Provenance
Facts are the metal.
Provenance is the seal.
Raw claims come in like ore. The record smelts them into facts you can test. Then every fact, and every step that made it, gets pressed with a seal that cannot be reworked without shattering. That seal is an Ed25519 signature, anchored on-chain. Our name is on it, permanently.
The cryptographic data supply chain
Every hop, from raw source to your slice, is signed.
A physical product carries a supply chain: every hop from raw material to shelf is documented, and anyone can inspect it. Data never had one, which is why nobody can tell you what actually went into an AI answer. DRM3 is that supply chain for data. Each stage below signs a receipt the moment it runs, and each receipt points at the one before it. Walk any output backward and verify the whole lineage, hop by hop.
- 1
Source
raw inputA feed, filing, DNS scan, price snapshot, or model run enters the live flow. The raw material.
- 2
Fetch
signed receiptPulled at a fixed moment. The receipt commits the source URL, the timestamp, and the content hash of exactly what arrived.
- 3
Extract
signed receiptThe text and structure lifted out of the raw payload, its own receipt chained to the fetch it came from.
- 4
Analyze
signed receiptA named model reads it. The receipt records which model, the prompt that shaped it, and the output it returned.
- 5
Fact
signed receiptDistilled, versioned, and corroborated across publishers. Append-only: stated, superseded, corrected, every hop receipted.
- 6
Slice
signed receiptWhat leaves through the one metered door, carrying a signature you re-check offline in your own code against published keys.
That chain of signed receipts is the supply chain. Not a log you have to trust: a lineage you can verify offline, from the slice you hold all the way back to the raw source it came from.
01The foundry
Molten in. Sealed out.
A foundry does one thing well: it takes raw material and makes something you can trust to hold. DRM3 is that foundry for data. Three stages, one continuous heat.
The lava
The live flow. Feeds, filings, scans, price snapshots, model runs, pouring in without pause. Hot, formless, and worth nothing until it cools into something with a shape.
The ore, the metal
A claim is ore. The record assays it, versions it, and links it to what it replaced, until it is a fact you can test and cite. Facts are the metal. They can be re-assayed; they are never quietly recast.
The obsidian
Provenance is obsidian: lava cooled hard into black glass. Sharp, permanent, and it fractures the instant you try to rework it. Every fact and every step that forged it is pressed into that seal. Break the seal and everyone can see.
The metal is the fact. The obsidian is the proof of who forged it and that no one has touched it since. Two different things, on purpose.
02What the seal proves
A seal is not a verdict.
A signature proves two things and refuses a third. It proves attribution: whose key forged this. It proves integrity: the bytes have not moved since. It does not, and cannot, prove that the statement inside is correct. You can sign a mistake. The seal says who is accountable for it and that it has not been altered, which is exactly the trust worth adding.
Signing is added trust
Accountability, permanence, non-repudiation. We cannot alter a receipt, backdate it, or walk it back. Our name is on every key. That is trust laid on top of the data.
Never a replacement
The seal is not a claim that a fact is true. Correctness lives in the record's lifecycle, its witnesses, and its corrections, all of which you can read and challenge. The proof and the fact are separate reads.
03The mechanics
How the seal is actually pressed.
No metaphor below this line. This is what runs.
One root, one key per product
Every signing key is derived deterministically from a single root at a unique path. DomainDrift signs DNS scans, Signals signs data fetches, MorScan signs price snapshots. Each key is independently verifiable, published at status.drm3.network, and anchored on Base. The live registry is the source of truth for how many keys exist and which are anchored.
Receipts chain to their parent
Every receipt can point at the receipt it came from, forming a provenance chain from raw source through every transformation to the final output. Walk backward from any output and verify the whole lineage, hop by hop.
Three granularities
Row-level puts a signed receipt on every data point. Merkle rollups batch row receipts into one tree root for efficiency. Session-level signs the whole batch with its query context. You pick: fine-grained for internal audit, coarser for data leaving your walls.
The record only grows
A fact is never edited or deleted. It has an identity and an append-only chain (stated -> superseded -> corrected / redaction-decided), every hop receipted. Daily editions are hash-verified and sealed, so a page from any past day re-verifies byte-for-byte against its signature.
Every fetch, every AI analysis, every transformation: signed with Ed25519, chained, and anchored. The metered Extract API is the one door apps pull it through, first-party and third-party alike.