The Problem
The lack of universal, machine-readable standards and schemas for product identity, provenance, events, and measurement breaks interoperability and impedes Web 3.0 and Industry 4.0. Without this work, advanced manufacturing lags, strategic autonomy weakens, social transformation stalls, LLMs underperform, cross-border trade slows, the climate transition fails, dark factories win, and bad actors gain ground.
The lack of interoperability perpetuates the dominance of aggregators and state-controlled industries which impacts governments, public companies, consumers, and smallholders in both formal and informal economies. Fractured standards weaken critical supply chain integrity, technological competitiveness, sanctions enforcement, and other dimensions of national security and critical national infrastructure. The absence of standards for Agent-2-Agent and other frontier interactions introduce cascading unpredictability, risk, and failure.
For example, Australia’s Scope 3 tracing laws don’t map to the EU’s ESPR regulations for Digital Product Passports / Textile DPPs or textile waste regulations. In California, the absence of community-driven standards means that industry is stepping in with captured circularity and interoperability standards that could meet some of the legal requirements while kneecapping climate progress for a technology generation.
Lots of foundational work has been done on circularity and standards, but it’s unusable if it remains locked in PDFs and siloed projects. The EU identifies JSON-LD as the governing standard, but no one has activated product, event, or climate measurement schemas at Schema.org, a W3.org partner. We need industry-specific standards that bring the real economy on-chain.
Landscape Changes Quicken Network Effects
Forcing Mechanism 1: Global sustainability regulations now account for approximately 30% of global GDP.
Forcing Mechanism 2: AI product sales reward robust product and event data with higher discovery. This creates economic incentives for tracing the climate impact of supply chains.
Why Standards and Structured Data Matter
Structured data is the only way to meet California’s SB 253, SB 261, the EU’s Digital Product Passports, and other climate transition laws. Embedding work, process, and measurement in interoperable product and event histories unlocks what has been unseen and undervalued. These product histories, called data graphs, correct past mistakes by making informal economies visible, preserving intangible culture, and rewarding individual contributions. Interoperable structured data favors creators over controllers and creates ecosystem competitive advantage. When interoperability fails, projects stall, trade slows, costs rise, transitions collapse, and extractive incumbents keep their moats. Bottom-up legitimacy is the only viable path to global-scale interoperability.
Without global standards, industries remain fragmented, and US firms won’t lead Web 3.0 or Industry 4.0. Instead, state-driven competitors in the EU and Asia will define global interoperability rules and capture the majority of trade data. We lack solid foundations because earlier standards, such as WTO HS codes, shopping taxonomies, and schema.org, excluded millions, ignored informal economies, and froze data at a coarse level. Interoperable product, climate, social, and security data are the unlock. Early standards are sticky in winner-takes-all stakes. Bad standards are already gaining adoption.
The Project
Develop interoperable W3.org measurement and data standards, along with associated schemas, built bottom-up to work at both Global South and Global North scales. These open standards connect on-chain systems to the real economy, link smallholders, work, industry, and governments in one framework. The anchor partner provides scientific rigor and the convening power to center these standards across technical and policy domains. Our team brings domain expertise, industry trust, and a plan for viral adoption. We are assembling convening organizations, NGOs, standards bodies and partners now.
Contact Scott@Economy3.org or +1 323 497 6426
©Scott Frankum, 2025
Proposal 1: Standards → Measurements → Schemas → The Trust Layer
Proposal 2: Implementation → Validation → Network Effects → Broad Adoption
Links:
Tracing Regulations
Australia Scope 3: https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-01/c2024-466491-policy-smt.pdf
EU ESPR DPPs: https://commission.europa.eu/energy-climate-change-environment/standards-tools-and-labels/products-labelling-rules-and-requirements/ecodesign-sustainable-products-regulation_en
EU Textile DPPs: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2024/757808/EPRS_STU(2024)757808_EN.pdf
Food and Textile Waste: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20250905IPR30172/parliament-adopts-new-eu-rules-to-reduce-textile-and-food-waste
Research-Based Circularity Standards
Ellen MacArthur Foundation: https://content.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/m/f82c6eaa9210571/original/Navigating-the-circular-economy-reporting-landscape.pdf
Drawdown GA: https://drawdown.org/explorer
Industry-Friendly Standards
ISO Circularity: https://www.iso.org/committee/7203984/x/catalogue/p/0/u/1/w/0/d/0
OECD Interoperability Standards: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2025/06/towards-interoperable-carbon-intensity-metrics_84dce81d.html
Technology
UN Digital Public Infrastructure: https://www.undp.org/digital/digital-public-infrastructure
Gates Foundation’s Mojaloop DPI/Text to Pay: https://mojaloop.io/
Holochain: https://www.holochain.org/
Unyt Peer-to-Peer Accounting: https://unyt.co/
Digital Public Goods Registry: https://www.digitalpublicgoods.net/registry
On-Chain Rights: https://www.weave3.org/p/on-chain-freedom-is-the-new-freedom
China’s Dark Factories: https://www.faf.ae/home/2025/3/19/chinas-dark-factory-revolution-the-rise-of-fully-automated-manufacturing-without-workers-or-lights
China’s Influence on Standards: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2023/02/what-washington-gets-wrong-about-china-and-technical-standards?