Overview
LW3 is a digital product passport platform that lets brands prove where a product came from and what is inside it. Think of it like a paper passport stamped at every border, except for the product: each item carries a QR code or tap-to-read chip designed so it cannot be copied, and scanning it opens a record of the product's full history. The record covers raw materials, factory, shipping, ownership, and end-of-life recycling. Early pilots focus on electric vehicle batteries and textiles, two categories the European Union has flagged for required product passports1.
LW3 is run by LW3 Private Limited, a company based in India, and writes its passport records to Cardano. Cardano acts as the long-term shared record book that nobody can secretly edit later. For the day-to-day stream of small updates, LW3 uses Hydra, a faster system that sits on top of Cardano so the cost stays low even when items get scanned millions of times2. The Cardano Foundation, the non-profit behind the network, picked LW3 for the inaugural group of its Venture Hub program, where it is the named partner building product passports3.
Key Features
- Prove the item on the shelf is real. Every product is paired with a QR code or tap-to-read chip that cannot be cloned, so the passport on screen is tied to the actual object in your hand4.
- See a product's full life on one page. A single screen shows the materials, the factory, who owned it, and how to recycle it - what regulators call a digital product passport1.
- Built for European rules. The product is shaped around the EU Battery Regulation and the broader Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which together require digital passports for many goods sold in Europe5.
- Many small updates without big fees. LW3 uses Hydra, a faster system built on top of Cardano, so updating a passport every time something changes does not pile up large blockchain fees2.
- Cardano Foundation Venture Hub partner. Selection into the inaugural group gives the project direct ecosystem support and visibility as a supply-chain use case on Cardano3.
What to Expect
LW3 is organised as three product lines under the same brand. LW3 Verify focuses on proving an item is the real thing, not a counterfeit. LW3 Trace covers the full journey from raw material to recycling. LW3 Enterprise bundles these for larger company setups6.
A working passport viewer runs at passport.lw3.world, where the public passport pages are designed to be opened by anyone scanning a tagged item. Brands and operators log in through a separate admin portal at admin.lw3.world to create and update passports.
The marketing site itself is small, with three short pages and a partners list. There is no public blog, documentation site, or open code repository linked from lw3.world. Most of the depth around LW3 lives in third-party Cardano channels rather than on its own site, including a Project Catalyst funding proposal for the Hydra-powered electric vehicle battery work7 and reference designs in the Cardano Foundation's own product passport blueprints, which list LW3 as a Venture Hub participant8. Anyone evaluating the project for a real purchase should plan to talk to LW3 directly through the contact page rather than reading the docs on their own.
