Call for Participation in Physical Asset Attestation (UORA) Community Group

The Physical Asset Attestation (UORA) Community Group has been launched:

The mission of the Universal Object & Resource Attestation (UORA) Community Group is to develop a vendor-neutral, decentralized protocol for the identity, state verification, and lifecycle tracking of physical assets. By bridging the gap between physical objects and digital identifiers, UORA enables every resource to function as a first-class citizen of the internet, fostering global trust, transparency, and interoperability across supply chains and industries.

Scope The group will focus on the technical specifications required to bind physical objects to the digital world using the W3C’s foundational standards for Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs).

• Universal Addressing: Develop protocols for assigning and resolving DID-native addresses to discrete physical units (at Batch, SKU, or Serial-level granularity).
• Attestation Schemas: Define data models and vocabularies for “Event-Based Attestations” that document a physical asset’s lifecycle. Core event types include, but are not limited to:
• Origin: Proof of creation, mining, or manufacture.
• Transfer: Change of custody or ownership.
• Transformation: Processing, assembly, or modification.
• Disposition: Recycling, decommissioning, or end-of-life.
• Secure Physical Binding: Establish best practices and specifications for the tamper-evident linking of a digital DID to a physical anchor (e.g., via NFC, QR, cryptographic hardware, or IoT sensors) to verify possession and state.
• Implementation & Interoperability: Create guidelines for integrating UORA with existing business systems (e.g., ERP, SCM) and networks to ensure practical adoption.

Deliverables

• UORA Core Specification: A technical document defining the architecture for DID-native object addressing and resolution.
• Universal Resource Attestation Schemas: A library of vocabularies and data models for cross-industry lifecycle attestations.
• Secure Physical Binding Protocol: A specification outlining methods and best practices for securely linking digital DIDs to physical objects.
• Implementation Guidelines and Use Cases: Documentation providing practical integration pathways, reference architectures, and business case examples to accelerate adoption.

Success Criteria

The Community Group will be considered successful when its core specifications are used by at least two independent, interoperable implementations to track physical assets across a multi-party supply chain.

Out of Scope

• Development of new blockchain or distributed ledger protocols.
• Creation of new cryptographic primitives.
• Mandating specific commercial hardware, sensor, or IoT platforms.

In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account. Please note, however, that W3C Membership is not required to join a Community Group.

This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2026-02-03 by Amir Hameed Mir. The following people supported its creation: Kurt Cagle, Amir Hameed Mir, Muezza Wani, Irtiqa Latif and Maimoona Bhat. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.

The group must now choose a chair. Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.

We invite you to share news of this new group on social media and other channels.

If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at site-comments@w3.org

Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team