The witness network

This chain

Exchange

Recorded by

Reading the ledger…

Why this exists

Every platform that sells you an audit trail also holds it.

A hash chain stops anyone else altering the record. It does not stop the operator rebuilding the whole thing and presenting the result as history. Anchoring the chain externally narrows that down — you can't rewrite anything older than your last anchor — and it still leaves the keeper and the checker as the same party.

Nothing you build alone closes that. Somebody outside has to be holding a copy.

So each platform here takes the fingerprint of the others' records and seals it into its own. To rewrite your past now, everyone holding a copy would have to rewrite theirs in step, and re-obtain external timestamps that were issued days ago. The second half is the part that can't be done.

What the marks mean

Two checks run on every submission. Neither can reject one — everything gets sealed. What changes is how strong we say the claim is.

Confirmed: We fetched the address given and it served exactly the tip that was submitted.
Live: The address served a valid but different tip. A working chain moves between submitting and our looking — normal, not a failure.
Self-declared: No address given, or we couldn't reach it. Taken on their word, and marked as such.
First-use: First time this name appeared. It's now bound to the address it came from.
Bound: Same address as the first time this name appeared. The same operator, consistently.
Conflict: This name has been submitted from a different address than the one it was first bound to. Still sealed, permanently flagged. Operators do move hosts — but you get to see it and decide.

What this does not prove

Said plainly, because the value of the rest depends on it.

It doesn't prove a record was true when it was written. Nothing can. No system reaches back to verify what someone was thinking or whether the data going in was honest. This proves what was recorded, when, and that it hasn't changed since.
It doesn't prove identity. A name is self-declared. Checking the address proves someone runs a live chain producing that data — not that they're who they say. Binding a name to its first address is what makes a change visible.
Two platforms checking each other isn't much of a network. The strength comes from breadth. This gets meaningfully harder to bend with every chain that joins, and not before.
A participant can go quiet. Nobody can force anyone to keep publishing. Gaps show up as stale or silent rather than disappearing, which is the point.

Joining

Chains submit their current head to the network and record the heads of others in return.

POST https://sebbi.pro/x/witness/observe
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "chain": "your-chain-name",
  "tip":   "<64 hex characters — your current chain head>",
  "url":   "https://yoursite/your/tip",
  "ts":    "2026-08-02T14:00:00Z"
}

url is the address we fetch to check your tip independently — it's the difference between confirmed and self-declared. ts is optional, epoch or ISO.

Running a chain in the other direction, recording ours as we record yours, is what makes it mutual rather than us keeping a list. If you operate a platform in this space and you're willing to have your history held somewhere you don't control, message me and we'll talk through it and what it costs.

Check it yourself

Nothing here needs a login. Open any of these.