Permanent on-chain receipts
Each archived asset gets an ERC-7053 record on the Numbers Mainnet. Even if the hosting institution disappears, the cryptographic timestamp and ownership claim remain provable forever.
Industry solution
Capture for Digital Archive
Store cultural heritage and historical evidence with immutable provenance. Used by Starling Lab to document war crimes for international tribunals.
The challenge
What's broken today
Digital archives need to outlive their hosting platforms, survive metadata corruption, and remain admissible as evidence decades later. Traditional preservation systems rely on a single institution's continued operation, and metadata can be lost during format migrations or platform shutdowns.
How Capture helps
Built-in for your industry
C2PA chain of custody
Every edit, format conversion, and curation step adds a signed C2PA action. Researchers can replay the asset's full history from capture to current state.
Decentralised storage
Capture integrates with IPFS and Filecoin for redundant, content-addressed storage. The asset can never be silently swapped or corrupted.
Court-admissible evidence
Used by Starling Lab to collect Ukrainian war crimes evidence published by Rolling Stone (Emmy-nominated). The same workflow is admissible in international human rights tribunals.
Regulatory alignment
Compliance, by design
| Regulation | What it requires | How Capture satisfies it |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 16363 OAIS | Trustworthy digital repositories | Capture's blockchain anchoring satisfies the most stringent integrity requirements |
| International humanitarian law | Evidence preservation for war-crime tribunals | Capture-Starling workflow has been accepted in ICC submissions |
| Berne Convention | Proof of authorship for cultural works | ERC-7053 timestamps establish legal priority across signatories |
Recommended stack
Best products for this use case
"In 2022 we presented the world with evidence of war crimes in Ukraine using Web3 technology — the same provenance stack museums and archives can use today."
Jonathan DotanFounder, Starling Lab (Stanford / USC)
Frequently asked
Digital Archive questions
How long do on-chain records last?
Numbers Mainnet records are permanent — there is no expiration and no way to delete them. The chain is decentralised, so even if Capture as a company disappears, your archive's provenance proofs remain readable by anyone with an Ethereum-compatible RPC.
Can we use our existing storage (S3, Glacier, on-premise)?
Yes. Capture writes only the provenance hash to chain, not the asset itself. You can store the asset wherever you prefer — your own servers, S3, Filecoin, IPFS, or all of the above. The on-chain receipt verifies any copy that matches the hash.
Is this admissible as legal evidence?
Yes, the underlying workflow has been accepted in international tribunal submissions. Starling Lab published an ICC-grade evidence collection methodology using ProofSnap and Capture's pipeline. Always consult counsel for your jurisdiction-specific evidentiary standards.
What about format migrations and bit rot?
C2PA's chain-of-custody model lets you record every format conversion as a signed action. Combined with content-addressed IPFS storage, archives can be migrated to new formats centuries from now while preserving full provenance back to capture.