ntag x dna

As of February 2026, we do not currently have plans to sell NFC tags containing this chip. The current availability, use cases and pricing for this chip would make standard NFC products such as labels or disc tags extremely expensive.

While the benefits of asymmetric crypto hold advantages in some very limited use cases, the majority of current NFC authentication and anti-counterfeit projects are actually more suited to symmetric encryption and more importantly, a lower unit price point.

As a quick recap, asymmetric encryption means that you have a private key on the chip and a public key - visible to all - which can verify the authentication. With symmetric encryption, the same private key is on the chip and then hidden on the server for auth.

The benefits of asymmetric are that as you have a public key, you can store this on a public blockchain. The problem is simple. You need a mechanism (mobile app, server software, etc) to access that public key and use it to authenticate the NFC tag. The basic principle of asymmetric being better for NFC is that the key is visible and permanent. Except there's no guarantee that the mechanism for authentication will be permanent, or indeed the blockchain itself will be permanent (and that access to it will be cost-effective). You are ultimately reliant on 'middle' code to allow auth. If you encode the tag to be frictionless, it must still point to a server - which must always exist (and not be sold or compromised). If you use an app to interact with the tag, the app must always exist.

It's also important to note that while the NTAG X DNA can 'sign' a message (a random challenge) which can then be verified with the public key - this process can only be done with a reader sending data to the chip. Which, in simple terms, means that you _must_ use a specialist mobile app to achieve this. To undertake frictionless 'SUN' style NFC tag reading, the NTAG X DNA would use symmetric encryption anyway. Which leads back to the previous comment - for this to have value, that specialist app will need to be permanent, safe and readily available for the lifetime of the product. And you need to develop it and maintain it, arguably along with the connection to the blockchain to access the public key.

So you usually end up in the same place but with higher costs and no better guarantee than if you simply ran a server with a private key.

If the costs were similar, our opinion might change. But it's not just the cost of the chip - it's the cost of the development and maintenance of the backend. In any event, as of February 2026, unless you are using the I2C features of the NTAG X DNA, then we cannot see the benefit over using the NTAG424. Therefore, it's not something we are likely to put on the shelf any time soon.
Seritag - 08 Feb 2026