Internet Ledger of Truth
Updated March 27, 2023
Proofivy is a layer of trust for the internet. Blockchains provide us with new tools for verification and storing of data. They have been used to keep track of crypto coins, creating an immutable ledger that everyone trusts, for a while now. The same technology can be used to keep track of data in general. Proofivy makes it easy for researchers, journalists and anyone, to prove the creation and possesion of data, even before they are ready to share it, and to store and share untamperable data.
Research
From Tim Harford - How to spot scientists who peddle bad data:
Scientists need to get back the traditional values of the field, which include the open sharing of scientific ideas and data, and rigorous scrutiny of those ideas.
They should bolster those traditional values with modern tools. For example, journals should demand that scientists publish their raw data unless there is an extraordinary reason not to. This practice dissuades fraud by making it easier to detect, but more importantly allows work to be checked, reproduced and extended.
Publication of data has proven to help uncover errors. A recent example is an analysis uncovering fraud, of a much cited paper about honest reporting. This was possible because the underlying data was published.
- Commit hashes of experiment setups, assumptions, conjectures and hypotheses
- Commit hashes of articles before official publication
- Store and share untamperable data
Media
From Mike Solana - Tether part I:
Information online is written and re-written rapidly, daily, across all manner of outlets, from the most respected, behind the most sacred veneer of the institutional, to the least respected, in the furious bowels of anti-establishment internet chat rooms. Reference back to some specific piece of information, which is the only way we know how to build on knowledge, is impossible if that piece of information has been altered, deleted, or buried in the months or weeks or even minutes since its “publication.” Then, with a hundred or a thousand alternate versions of every piece of information that exists, all at our fingertips, it’s difficult to even decide which malleable piece of information we should be looking at, let alone reach anything resembling broad consensus.
Trust in media is lower than ever. Proofivy provides tools to restore trust.
- Commit hashes of articles to prove authenticity
- Share proof of source data
- Store and share untamperable data
Business
- Commit hashes of legal documents for next level version control
- Commit software release hashes to combat malware