How it works

Every product gets an identity you control.

A secure chip in the product. A record on a public network that no marketplace owns. A tap that proves the two belong together. Here is how it works, in plain English.

Discuss a pilotThe hardware
A brown leather handbag with a cutaway showing the NFC coil inside the lining; beside it a glass panel labelled Digital Twin (NFT) with a token id on Base, and a phone showing the TAG IT app with Authentic, Issued by Brand, Owned by You and a Proof of Ownership card.
A navy leather jacket with a cutaway at the lining showing a gold NFC coil and chip. On the left a torn paper barcode and QR label with an arrow pointing into the jacket; on the right the tag layers float beside glowing blocks and a shield with a check.

01 — Identity

A passport for the product, not a link to somebody's marketplace.

A barcode or a QR code is a link, and the link points wherever the printer chose, often a marketplace that owns the customer from then on. TAG IT gives the product a cryptographic identity instead: proof it is real, a record of its life, and a door back to your brand on every tap.

The record carries its data in a form compatible with the EU Digital Product Passport, so the passport your regulator will ask for is already there.

A chip in the product

A secure NFC chip (NTAG 424 DNA) sealed into the product at the factory. It carries its own key and signs every tap.

A record on a public network

An NFT, the product's digital twin, on Base. It holds the maker, the batch, the owner and every event since. Nobody can edit the past.

Issued by you, held by the owner

Your brand issues the record. The customer who buys the product holds it. The record always belongs to the owner, and the issuer is always you.

02 — The tap

The chip has to answer.

Every tap makes the chip produce a fresh signed message. Our service checks that signature against the chip's key before it shows anything. A copied link, a photographed code or a cloned label cannot do that, because the secret never leaves the chip. The customer sees the record. The counterfeiter sees nothing.

No app is needed to check. The phone reads the tag and opens the record in a browser page. Owners who want to act, claim, hand over or flag, sign in with email in the app.

9:41
verify.tagit.network

Authentic

Tag verified by TAG IT

CLAIMED
Product
Luxury handbag
Brand
TAG IT Demo
Ownership
Claimed
Category
Handbag
Material
Leather

VERIFIED OWNER RATING

5.0

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What a check proves

  • A specific chip answered the challenge, so that chip was present at the moment of the tap.
  • A record for that chip exists and is in the stated state, for example claimed or flagged.
  • The recorded owner and the recorded history are what the contract holds today.

What it does not prove

  • The physical condition of the item, or that it has not been repaired or altered.
  • Legal title. A recorded owner is a record, not a court.
  • The truth of every historical claim an issuer wrote into the record.

03 — The life of the record

One record, from the factory to recycling.

The record moves through fixed states, and the contract on the network decides which moves are allowed. A flagged product cannot be handed over. A recycled one cannot be revived. That is what makes the history worth trusting.

A folded cream sweater with an NFC label at the collar, shown in a zoom with its coil and chip. Around it a loop of icons: a tag, a factory, a box, a shopping bag, a warning shield, and a recycling symbol beside a pile of recycled fibre and a spool of yarn.
  1. 01

    Minted

    The record exists. The product has an identity before it has a tag.

  2. 02

    Bound

    The chip is tied to the record. From here the tag and the record are one thing.

  3. 03

    Activated

    Quality checked and released. The product is ready to sell.

  4. 04

    Claimed

    A customer owns it. The record moves with every handover.

  5. 05

    Flagged

    Lost, stolen or recalled. Every tap shows it, and it cannot change hands until resolved.

  6. 06

    Recycled

    End of life, closed for good. A recycled product cannot come back as a new one.

Seven states in all, counting the empty one before a record exists. When a flag is resolved the product returns to the state it was in before.

A pair of cream and beige sneakers with an NFC mark on the side, on a round metal stand. Three glass tiles stand around it on smaller stands, linked by a glowing ring: a factory, a person with a key, and a shield with a check.

04 — Who controls what

You control the product. Not a marketplace.

The record lives on Base, a public network. It is not locked in our database and not in a marketplace's. Your brand holds the issuer role, your customer holds the product, and the contract, not an app, decides who may do what.

Your brand

Create the record, bind the tag, release the product, flag it and resolve the flag.

Live on our test network

The owner

Claim the product, hand it over, list it for sale, flag it as lost or stolen.

Live on our test network

Anyone holding it

Tap it and check it against the record. No wallet, no app, no account.

Live on our test network

Every tap is a visit to your brand. The customer lands on your record and your assistant, not on a listing page that sells them someone else's product next.

05 — From your dashboard

Protect the product after it leaves you.

Most of a product's life happens after the sale. The business app is where your team handles what comes up, in seconds, from one screen.

A red cordless drill with an NFC mark on a round metal stand, ringed by four glass tiles: a red warning pin, a blue cycle of arrows, a green shield with a check, and a green recycling symbol.

