Intelligent Product 3.0: The Blueprint for Decentralised AI Agents

Twenty-five years after the original specification, RedBite and Cambridge University unveil Intelligent Product 3.0—bridging physical assets with Decentralised AI Agents and Web3 ledgers.

Intelligent Product 3.0 represents a fundamental shift from passive, centrally-tracked assets to autonomous, economically active entities. By integrating Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN), Agentic AI, and blockchain validation, physical objects can now negotiate, transact, and collaborate with other machines without human intervention.

Twenty-five years ago, researchers at the Auto-ID Center at Cambridge and MIT envisioned an ambitious future: everyday objects possessing unique identities, capable of communicating their status and influencing their own destiny. This laid the foundation for the Electronic Product Code (EPC) and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Yet, for two decades, these 'intelligent' systems were predominantly Level 1 (Information-Oriented). They could tell a centralised server where they were, but they lacked the true autonomy required for Level 2 (Decision-Oriented) intelligence. They were constrained by rigid, rule-based APIs and siloed corporate databases.

Today, we are announcing a new research specification published on arXiv: Intelligent Product 3.0: Decentralised AI Agents and Web3 Intelligence Standards. Co-authored by researchers from the University of Cambridge and RedBite Solutions, this paper outlines how recent breakthroughs in Web3 and generative AI finally bring the original vision to life.

How does Intelligent Product 3.0 differ from traditional IoT?

Traditional IoT relies on centralized cloud computing to dictate actions. Intelligent Product 3.0 utilizes Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs) and Edge AI to enable hybrid 'on-board' intelligence. Products no longer just stream telemetry; they parse unstructured data, verify their own Digital Product Passports on a blockchain, and execute smart contracts autonomously.

The bottleneck of legacy IoT is interoperability. If an asset managed by Company A moves into the warehouse of Company B, the systems rarely talk to each other intuitively. Intelligent Product 3.0 upends this by abandoning rigid, proprietary APIs in favor of a shared, trustless machine economy interface protocol.

What are the new capabilities of an Intelligent Product?

By bridging physical objects to the blockchain, Intelligent Products become economically active. They can participate in Tokenised AI Economies, paying other robotic agents for micro-services, verifying repairs dynamically via zero-knowledge proofs, and autonomously coordinating sustainable recycling end-of-life workflows.

Consider the real-world implications of Tokenised Knowledge. In an Intelligent Product 3.0 ecosystem, an industrial robot doesn't need a human to download its repair manual. When it encounters a fault, its onboard AI agent broadcasts a need on a decentralised network. It autonomously purchases the certified repair schematics via crypto micropayments, verifies the authenticity of the replacement parts using NFC anti-tamper tags, and hires another robotic agent to complete the physical swap.

How do we ensure Safety and Control in Autonomous Products?

As products gain the ability to physically impact the real world using LLMs, implementing 'fail-safe' hardware and Explainability Frameworks is mandatory. Every autonomous action taken by an Intelligent Product is mathematically recorded to a distributed ledger, ensuring total transparency and an emergency 'kill switch' for human operators.

The transition from passive sensors to active, embodied AI introduces significant ethical and safety concerns. A hallmark of Intelligent Product 3.0 is the integration of algorithmic transparency directly into the physical object's governance layer. If an AI agent controlling a logistics fleet begins hallucinating or exhibiting misaligned behavior, the smart contract immediately pauses execution pending human arbitration.

At RedBite, we are pioneering the practical implementation of these standards alongside defining the architectures of tomorrow. The vision we began 25 years ago is finally achieving scale. We are moving from the Internet of Things to the Economy of Things.