NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / December 17, 2025 / The tools driving digital transformation have never lacked innovation. What they have lacked is a reliable connection to the physical world.

Digital ledgers can be immutable. Automated contracts can be precise. Digital assets can be programmable. None of it matters if the information entering the system cannot be verified at the source. That gap has quietly limited enterprise adoption, regulatory confidence, and real-world deployment for more than a decade.

This is where SMX (NASDAQ:SMX) changes the equation. To be clear, SMX is not a disruptor of digital ledger systems or a replacement for existing frameworks. Its intent is to become the MVP on the digital team by making an already transformative system even better.

Keep in mind that SMX is already a key sector player. It enables digital systems to finally do what they were designed to do: enforce transparency, accountability, and verification without relying on trust. All in the physical world.

That distinction matters as distributed technologies move beyond theory and into infrastructure. Here's the gap SMX fills.

Why Digital Ledgers Have Struggled With the Real World

Distributed ledgers are highly effective at preserving information once it exists. They are far less effective at determining whether that information was accurate to begin with. This limitation has followed the technology since its earliest enterprise pilots.

Supply chains, sustainability reporting, and asset provenance still depend largely on declarations. Someone reports data, the system records it, and the record is preserved sounds great. The problem is that the information stored isn't always accurate. Why? Middlement that can change things that were supposed to be immutable into something less formidable.

SMX addresses this problem at the point of origin. And doing so, remove the guesswork and replace it with a single thing: proof.

By embedding identity directly into physical materials, SMX ensures that what enters a digital ledger is not a claim but a verifiable fact. Identity persists through transformation, recycling, and reuse. The data layer becomes grounded in physical reality rather than interpretation.

This is not an enhancement to ledger architecture. It is a correction to the layer that those systems depend on most.

Turning Decentralized Design Into Physical Reality

The original promise of decentralized systems was trust minimization. Reduce intermediaries. Remove reliance on belief. Let systems enforce outcomes.

Extending that promise into the physical economy has proven difficult. Materials cross borders. They are blended, processed, and resold. Paper trails degrade. Audits lag behind reality. Verification becomes probabilistic.

Again, SMX removes that uncertainty at the source. Because when identity is embedded into materials themselves, verification becomes continuous rather than episodic.

Digital ledger systems can then record, settle, and enforce outcomes based on reliable inputs. In basic terms, trust is not minimized after the fact. It becomes unnecessary from the start.

This is how decentralized principles scale beyond digital-native assets.

The Plastic Cycle Token as an Incentive Mechanism

In discussions around digital infrastructure, incentive mechanisms often receive outsized attention. With SMX, the Plastic Cycle Token (PCT) serves a specific and practical function.

It represents verified circularity rather than aspirational sustainability. Its value is derived from proof, not promises. That makes it an incentive mechanism rather than a speculative instrument.

From a systems perspective, this structure is familiar. Platforms function best when incentives reward behavior that strengthens the ecosystem. In this case, the behavior is verified recovery, reuse, and accountability across physical supply chains.

The token does not replace digital ledger platforms. It gives them something meaningful to settle.

Why Enterprises and Regulators Pay Attention

Enterprise adoption of distributed ledger technology has always hinged on one question. Can regulators trust it?

SMX helps answer that question directly. With its platform, saying a resounding YES.

They are showing across the world that when physical inputs are verifiable at the molecular or material level, ledger records become auditable without reliance on self-reporting. Compliance becomes measurable. ESG reporting becomes defensible. Cross-border trade gains transparency instead of friction.

For regulators, this is not about ideology. It is about visibility. For enterprises, it is about reducing risk. Distributed systems shift from experimentation to infrastructure.

This is where SMX operates, at the intersection of incentives, compliance, and technology.

The Market Is Recognizing the Enablement Layer

Recent market attention to SMX reflects global market recognition, not day trader excitement. Markets tend to reward systems that enable other systems to function better. Infrastructure often outperforms applications over time because it compounds value elsewhere.

Here's the best part. SMX does not ask existing ecosystems to change how they operate. It gives them better inputs. Better data. Better certainty.

Once that layer exists, value builds across platforms, applications, and settlement systems, finally giving them something solid to rely on.

The Next Phase Is Physical

The next phase of digital ledger adoption will not be driven by louder narratives or theoretical architectures. It will be driven by integration with the physical economy. Materials. Goods. Supply chains. Compliance.

SMX represents that shift. Not as a competitor to digital ledger systems, but as an enabler of their original purpose. To make truth verifiable. To make trust optional. To allow systems to enforce reality rather than interpret it.

SMX does exactly that. And by doing so, it strengthens the foundation on which modern digital infrastructure was always meant to operate.

About SMX

As global businesses face new and complex challenges relating to carbon neutrality and meeting new governmental and regional regulations and standards, SMX is able to offer players along the value chain access to its marking, tracking, measuring and digital platform technology to transition more successfully to a low-carbon economy.

Forward-Looking Statements

The information in this press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. In addition, any statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate," "believe," "contemplate," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intends," "may," "will," "might," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "would" and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. Forward-looking statements in this press release may include, for example: matters relating to the Company's fight against abusive and possibly illegal trading tactics against the Company's stock; successful launch and implementation of SMX's joint projects with manufacturers and other supply chain participants of steel, rubber and other materials; changes in SMX's strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs, prospects and plans; SMX's ability to develop and launch new products and services, including its planned Plastic Cycle Token; SMX's ability to successfully and efficiently integrate future expansion plans and opportunities; SMX's ability to grow its business in a cost-effective manner; SMX's product development timeline and estimated research and development costs; the implementation, market acceptance and success of SMX's business model; developments and projections relating to SMX's competitors and industry; and SMX's approach and goals with respect to technology. These forward-looking statements are based on information available as of the date of this press release, and current expectations, forecasts and assumptions, and involve a number of judgments, risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing views as of any subsequent date, and no obligation is undertaken to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. As a result of a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, actual results or performance may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Some factors that could cause actual results to differ include: the ability to maintain the listing of the Company's shares on Nasdaq; changes in applicable laws or regulations; any lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on SMX's business; the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations, and identify and realize additional opportunities; the risk of downturns and the possibility of rapid change in the highly competitive industry in which SMX operates; the risk that SMX and its current and future collaborators are unable to successfully develop and commercialize SMX's products or services, or experience significant delays in doing so; the risk that the Company may never achieve or sustain profitability; the risk that the Company will need to raise additional capital to execute its business plan, which may not be available on acceptable terms or at all; the risk that the Company experiences difficulties in managing its growth and expanding operations; the risk that third-party suppliers and manufacturers are not able to fully and timely meet their obligations; the risk that SMX is unable to secure or protect its intellectual property; the possibility that SMX may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors; and other risks and uncertainties described in SMX's filings from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Contact: info@securitymattersltd.com

SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited