Editor’s Note
This article explores how Digital Product Passports (DPPs) and blockchain technology are transforming luxury authentication, shifting the focus from verifying authenticity to revealing a product’s unique story and provenance.
In 2025, the luxury industry is changing its question.
From “Is this bag real?” to “What story does this bag hold?”
Brands no longer answer this question with paper certificates. Through Digital ID—an invisible layer of information—products are beginning to tell consumers about the journey they have taken. At the heart of the technology enabling this new language is the Aura Blockchain Consortium.
The Aura Blockchain Consortium was founded in April 2021 by three major luxury conglomerates: LVMH, Prada Group, and Cartier under Richemont, with OTB Group joining in October 2021. These three luxury groups joined forces to address the common challenge of delivering authenticity, responsible sourcing, and sustainability in a secure digital format.
The Aura Blockchain Consortium is a non-profit organization headquartered in Switzerland, aiming to encourage social responsibility, sustainability, and customer-centric business practices throughout the lifecycle of luxury products by leveraging blockchain and other technologies. By encouraging the use of a single global blockchain solution open to all luxury brands across all industries worldwide, this platform provides consumers with additional information, services, and transparency, elevating the customer experience to a new level.
The EU will require a ‘Digital Product Passport (DPP)’ for all consumer goods from 2026. Products must prove their identity and entire lifecycle with data. Beyond simply ‘where it was made,’ they must transparently disclose the origin of materials, environmental footprint, distribution channels, repair history, and resale potential. The Aura Consortium saw this requirement as an opportunity. Global luxury brands in competitive relationships, such as LVMH, Prada, Cartier, OTB Group, and Mercedes-Benz, joined hands under the common goal of ‘trust and sustainability.’
Aura’s technology is already being applied by real brands. It is not just a simple theory but is becoming a digital luxury strategy that works in the market.
In 2022, Prada launched the fine jewelry collection ‘Eternal Gold,’ which uses only 100% recycled gold. Behind its beauty lies Aura’s blockchain technology. In collaboration with top-tier diamond suppliers, it applies traceability across the entire value chain, from mining to cutting, setting, and polishing.
Consumers can check the origin of the gold, processing stages, and environmental impact in real-time via the NFC chip attached to the product. This was the first step in sharing the brand’s responsibility for sustainability with consumers.
Maison Margiela and Marni, under the OTB Group, embed NFC chips in all products and issue digital certificates via the Aura blockchain. Consumers can instantly verify product authenticity with just a smartphone, and brands can maintain authentic value even in the secondhand market. This is being applied to over 1.5 million products annually.
Louis Vuitton attaches QR codes to products, designed so that consumers can scan them to check authenticity, production year, and repair history. This is not just about providing information; it is a digital strategy to maintain and extend the product’s lifetime value in the resale market.
Aura’s technology is expanding beyond fashion to luxury automobiles. Mercedes-Benz provides digital certificates and NFT-based artwork to vehicle buyers, extending the concept of ‘ownership’ to include digital experiences. This is an experiment in a new brand interface that breaks down the boundaries between art, technology, and luxury.
These cases are changing the relationship between brands and consumers. Now, consumers are not simply ‘purchasing’ but participating in the brand’s philosophy and sustainability journey. Digital ID simultaneously provides transparent information, personalized services, and emotional connection with the brand, creating a new definition of luxury.
Digital ID is not just a story for luxury brands. It is the prelude to an era where we all buy and sell trust through consumption. From the consumer’s perspective, the desire to know what is real, to have transparent information, and to make valuable consumption is growing. Digital ID is a means to protect that consumer right with technology and a tool that allows an individual consumer to choose a better world.
From the brand’s perspective, it is an opportunity to prove trust with data and to extend the relationship with consumers from ‘sale’ to ‘companionship.’ Sustainability, authenticity, and digital identity have now become the core of brand strategy. And above all, this path must also be open to small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.
Digital ID is not just a tool. It is the technology that redesigns consumption around trust, and perhaps the direction the future consumer society must take!