OBADA: The ITAD Blockchain

OBADA is an industry coalition of stakeholders in the IT asset disposition (ITAD) industry. We are working to create a public utility allowing any enterprise or supply chain system to digitally represent physical assets as NFTs (pNFTs), in effect creating a decentralized “Carfax™” for physical assets. This allows for permanent, interoperable recordkeeping of any asset, from manufacturer to recycler, and it gives the world a standard interface for ordering and tracking end-of-life services such as data destruction and recycling.

“OBADA” consists of two organizations; the nonprofit OBADA Foundation and the OBADA DAO. The foundation is working with the International Standards Organization (ISO) to develop a standard for creating and storing digital representions of physical assets in a blockchain. The OBADA DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization developing decentralized registry based on the standard to store the Carfax-like digital representations (i.e. the pNFTs).

The OBADA DAO

The OBADA DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is a coalition of stakeholders from the IT asset disposition (ITAD) industry. The DAO members serve as the governance for the OBADA platform, making important decisions related to the direction, and operation of our public utility. With 35 DAO Members currently, and a maxiumum of 101 voting members, we still have seats available! Don’t miss out, join the DAO today!

The OBADA Foundation

The OBADA Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is developing an an open standard called “Representing Physical Assets using Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)” in conjunction with the International Standards Organization ISO TC/307 AHG3. This open blockchain protocol will allow any organization or ecosystem to establish their own NFT implementation for their own category of physical assets which will be interoperable across all categories.

The ITAD Blockchain

The OBADA DAO is creating a public utility, loosely called “the ITAD Blockchain”, based on the physical NFT (pNFT) standard. The utility is a decentralized registry to store the pNFTs data, with standard methods for connecting to the backend systems of the actors and software used by the asset disposition sector. The registry acts as a “bridge” between the real-world asset and it’s digital representation which can be embedded in a ERC-721 or any other form of NFT.

This utility will allow enterprise and supply chain systems to track the service history of any asset, from manufacturer the recycler. and it creates a simple, standard interface for the world to order and track asset disposition services such as data destruction and responsible recycling.

Why join the DAO

Besides obtaining a “seat at the table” shaping in the future of our industry, there are three main reaons to join the DAO: governance rights, operational rights, and economic rights.

Real-World Devices

Software reads the firmware of a device and uses open cryptographic formulas to represent the data as a pNFT, creating an addressed that is basically based on the device serial number.

Decentralized Registry

Software connected to the physical device posts the results directly to a public decentralized registry, which stores the physical asset data in a form that can be used by any pNFT.

pNFTs in Outside System

Anyone can develop a pNFT, in any supply chain system or public layer-1 blockchain, using the registry as a bridge to the real-world device and it's information.


An Industry Coalition

Built for ITAD
IT Asset Disposition

Founded in 2017, OBADA is a coalition of over 100 organizations that provided asset disposition services for end-of-life electroncs. The goal is to provide cryptographic PROOF when device data is destroyed and when devices are properly recycled.


OBADA is for

The Asset Disposition Sector

To digitally transform our industry via blockchain proofs and efficiences.

L1 Blockchains

Interoperable Physical NFTs are (the missing) composable infrastructure component needed by supply-chain blockchains and enterprise DLT systems.

Supply Chains

Representing serialized assets as composable NFTs enables traceability from manufacturer to recycler, across any combination of previously siloed systems.

The Economy and the Planet

Sensitive data must be destroyed to prevent data breaches. Toxic materials must be disposed of properly. Lithium, cobalt, and rare-earth elements must be recovered. Traceability in recycling is the answer.


OBADA Governance

The standards effort is stewarded by the OBADA Foundation, an off-chain nonprofit foundation.

The implementation is being developed by the OBADA DAO, currently managed by the foundation with a progressive decentralization strategy to eventaully allow for independant governance based on proposals and voting.


The OBADA Standard

The OBADA Foundation is steward of the OBADA standard. We have been working with ISO since 2019 to develop it as an international standard. The standard consists of an open data methods for representing an immutable physical asset identifier as a cryptographic addresses, a data method for creating a cryptographic checksum of all associated asset data, and an open protocol for transferring and resolving the data. read more…


The OBADA Platform

The OBADA DAO was formed to create a platform, a Physical NFT Registry, that implements the standard. The platform is based on open W3C DID (decentralized identifier) methods. We previously worked on proof of concepts based on Hyperledger and Ethereum. Current development is based on Cosmos, using the Tendermint consensus algorithm.

The standard consists of an open data methods for representing an immutable physical asset identifier as a cryptographic addresses, a data method for creating a cryptographic checksum of all associated asset data, and an open protocol for transferring and resolving the data.


FUTURE: Platform Economics: Rewards for Recycling

IN the current implementation, "gas" for basic transactions is paid with a native utility token. Collected gas fees are distributed back to the nodeholders to compensate them for their compute power. There is no middleman.

In the future, the same utility token is used to "order traceability". The mechanism is by "staking" the NFT. The stake, plus a reward, is returned upon proof of recycling.

There is expected to be a high loss rate of staked tokens, due to the nature of recycling, as the real-world assets are lost from the chain. These tokens will be replaced by the newly issued tokens that are created with proof of recycling.

This unique cryptoeconomic mechanism, where the total token supply is not maintained by cryptographic methods, but rather by the real-world actions, creates a world-changing incentive structure for proper recycling.


  • There is no offer for investment here. OBADA DAO membership is not an investment.
  • A decentralzied ledger keeping track of “system credits” is necessary to coordinate the activity and system functions between nodes operated by the DAO members. While this ledger could be described in terms of a utility token, at this time there are no plans to offer any native token to the general public nor on any public token exchange.
  • Contact us at bizops @ obada.io.