Integrity Substrate

RSA: the counter-entropic integrity layer

RSA records provenance-relevant stewardship statements in a durable sequence so verification can compound instead of resetting at every institutional or market interface.

See Verify (placeholder) Read the deep dive View specifications
Six-stage RSA lifecycle diagram
Authority to trust compounding in six operational stages.
  • Append-only integrity log per artwork.
  • Registry Authority issued stewardship statements.
  • Time-ordered sequence with tamper-evident continuity.
  • Selective disclosure for scoped verification.
  • Not a marketplace.
  • Not tokenization.
  • Not valuation.
  • Not ownership adjudication.

Why a registry becomes necessary under cultural entropy

Without durable shared references, each institution, insurer, scholar, or buyer rebuilds trust from scratch. RSA turns repeated private verification into reusable infrastructure.

Why Zcash

The thesis positions Zcash as a shielded public Layer 1 for two simultaneous requirements: tamper-evident ordering and selective disclosure. Verification can be scoped to a single artwork trail without exposing full inventories or sensitive counterpart information.

RSA lifecycle

  1. Authority

    Registry Authority is publicly declared with governance, succession, and revocation procedures. See ZIP-SRA-KEYGEN

  2. Identifier

    A canonical identifier anchors referential continuity across catalogue, institutions, and transactions. See ZIP-SRA-EVENTS

  3. Stewardship events

    Provenance-relevant statements accumulate as append-only, RA-issued entries. See ZIP-SRA-EVENTS

  4. Selective disclosure

    Verification is scoped to a work-level trail without forcing total portfolio exposure. See ZIP-SRA-DISCLOSURE

  5. COA interface

    Certificates of Authenticity act as an operational bridge into real institutional and market workflows.

  6. Trust compounds

    Due diligence cost decreases over time because verification does not reset each cycle.

Use cases

Museum loans

Reduce repeated provenance reconstruction for lending committees.

Insurers

Improve risk analysis through traceable stewardship chronology.

Lenders

Support collateral diligence with clearer attribution and documentation continuity.

Scholars

Increase citation stability by preserving reference integrity across revisions.

Secondary market

Lower discounting due to uncertainty in authenticity and custodial continuity.