Long before Bitcoin, cryptographers were already working on how to prove that a digital record existed at a certain time and detect if it was changed later.
In 1991, Bellcore researchers ๐๐ญ๐ฎ๐๐ซ๐ญ ๐๐๐๐๐ซ ๐๐ง๐ ๐. ๐๐๐จ๐ญ๐ญ ๐๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ง๐๐ญ๐ญ๐ published a system for cryptographically timestamping digital documents. Each timestamp was linked to earlier ones, so changing an old record would leave evidence. Bitcoin cited their work in 2008.
Thirty-five years later, AI can generate or alter text, images, audio and video at enormous scale. Provenance โ where something came from, who created it and what happened to it afterwards โ is now a serious technical problem.
One response is ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐จ๐ง๐ญ๐๐ง๐ญ ๐๐ซ๐๐๐๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐๐ฅ๐ฌ, which uses cryptographic signatures to carry verifiable provenance with digital content. It doesnโt use blockchain.
A major strength of blockchain is allowing different parties to verify the same shared record independently, without one party controlling it.
With ๐๐๐.๐๐จ๐ฆ๐๐ข๐ง, ownership is recorded on-chain and can be verified across SourceLess services rather than being tied to one platform account.