Titulo Estágio
A Blockchain-Based Framework for Energy-Efficient and Privacy-Preserving Digital Product Passports
Áreas de especialidade
Comunicações, Serviços e Infraestruturas
Sistemas de Informação
Local do Estágio
DEI-FCTUC / CISUC
Enquadramento
Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are emerging as critical tools in enabling sustainable and circular economies by providing transparent information about a product's origin, composition, lifecycle, and recyclability. The European Union’s Green Deal and Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) underscore their importance.
Blockchain technology has been proposed as a foundational infrastructure for DPPs due to its immutability, transparency, and decentralized trust model. However, its adoption faces two critical research challenges:
- Energy Consumption and Environmental Sustainability: Many blockchain platforms (e.g., Bitcoin, Ethereum) consume large amounts of energy, potentially undermining the ecological goals of DPPs.
- Data Privacy and Confidentiality: DPPs must handle sensitive information (e.g., proprietary materials, supplier identities), raising concerns over public data exposure on transparent ledgers.
These two challenges—environmental sustainability and privacy— are vital for creating practical, scalable, and usable DPP systems.
Objetivo
This thesis aims to:
• Evaluate the energy consumption of existing blockchain architectures that can be used for DPPs.
• Design a privacy-preserving architecture for DPPs that protects sensitive product data.
• Propose a hybrid blockchain framework that optimizes for both sustainability and data confidentiality.
• Demonstrate the feasibility of the framework via a prototype implementation.
Additionally, it is expected to submit the results to an international conference or journal.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
1) Study of blockchain and supporting tools.
2) Study of the state-of-the-art of product biographies, and their application on supply chains.
3) Analyze existing DPP implementations, blockchain energy models, and privacy solutions in supply chain contexts.
4) First proposal of the architecture of the platform
Work results of the semester:
• Initial architecture of the blockchain platform.
• Intermediate report.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
5) Benchmark energy usage of blockchain platforms for DPP scenarios.
6) Develop a hybrid DPP framework:
a. Layer 1: Lightweight, energy-efficient blockchain.
b. Layer 2/Off-chain: Confidential product data with controlled access.
7) Platform evaluation and critical analysis of the results
8) Writing of the final report.
Work results of the semester:
• Final blockchain platform.
• Final report and scientific paper.
Condições
The student will have access to all the computer resources needed to carry out the work. Evaluation, either by simulation or using specific hardware, can be carried out using computer resources available in DEI/CISUC.
Observações
Thesis supervised by Profs. Vasco Pereira (vasco@dei.uc.pt) and João Barata (barata@dei.uc.pt).
Orientador
Vasco Pereira
vasco@dei.uc.pt 📩