> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://wiki.gen6.life/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://wiki.gen6.life/solutions/realseal/rs-integrity.md).

# RS Integrity

### What Integrity Means Here

Integrity, in RealSeal, is a precise and deliberately narrow claim:

> **A piece of content signed through RealSeal has not changed — by even one bit — since the moment it was signed.**

That is the whole guarantee. It is not a claim about whether the content is true, accurate, or created by a human. It is a claim about **sameness over time**, and it is provable by anyone, mathematically, without trusting Gen6 or the person who signed it.

This narrowness is a feature. A guarantee that is precisely bounded is a guarantee that can actually be relied on in a dispute, an audit, or a court. A broader claim would be weaker, because it could not be proven.

***

### How Integrity Is Produced

RealSeal establishes integrity in three steps. None of them require the content itself to leave the signer's control.

**1. Hash — the content becomes a fingerprint**

The file is passed through a cryptographic hash function (BLAKE2 / BLAKE3, or SHA-256), producing a fixed-length digest. Two properties matter:

* **Deterministic** — the same file always produces the same digest.
* **Avalanche effect** — changing a single bit anywhere in the file produces a completely different digest, not a similar one.

A hash is one-way. The digest cannot be reversed to reconstruct the content. This is what allows a file to be proven unaltered without ever being published.

**2. Sign — the fingerprint is bound to an identity**

The digest is signed with the private key of a Gen6 self-sovereign identity (Ed25519 / sr25519). This binds two facts together inseparably: *this exact content* and *this specific identity*.

Anyone can later verify the signature using the corresponding public key. Nobody can produce a valid signature without the private key.

**3. Anchor — the record is written to the chain**

The signed digest and its timestamp are recorded on the Gen6 blockchain, live on mainnet since January 2025 and maintained across 150+ independent validator nodes.

Once anchored, the record cannot be edited, backdated, or removed — not by the signer, not by Gen6, not by any single party. The timestamp becomes as immutable as the digest it accompanies.

***

### What Integrity Guarantees

A RealSeal record supports four claims, each provable independently:

| Claim                                   | What proves it                                       |
| --------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| **This content is unchanged**           | Recomputed hash matches the anchored digest          |
| **This identity signed it**             | Signature verifies against the identity's public key |
| **It was signed at this time**          | The anchored timestamp is immutable                  |
| **Nobody has tampered with the record** | The chain record cannot be altered retroactively     |

Any alteration to the content — a changed pixel, an edited character, a re-encoded video, an adjusted number in a spreadsheet — breaks the hash match. Not subtly. Completely, and visibly.

***

### What Integrity Does Not Guarantee

Stated plainly, because overclaiming here would undermine the entire value of the guarantee:

* **RealSeal does not verify that a claim is true.** If someone signs a document stating something false, RealSeal proves that they signed *that document*, unaltered, at that time. It does not make the contents accurate.
* **RealSeal does not detect deepfakes or AI-generated content.** Detection is a different technical discipline — pattern and artefact analysis on existing media — and is not a Gen6 capability. RealSeal proves that *signed* content is unaltered since signing. It has nothing to say about content that was never signed through Gen6.
* **RealSeal does not establish what happened before signing.** Integrity begins at the moment of signature. What a file was, or was edited into, prior to that point is outside the guarantee.
* **Absence of a RealSeal record is not evidence of anything.** Most content in the world is unsigned. An unsigned file is simply unsigned.

The correct mental model: RealSeal is not a lie detector. It is a **tamper-evident seal**. It tells you with certainty whether the seal has been broken.

***

### Integrity Without Disclosure

Because only the hash is anchored — never the content — RealSeal can prove integrity for material that stays entirely private.

This matters in practice:

* A confidential contract can be proven unaltered without its terms ever being published.
* A medical or legal record can be verified without exposing its contents.
* A company can prove it held a document on a given date without revealing what the document says.

The proof lives on a public chain. The content does not have to.

***

### Integrity Over Time

Integrity in RealSeal does not decay, expire, or require renewal.

A conventional certificate must be reissued, a signing authority must stay in business, a verification server must remain online. A RealSeal proof depends on none of these. The record persists on a distributed chain maintained by independent validators — it does not depend on Gen6 continuing to exist, on any single company, or on any institution's records survival.

This is what makes RealSeal usable for long-horizon purposes: archival records, evidence, institutional history, and any proof that must outlive the organisation that created it.

For the long-term cryptographic durability of these proofs — including the migration path to post-quantum signature schemes — see **GGS-6: Post-Quantum Infrastructure**.

***

### Verification Is Permissionless

Verification requires no account, no API key, no fee, and no request to Gen6.

Anyone holding a copy of the content can:

1. Recompute its hash,
2. Compare that hash against the anchored record,
3. Verify the signature against the signing identity's public key.

If the hashes match and the signature verifies, the content is provably unaltered since the anchored timestamp. If they do not match, it has been modified.

There is no authority in the middle deciding the answer. This is the operating principle behind the Gen6 statement: *you do not have to trust us — you can verify it yourselves, independently.*

***

### Integrity in RealSeal IoT

RealSeal IoT applies the same three-step guarantee to machine-generated data, with signing occurring at the point of capture rather than after the fact.

A sensor reading — emissions, temperature, water quality, a production-line measurement — is hashed and signed at the moment it is recorded. From that point forward, the same integrity guarantee applies: the reading is provably unaltered since capture.

The practical consequence is that a regulator, buyer, or auditor can verify field data without trusting the operator's internal record-keeping. The data does not become *correct* because it is signed; it becomes **unfalsifiable after the fact**, which removes an entire category of dispute from compliance and supply-chain reporting.

***

### Related Pages

* **RealSeal** — product overview
* **RealSeal IoT** — sensor and supply-chain data signing
* **Identity** — the self-sovereign identity layer that signatures bind to
* **GGS-6: Post-Quantum Infrastructure** — long-term cryptographic durability of RealSeal proofs