Beyond Traceability: Decentralised Identity and Digital Twins for Verifiable Product Identity in Agri-Food Supply Chains
Manuela Cordeiro, João C. Ferreira
Abstract
Agricultural supply chains face growing scrutiny due to rising concerns over food authenticity, safety, and sustainability. These challenges stem from issues such as contamination risks, fraudulent labelling, and the absence of reliable, real-time tracking systems. Existing systems often rely on centralised databases and fragmented data flows, limiting traceability, data integrity, and end-to-end visibility. While blockchain technology offers potential, most research focuses narrowly on traceability, overlooking its role in establishing secure product identity and its integration with emerging tools. This review investigates how Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs), digital twins, and smart contracts—in conjunction with blockchain—can create verifiable digital representations of agricultural products and automate trust mechanisms. Through an analysis of over sixty recent sources and leading standards (e.g., W3C DIDs, Hyperledger Aries), the study identifies key gaps in interoperability, governance, and system maturity. A layered system architecture is proposed, and its application is demonstrated in a cold-chain case scenario. The paper concludes with a roadmap for empirical validation and policy alignment, contributing a practical and scalable framework for researchers, practitioners, and regulators advancing blockchain-enabled traceability systems.