Introducing STAMP — VeriArti’s IP Flagship Product (coming soon)

Instant Blockchain Proof-of-Authorship without the need for Crypto-Currency.

If we haven’t said it before, and I believe we have several times, VeriArti wants to bring the benefits of blockchain to digital artists who don’t understand how crypto-currency works. Again, enter VeChain’s fee delegation protocol that has allowed us to turn our IP rights mechanism at DevCon in San Fransisco to a full protocol: STAMP, an intellectual property tool which removes the need for tokens.

STAMP allows any digital artist, photographer or content creator to register their intellectual property on the blockchain at the click of a button, without needing crypto-currency, receiving a certificate of proof-of-authorship. This differs in minting a VRA NFT for our collectible market, as while that shows something was minted at a certain time, it relies on off-chain confirmation the person was who they said they were. And also, as the token is tradable, encryption becomes pointless at it goes from owner to owner.

STAMP is a separate smart contract that works in synergy with our VRA token mechanisms. It can be used at any stage of an artist’s work and only the author will have the key needed to unlock the work to prove authorship when needed. And as this is on a public POA blockchain, it can also be verified by any third party.

Blockchain and Intellectual Property — The Perfect Match

With digital art rife on the internet, anyone can theoretically download your work for commercial use without your consent. Most of the time, there’s not much you can do. It’s your word against theirs. They probably won’t take it down and send you a cheque in the mail. This is because the onus of proof is now on you.

However, with the rise of blockchain technology, the process of defending intellectual property leaves no question as to where copyright belongs because you have immutable proof of when you stamped your work.

Blockchain is a decentralised and immutable record. This is such a given that blockchain records hold up in a court of law. Furthermore, the records are not subject to the control of any one agency. Thus, this can be utilised by artists and designers, creating permanent evidence of their authorship. IP rights can then be upheld with 100% timestamped evidence supporting it.

How does it work?

First of all, fee delegation, fee delegation, fee delegation (quote credit to Totient Labs!). These are the two words that we’ll be saying quite a lot. Using Multi-Party-Protocol (which basically means other parties can sponsor the crypto-currency a blockchain needs for transactions), we can allow anyone who has zero knowledge of crypto-currency to reap the security benefits of logging their work on the blockchain. In high-level terms, a user pays a small fiat cost, VeriArti pays the transaction fee for the user, all the while they retain the private keys to the data.

For STAMP, the process is as follows (scroll down for TLDR):

Our STAMP contract can be used via the VeriArti website when minting a piece of work (if they so choose) or it can called upon using our API (meaning those working on a piece of work in Photoshop for example won’t need to go through many hoops to register their work). Once the user has uploaded their work, it is one-way encrypted. Remember, the user will NOT need crypto as all tokens are sponsored by VeriArti due to the MPP protocol by VeChain. The author only needs to hold on to his or her private keys and not to any file specific keys, again thanks to VeChain’s MPP protocol. The user will receive a certificate of authorship displaying the timestamp, encrypted hash and instructions on how to prove they were the author of the work when needed. As an exact copy of the work will be needed to unlock (validate) the proof, VeriArti will store this for the user in the same place as their collected art (their online art vault). Now, if an artist sees their work being used commercially or elsewhere, and the infringer wants proof the work is the author’s, the author has legally binding blockchain evidence and timestamps of when they uploaded the work. As this information is only available to the author it’s impossible for the copyright infringer to ‘guess’ when the work was made or registered.

TLDR:

STAMP enables users to prove authorship of their work. A user will upload his or her work to STAMP, which notarises the work using the STAMP smart contract. The smart contract will give the work a blockchain timestamp, store the encrypted version of the file and will store the author’s address. The author only needs to hold on to his or her private keys and not to any file specific keys thanks to VeChain’s MPP protocol. With STAMP you can notarise different stages of your work, even from the art platform you’re using, providing even more irrefutable proof of your work. STAMP will provide you with both a notarisation certificate and a blockchain certificate. And the best of all, STAMP will be available via the VRA API and of course no crypto needed!

All the best,

The VeriArti Team!

Twitter: twitter.com/veriartivra