Introduction

Odal Node is software for creating, signing and serving EU Digital Product Passports (DPPs) under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). A manufacturer uses it to produce passports that anyone can verify, without handing its production data to a third party.

Each passport also has a history: publication, amendments, transfer of responsibility and end of life. The node records it on a tamper-evident, hash-chained audit trail and can export all of it as a signed evidence dossier, which an auditor can verify offline.

Who it’s for

• Manufacturers and operators facing an ESPR deadline who need to issue compliant passports and keep control of their data.
• Developers who want to run it on their own infrastructure, with no licence keys and no capability caps.
• Authorities, recyclers and customers who need to check that a passport is genuine. They check it against the manufacturer’s public identity; Odal is not involved.

How it’s organised

Odal Node has two parts, each under its own licence:

Part	Licence	What it is
dpp-core	Apache‑2.0	The regulatory library: the rules a compliant passport must satisfy.
dpp-engine	BSL‑1.1	The service that runs those rules in production.

The core holds the rules and the engine applies them. Core Concepts explains why they are split this way: the rules stay open and free, and the operational layer around them is what pays for the project. Licensing covers what each licence allows.

Next steps

• Quick Start: run a node and produce your first signed passport.
• Core Concepts: the three ideas the design rests on.
• A passport’s lifecycle: what you can do with a passport once it exists.
• Self-Hosting: run the engine on your own infrastructure.