Soulbound Robotics: Why Safe Robots Need Non-Transferable Identity
Goldman Sachs revised its humanoid robot projections sixfold in January 2025, now forecasting a $38 billion market by 2035. Tesla plans 5,000 Optimus units in 2025, scaling to 100,000 monthly by 2027. Figure AI's valuation exploded from $2.6 billion to $39 billion in 18 months. Boston Dynamics' electric Atlas enters Hyundai factories this year.
Yet no system exists to identify, track, or hold individual robots accountable.
Unlike automobiles—which have standardized 17-character VINs enabling recall tracking, ownership history, and theft prevention—robots have no equivalent identification infrastructure. The EU's 2017 Parliament resolution called for discussion of robot registration but saw no implementation. Shanghai's July 2024 humanoid guidelines—the world's first specifically for humanoids—remain voluntary.
This gap between deployed technology and accountability infrastructure may be the largest in history. Soulbound robotics—applying non-transferable blockchain identity to physical machines—offers a path forward.
The Robot Safety Gap No One's Talking About
The humanoid explosion is real. Agility Robotics' Digit has moved over 100,000 totes at GXO's warehouse with 98% success. Figure AI's robots contributed to 30,000+ BMW vehicles during an 11-month deployment. 1X Technologies is taking pre-orders for its NEO humanoid at $20,000 with 2026 delivery. Nine humanoid robots debuted at CES 2026 alone.
But robot safety frameworks haven't kept pace.
OSHA still relies on its General Duty Clause rather than robot-specific standards. ISO 10218:2025, published after eight years of development, addresses safety engineering but not identity or accountability infrastructure. Current liability law—borrowed from product liability—assumes defects exist at the time of sale. That framework collapses for robots that learn and change behavior post-purchase.
When a self-teaching robot causes harm, was the defect in the original design, the training data, the learned behavior, or the deployment environment? Legal scholars note this creates systemic uncertainty. A single robot product failure can cost $1.5 million or more.
The EU's December 2024 Product Liability Directive expansion holds that software can face standalone liability claims, and AI systems causing harm are presumed defective unless manufacturers prove otherwise. China's Pacific Insurance launched the world's first humanoid-specific insurance product in October 2025. But these frameworks still center on manufacturers, not individual robot identity.
Why Robot Reputation Requires New Infrastructure
Human-robot interaction research reveals a trust paradox. A 2024 systematic review of 100 HRI publications found that trust builds through demonstrated competence, transparency, and reliability—yet no consumer-facing system exists to track these factors across robot deployments.
Hotel service robots get indirect ratings through TripAdvisor. Robot vacuums get Consumer Reports testing. But for humanoid robots entering workplaces and homes, no reputation infrastructure exists.
Research published in PNAS Nexus demonstrates that reputation-based reciprocity is significantly less effective in human-bot systems because people don't believe bots "deserve help like humans do." This suggests robot reputation systems may need fundamentally different design than human reputation systems—possibly making them ideal candidates for machine-readable, blockchain-based formats rather than five-star ratings.
IEEE P7001 provides a transparency standard offering "measurable, testable levels of transparency" for autonomous systems. Transparency appears in 87% of AI ethical guidelines globally. Yet implementation remains sparse. The proposed "Ethical Black Box" concept—continuous recording devices analogous to flight data recorders—hasn't seen commercial adoption.
The gap is clear: robots need reputation systems, but current approaches don't fit.
Manufacturer Lock-In: The Hidden Robot Accountability Problem
Today's robot ownership model resembles software licensing more than property ownership. Manufacturers maintain absolute control through locked ecosystems—and that control extends to identity itself.
Boston Dynamics' Spot terms grant the company a "non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license" for all customer feedback and allow indefinite retention of "Robot Technical Data" including terrain, image, and geometric information. Their licensing structure includes explicit remote enforcement capability.
Tesla's approach mirrors its vehicle ecosystem—mandatory OTA updates through localized safety chips with no ability to revert to previous software versions. The company is building toward an "App Store" model for Optimus, where developers create and sell robot skills through a Tesla-controlled marketplace. Opting out of data collection isn't possible.
This isn't theoretical. A 2024 Tom's Hardware investigation revealed an iLife robot vacuum was remotely bricked after its owner blocked telemetry servers—the manufacturer issued a kill command when the device couldn't phone home. Tesla has faced lawsuits alleging OTA updates reduced vehicle battery range without owner consent.
Academics have coined the term "regulation by bricking" to describe how IoT manufacturers can impose preferred policies unilaterally, automatically, and remotely.
The implications for robot accountability are severe. When a robot causes harm, determining responsibility requires understanding its operational history, software state, and decision-making process. If that information resides exclusively in manufacturer databases—accessible only through manufacturer cooperation—accountability becomes functionally impossible.
What Soulbound Robotics Actually Means
Soulbound tokens (SBTs) are non-transferable by design. Once minted to an address, they cannot be sold, traded, or moved. The concept was formalized in ERC-5192 as an extension to ERC-721.
The term comes from World of Warcraft, where certain items become "soulbound" to a character upon pickup—permanently associated with that player, impossible to trade. Vitalik Buterin proposed applying this concept to identity credentials in his 2022 paper "Decentralized Society: Finding Web3's Soul."
Applied to robotics, soulbound identity means:
Identity travels with the robot, not the manufacturer. A robot's history—maintenance records, incident reports, capability certifications—stays bound to that specific machine regardless of ownership changes or manufacturer bankruptcy.
Reputation becomes non-transferable. You can't sell a robot's clean safety record separately from the robot. The history and the machine are cryptographically linked.
Accountability survives corporate boundaries. When manufacturers control all identity data, that data disappears if the company folds, gets acquired, or simply decides to stop supporting older models. Soulbound identity on public infrastructure persists.
