What the blink does that acronym mean?

A structured digital record attached to a physical product that exposes its identity, composition, compliance and lifecycle data on demand.

The EU regulation that makes Digital Product Passports mandatory for most physical products sold in the EU.

The EU regulation that introduces a mandatory Digital Product Passport for industrial, EV and (from 2027) most portable batteries.

The EU regulation harmonising packaging recyclability, reuse targets and consumer disposal information — increasingly delivered via on-pack QR.

The long-standing EU regime making producers responsible for the collection, treatment and recycling of electrical and electronic products.

The EU chemicals regulation requiring suppliers to declare and, where relevant, restrict substances of very high concern in articles placed on the EU market.

The conformity mark indicating a product meets the EU's applicable health, safety and environmental requirements — increasingly backed by a digital DoC inside the DPP.

The ESPR role responsible for placing a product on the EU market — and therefore for the existence, correctness and accessibility of its DPP.

A web-URL syntax from GS1 that turns standard product identifiers (GTINs, serials, lot codes) into resolvable URLs.

A GS1 standard for recording and sharing supply-chain events about identified objects — the what, when, where and why of an item moving through the world.

The global, not-for-profit standards body that owns barcodes, GTINs, Digital Link, EPCIS and most of the underlying identifiers in retail and healthcare.

The global retail migration from 1D EAN/UPC barcodes to 2D barcodes (GS1 Digital Link in QR or DataMatrix) — targeted for end of 2027.

The service that turns a GS1 Digital Link URL into the right downstream experience for the requesting party — consumer page, DPP, EPCIS event, repair docs.

An append-only, cryptographically chained ledger replicated across many parties — used in connected products mainly to anchor proofs of provenance and DPP records.

Publishing the cryptographic hash of an off-chain record on a public blockchain — proving the record existed unaltered at that point in time.

A W3C-standard, cryptographically-signed claim about a subject (a product, a person, an organisation) that any third party can verify without contacting the issuer.

A W3C identifier scheme that lets a subject own and prove a stable identity without depending on a central registry.

The globally unique identifier for a product type, encoded in EAN/UPC barcodes at retail.

A GTIN combined with a serial number, so each individual item is uniquely identifiable.

Two carriers for the same connected-product idea: QR is a printed 2D barcode anyone can scan; NFC is a chip read by tapping a phone.

A short-range (≈4cm) wireless standard used to embed a tappable chip in a product, label or tag — read by every modern smartphone with no app.

The three workhorse NFC chips from NXP, distinguished by how much data they can store on the tag itself.

An NFC chip that signs every tap with a one-time cryptographic code — making counterfeit and clone attacks detectable in software.

The standard NXP scheme by which an authentication-grade NFC chip appends a per-tap signature to the URL it serves.

The cryptographic primitive (AES-CMAC) used by authentication-grade NFC chips to prove a URL was produced by a specific chip.

NFC inlays engineered to survive industrial laundry — the carrier of choice for connected garments, hospitality linen and rental textiles.

Long-range (~3–10m) RFID used for warehouse and retail inventory — read by handheld and gate scanners, not by phones.

Physical or cryptographic design that lets a scan reveal whether a tag, seal or container has been opened or replaced.

The square matrix barcode invented by Denso Wave in 1994 — by far the most-scanned 2D symbology on consumer products today.

A compact 2D barcode used heavily in pharmaceuticals, industrial parts and shelf-edge labels — denser than QR at small sizes.

The classic 1D barcode found on retail packaging since the 1970s — encodes a GTIN and nothing else.

The GS1 identifier scheme used inside UHF RFID tags — a serialised, machine-readable extension of GTIN for the supply chain.

Assigning each physical unit a unique identity (a serial number on top of its product code) — the foundation of authentication, recalls and DPPs.

An AI pattern where the model retrieves relevant source documents first, then answers using only those documents — instead of guessing from training data.

An open protocol that lets AI agents discover and call external data sources and tools in a standard way.

A neural network trained on huge volumes of text that can read, write and reason in natural language — the engine behind ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and friends.

Numerical fingerprints for chunks of text that let you find semantically similar passages — the search layer underneath RAG.

A database optimised for storing embeddings and finding the nearest matches to a query vector at high speed.

Machine-readable metadata embedded in web pages so that search engines and AI agents can parse what a page is actually about.

A proposed convention — a /llms.txt file at the root of a site — that gives LLMs a clean, structured map of what the site is about and where to find authoritative content.

Commerce mediated by AI agents acting on a buyer's behalf — researching, comparing, buying and managing products without the human ever touching the brand's website.

A digital counterpart of a physical thing, kept in sync with it over its lifetime — the broad industry term for what SmartLinks calls a Connected Identity plus Product Record.

The system of record for product attributes — names, descriptions, specs, images — that feeds your website, retailers and marketplaces.

The system of record for brand and product media — images, video, packaging artwork, manuals — usually paired with a PIM.

The verifiable origin and history of an item — where it was made, from what, by whom, and how it has moved through the world.

Authentication answers 'is this item genuine?'; verification answers 'is the claim about it true?'. Different questions, different tools.