, GS1 Web Vocabulary, and UN/CEFACT, making it ideal for complex supply chains.
Prototypes Developed: Real-World Applications in Action
As part of the PCP, IOTA collaborated with partners including Digimarc, Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya, Software AG, and Uncommon Digital to build functional prototypes addressing real European challenges.
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Management
This prototype enables transparent royalty distribution in the creative industries using decentralized identities (DIDs), NFTs, and smart contracts. Creators can register works on an IPR marketplace accessible through an EU Digital Identity-compatible wallet. When music is used in films or media, automated smart contracts trigger fair royalty payments—ensuring artists are compensated promptly and transparently.
Digital Product Passports (DPP)
Two DPP prototypes were developed:
- Electronics DPP: Tracks devices from manufacturing to end-of-life recycling, capturing environmental impact, repair history, and component origins.
- Plastics DPP: Documents the conversion of agricultural plastic waste into bioplastics, supporting circular economy goals and regulatory compliance under EU sustainability directives.
These passports align with upcoming EU regulations requiring product-level traceability and are built using EPCIS 2.0, a global standard for supply chain event tracking.
👉 See how blockchain powers sustainable product lifecycle tracking
Key Innovations Validated During the PCP
IOTA’s performance across five core technical domains demonstrates its readiness for enterprise and governmental adoption.
Scalability: Proven Performance at Continental Scale
In rigorous testing involving 100 nodes across 12 geographic regions and multiple cloud providers—simulating one node per EU member state—IOTA demonstrated unprecedented throughput:
- Achieved ~90,000 confirmed transactions per second across 100 interconnected Tangles.
- Validated horizontal and vertical scalability using the Tangle Tree model: Child Tangles commit to a Parent Tangle, enabling modular growth without sacrificing speed.
This architecture allows national authorities to operate sovereign subnetworks while remaining anchored to a shared root chain for cross-border verification.
Sustainability: Energy Efficiency by Design
Energy consumption analysis revealed that IOTA’s Stardust implementation scales logarithmically with transaction volume—meaning increased usage does not linearly increase power demand. Compared to Hyperledger Besu (used in current EBSI deployments), a single IOTA Tangle instance consumes significantly less energy.
By distributing processing across low-power nodes capable of running on renewable energy sources, IOTA supports carbon-neutral operations—a crucial factor for public sector sustainability targets.
Security & Privacy: Alignment with Global Standards
IOTA adhered to top-tier security frameworks:
- Compliant with NIST-800, CISA, and NSA cybersecurity guidelines.
- Conducted formal Cybersecurity Risk Assessments and Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA).
- Implemented quantum-resistant cryptography using CRYSTALS-Dilithium signatures.
- Ensured eIDAS2 compliance via W3C Verifiable Credentials and OpenID4VP protocols.
These measures ensure trustworthiness in identity management and data sharing across borders.
Object Identification & Data Processing
The Auditable Item Graph provides a unified framework for object traceability. Integrated with EPCIS 2.0 repositories, it captures events like production, shipment, ownership transfer, and disposal—enabling auditable, tamper-proof records essential for DPPs and compliance.
Robustness & Technical Maturity
The solution supports:
- Full API documentation
- Disaster recovery planning
- Interoperability with EVM chains and MongoDB/IPFS data layers
- Adherence to international standards like ISO/IEC 21000-23
This maturity makes it suitable for production-grade deployment in government and industry settings.
What’s Next? From Pilot to Commercial Reality
Completing the PCP is not an endpoint—it’s a launchpad. An IOTA-EBSI Sandbox is now available for EU authorities and developers to experiment with pilot use cases in a secure environment. As EBSI transitions into EUROPEUM-EDIC, IOTA aims to formalize partnerships to integrate its DPP and IPR solutions into the new governance structure.
Commercial momentum is already building. The recent launch of the Eviden Digital Passport Solution—the first market-ready DPP powered by IOTA—demonstrates real-world applicability in tracking automotive battery lifecycles.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q: What is the European Blockchain Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP)?
A: The PCP is an EU-funded initiative designed to stimulate innovation in distributed ledger technologies by procuring pre-commercial solutions from private consortia before full-scale public deployment.
Q: How does IOTA’s Tangle differ from traditional blockchains?
A: The Tangle uses a DAG structure instead of blocks and chains, enabling feeless transactions, higher scalability, and lower energy consumption—ideal for public infrastructure and IoT applications.
Q: What are Digital Product Passports (DPPs)?
A: DPPs are digital records attached to products that store information about origin, composition, repair history, and environmental impact. They support EU circular economy goals and consumer transparency.
Q: Is IOTA’s technology ready for production use?
A: Yes. The PCP validation confirms technical maturity, security compliance, and scalability. The Eviden Digital Passport is already a commercial deployment.
Q: Can other countries or organizations adopt IOTA’s EBSI solution?
A: Absolutely. The open-source nature of the solution allows any government or enterprise to deploy it independently or integrate it into existing digital identity and supply chain systems.
Q: What role does quantum resistance play in IOTA’s security model?
A: Quantum computing poses future risks to cryptographic systems. IOTA’s adoption of CRYSTALS-Dilithium ensures long-term security against potential quantum attacks.
Keywords: IOTA, European Blockchain PCP, Digital Product Passport, Intellectual Property Rights, DLT, Tangle, EUROPEUM-EDIC, EBSI