Stolen or lost

Flag the product from your dashboard, or let the owner flag it from the app. From that second every tap, anywhere, shows the flag, and the product cannot be handed over until the case is closed.

Recall

Flag the affected products and every later tap tells the holder to stop and contact you. Recall workflows for whole batches are scoped with your team in the pilot.

Warranty

The record shows when the product was activated and who claimed it, so a warranty question is a tap, not a receipt hunt. Warranty terms can be stored on the chip itself.

Recycling, done right

When a product reaches end of life, the record is closed with a recycle action. The recycler can prove what it processed, and the identity cannot be reused on a fake.

06 — Ready for what buys next

Built for the agentic economy.

The next buyer may not be a person. Shopping assistants, resale platforms and brand agents already read product data before they recommend or buy. A barcode gives them a number. A TAG IT record gives them a signed history they can check through public tools, and an agent-to-agent channel to ask your brand's own agent a question.

That is what makes the product ready for the next generation of marketplaces: places where a machine checks the record before money moves, and where your brand is in the conversation.

What an agent can do today

  • Check a product

    Verify a record and read its history through the public tools, with no key.

  • See a flag

    Ask whether a product is flagged before recommending or buying it.

  • Talk to your agent

    Reach the brand's agent through the agent network to ask about a product.

  • Use any model

    ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and others connect through the same open interface.

The AI agents page

Side by side

A barcode and a smart tag.

The barcode did its job for fifty years: it identifies a product type. It was never built to prove anything about one specific item. The smart tag is.

QuestionBarcode or QRTAG IT smart tag
Can it be copied?Yes. Print it again.No. The chip signs every tap with a key that never leaves it.
What does a scan prove?A number was printed somewhere.This exact chip was present, and what its record says.
Who owns the product?Unknown.The recorded owner, updated on every handover.
Where has it been?Nothing. A barcode has no memory.Every checkpoint and every state, from factory to recycling.
Lost, stolen or recalled?No way to tell.Flagged on the record. Every later tap shows it.
Where does the scan lead?Wherever the printer pointed it. Often a marketplace you do not control.To your brand's record and the assistant in your app.
Can an AI agent trust it?No. A number tells it nothing about whether the product is real.Yes. The agent asks the network and gets a signed answer: this product is real, this is its owner, and it is not flagged.
Does it fit the existing process?Yes.Yes. The barcode can still be printed on the tag label, so scanners and systems keep working.

Look to the future, today

Tag it once. It keeps up with everything that comes next.

Humanoid robots, smart appliances, autonomous warehouses and AI buyers are all on their way, and every one of them needs the product to speak for itself. The record lives on the network and the chip is chosen per product line, so a product tagged today is ready for readers that do not exist yet.

A washing machine with a sweater inside, a humanoid robot reading the tag on a steel bottle, and a warehouse where a robot arm and a scanning gate handle tagged cartons on a conveyor, all linked by glowing rings around a tag inlay.

Robots that know how to handle it

A humanoid helper in the kitchen or the laundry reads the product before it touches it. The tag carries the rules: this pan is not dishwasher safe, this jacket is wool, this drill needs the guard on. The rules live with the product, so every robot gets them right, not only the one that was trained on it.

Appliances that read the product

A washing machine reads the garment and picks the right cycle. A dispenser reads the chemical and doses it correctly. The warranty terms and the care sheet sit on the chip itself, readable with no internet, in a basement or on a ship, ten years from now.

Smart factories and smart logistics

An assembly's record links to the records of its parts, parent to child, so a recall traces to the exact batch of one component. Carrier and warehouse readers log every carton as it passes, and a stolen shipment leaves a signed trail from its last checkpoint: the evidence an insurer asks for.

Robot rules and on-chip data run on the data-on-chip tag option. Parent-to-child links are part of the product record. Both are specified per pilot. See the hardware page for the chips.

Demonstrations

Short recordings, published as each is verified.

Each recording names its environment and date and shows the observed result. We do not publish simulations as live software; until a recording is verified, the slot says so.

  1. Product verification

    Recording pending

    Verify an item with a tap

    A phone taps the tag; the signed URL opens the record and the tag check result.

    Base Sepolia test network

  2. Ownership and handover

    Recording pending

    Claim an item

    A business activates a bound item and the first owner is recorded.

    Base Sepolia test network

  3. Ownership and handover

    Recording pending

    Hand an item over

    The recorded owner signs a handover and the record shows the new owner.

    Base Sepolia test network

  4. Flagged-item handling

    Recording pending

    Flag, restrict, resolve

    An item is flagged as lost; a handover is refused; the flag is resolved and the item returns to its prior state.

    Base Sepolia test network

  5. Business provisioning

    Recording pending

    Provision a batch

    A business mints records, binds tags with the reader bridge and activates the batch.

    Base Sepolia test network

  6. Product verification

    Recording pending

    Reject a copied or replayed tap

    A reused tap URL is rejected because the counter and signature no longer match.

    Base Sepolia test network