# Overview

## The Legitimate Protocol

The Legitimate Protocol is an secure decentralized framework designed to keep physical products in-sync with unique digital identities, specifically from an ownership and provenance perspective. When integrated into the Legitimate Protocol, a product is capable of becoming a phygital (physical + digital) product.

NFC Tags operating on the Legitimate protocol can be by used by customers to verify the authenticity and ownership of physical goods through Legitimate's infrastructure and decentralized smart contracts.

### How it works

NFC tags powered by the Legitimate protocol have a few key features:

* Unique Digital Identity
  * A decentralized digital ID that satisfies most provenance and traceability protocols, designed to track products through their entire lifecycle. Owners can scan the NFC tag to claim ownership of a product.
* Secure
  * A digital ID can be transferred from one owner to another to record any change in ownership. Our Locking Mechanism (defined below) is a secure escrow implementation that ensures the digital ID and the physical product belong to the same person.
* [Locking Mechanism](/technical-docs/protocol/smart-contracts/locking-mechanism.md)
  *  A digital ID is “locked” and cannot be unlocked or transferred until the NFC tag on the physical product is scanned by the new owner to unlock.
* Extensible
  * Third party developers can build on top of this “locked” digital ID state to provide exclusive gated content, access, and more.

<figure><img src="/files/4e5djZjm7hQ4Ex2x5Zfs" alt=""><figcaption><p>LGT Protocol Diagram</p></figcaption></figure>


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