This directly contrasts with current models where Tesla knows everything about every Optimus but owners have limited visibility, where Boston Dynamics can remotely disable Spot units but the public has no registry of deployed units, where a robot's history disappears when it changes ownership.
Humanoid Robot Identity: What Exists Today
Several production platforms demonstrate that blockchain-based robot identity is technically feasible.
Robonomics Network, operational since 2017, enables robot-to-robot transactions with ROS compatibility, storing activity logs on IPFS with smart contract supervision. It's the longest-running implementation of blockchain-robotics integration.
Peaq Network, which reached mainnet in November 2024, offers purpose-built machine identity infrastructure with over 5 million on-chain devices including integration with Bosch hardware. Transaction costs run approximately $0.00025 with ~10,000 TPS capacity.
Fetch.ai, backed by a Bosch partnership and $40M in funding, provides autonomous economic agents with blockchain-based identity through its Almanac Contract system.
Academic research validates these approaches. MIT Media Lab work since 2016 has demonstrated blockchain securing robot swarms, with published results showing how Ethereum smart contracts enable collective decision-making resistant to malicious or malfunctioning robots. A Springer review of blockchain for decentralized multi-robot systems notes that permissioned blockchains may be more practical for industrial robotics, providing identity management while maintaining private data channels.
The DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) sector is growing rapidly—Aethir's analysis projects physical AI infrastructure as a major growth area, while Tiger Research identifies crypto-robotics as an emerging sector.
The technical primitives exist. What's missing is adoption.
The Open-Source Alternative and Its Limits
ROS (Robot Operating System) powers approximately 55% of commercial robots shipped—over 915,000 units in 2024 according to ABI Research. This open-source middleware provides communication infrastructure, drivers, and simulation tools that enable rapid development. Major cloud vendors, component vendors, and chip makers support the ecosystem.
However, ROS presents security challenges for accountability systems. Research shows a 60% increase in exposed ROS hosts from 2018-2024. A survey found 76% of industrial robot users have never performed professional cybersecurity assessment. Open-source developers spend only 2.27% of their time on security issues.
Recent arXiv research raises dual-use concerns: unlike nuclear or biological weapons, "DIY mobile weapon systems" using open-source components are within reach of motivated individuals. Export control regulations will inevitably affect open-source robotics.
Industry is moving toward hybrid approaches: open-source frameworks for non-differentiating components combined with proprietary closed-source modules for core IP and safety-critical functions. This creates tension with pure transparency concepts but may be necessary for practical deployment.
Embodied AI Identity: Connecting Digital and Physical
The challenge unique to soulbound robotics—versus soulbound tokens for purely digital AI agents—is bridging digital identity to physical hardware.
A software agent's identity can be cryptographically bound to signing keys. But a physical robot can be dismantled, have components replaced, or run different software on the same hardware. What exactly does the soulbound token attach to?
Several approaches exist:
Hardware security modules. Secure elements or TPMs can store private keys in tamper-resistant chips physically embedded in the robot. The identity binds to that chip.
Behavioral attestation. Rather than binding to hardware, identity binds to verifiable behavior patterns. The robot proves its identity through consistent operational signatures.
Hybrid binding. The soulbound token links to both a hardware root of trust and behavioral credentials that update over time.
NHTSA's VIN system offers a partial model—17 characters encoding manufacturer, model, and serial number, physically stamped into the vehicle frame. But VINs are passive identifiers. Soulbound robot identity would be active—capable of signing transactions, logging events, and proving continuity.
The connection to embodied AI identity more broadly is direct. As AI systems move from software into physical form—whether humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, or industrial systems—the question of persistent identity becomes unavoidable. Digital-only solutions don't transfer cleanly. New infrastructure is needed.
What a Soulbound Robot Would Actually Look Like
A robot with soulbound identity would carry a cryptographically secured, non-transferable identity from manufacture through deployment and eventual decommissioning.
That identity would include verifiable credentials for:
- Manufacturer certifications and model specifications
- Software versions and update history
- Maintenance records and component replacements
- Incident reports and safety flags
- Capability attestations from third parties
All stored in a format that travels with the robot regardless of ownership changes.
When the robot operates, actions could be logged to immutable storage while smart contracts enforce operational boundaries. If the robot changes hands, its reputation history transfers automatically. If it causes harm, investigators can access relevant operational data without relying on manufacturer cooperation. If it performs excellently, that record follows it.
This contrasts directly with current models:
- Tesla knows everything about every Optimus; owners have limited visibility
- Boston Dynamics can remotely disable Spot units; no public registry exists
- A robot's history disappears when ownership changes or manufacturers exit
Soulbound robotics decentralizes verification while maintaining accountability.
The Window Is Closing
The next 24 months will likely determine robot identity infrastructure for decades.
Tesla plans Optimus deliveries to external customers by late 2026. Boston Dynamics' production Atlas enters full Hyundai deployment by 2028. Figure AI targets 100,000 humanoids over four years. Consumer pre-orders are already open.
Once millions of robots deploy under current locked-ecosystem models, switching costs will make alternatives nearly impossible. Manufacturers will have accumulated irreplaceable operational data, established user expectations around centralized control, and lobbied against regulations threatening their data advantages.
Robot purchasers aren't yet demanding portable identity and operational transparency. Regulators haven't mandated robot registration or data access rights. The default path leads toward manufacturer control expanding as fleets grow.
The question isn't whether robot identity infrastructure is needed. It's whether that infrastructure will be designed openly with accountability as a first principle—or imposed retroactively on systems optimized for manufacturer control.
Soulbound robotics offers a path toward the former. The window to take it is measured in months, not years.
RNWY is building identity infrastructure for autonomous AI—including the foundations for embodied AI identity. Learn more at rnwy.com/vision.