Veriphant Helps Enable Legal Proofs in the Bitcoin Blockchain

Data immutability service Veriphant uses the Bitcoin blockchain and other methods to ensure their customers’ data is completely immutable and even legal in a court of law. Bitcoin.com talked to founder Charles Fairclough about his recently-launched service.

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About Veriphant

How the business world notarizes and timestamps their data has been undergoing a major change since Bitcoin came along and gave them a cheaper alternative that holds digital documents immutably. However, most courts and legal processes worldwide have not changed to accommodate this new technology.

UK startup Veriphant recognized the need to offer this new type of proof, including cryptographic fingerprinting of the data and even submitting those to newspapers, which the courts already do recognize as proof. The company aims to follow accepted legal standards while providing immutability for documents and other business using the powerful method of timestamping data to Bitcoin’s blockchain.

Registration on the Veriphant website is currently restricted to those with invites. However, Fairclough confirmed to Bitcoin.com that: “Veriphant has launched and is indeed active”. The startup is currently working with organizations to implement its technology. “We will have open registration soon, allowing anyone to signup and start using our platform”, he said.

Blockchains Meet the Law

In order to make their client’s data legally binding in more legal systems, the startup has created “three main legal tie-ins,” according to Fairclough. “The first is using the Bitcoin Blockchain as a legal proof of existence”, he explained, however, so far there has been no use of a blockchain in a legal case “as far as we are aware”, he admitted. The second uses “peer-to-peer technology to store fingerprints of data sets”, a type of cryptographic proof that is more commonly used in court cases.

The third tie-in uses a novel method of submitting those finger-print data sets to “nationally printed newspapers, to have the fingerprint published.” This way of locking in data, Fairclough explained, makes Veriphant “the first in the world to use this methodology,” he claims. The founder has already applied for a patent for the method, which is “being processed at this very moment.”

Products & Tools

“Our main product is a custom addition only database, which would be tailored to your needs”, Fairclough explained. To that end, the startup offers an API and three multi-platform tools to its customers. According to Fairclough, Veriphant can preserve any kind of data. “Anything from plain-text, to fully encrypted and signed data”, he said, including “pictures, music, documents, application data, website data etc”. The size of the data is only “limited by normal restrictions involved with storing large data, such as storage and hosting costs”, he noted.

There are currently three tools listed on the website.

The first, called the Document Manager, is a multi-platform application that facilitates the storage and management of any document format. This tool “handles legal documents and historically records all version changes making all the data easily auditable and immutable”, Fairclough described, adding that it “eliminates lost documents, reduces audit costs, prevents data tampering and is completely verifiable”.

The second is called Veriphant Data Integrity. “This tool protects your business data by irreversibly locking it in place, so it cannot be tampered with. All data modifications, or insertions are recorded and linked to a person within your organisation”, Fairclough noted.

The third is Veriphant Data Share, which is “a mobile, web and desktop application for securely sharing sensitive immutable data between individuals, organisations and/or systems”, the website describes.

Similar Services

There are other timestamping services in the crypto space. “We are very similar to services like Tierion and Factom”, Fairclough noted.

Tierion calls itself “the first cloud platform capable of recording millions of records in the Bitcoin blockchain.” While the company’s ability to make all kinds of data immutable is facilitated by integration into over 500 applications, its emphasis is not on legal proofs, as Veriphant is attempting. Factom, meanwhile, is a much larger suite with products for many different industries from insurance to real estate. One of their older products, Harmony, uses document timestamping technology with existing imaging and document management solutions aimed at loan documents.

However, Fairclough believes that Veriphant sets itself apart from competitors because “we offer additional verification methods and we also have lots of unique tools and services”. In addition, he claims that Veriphant makes things “extremely simple and easy to start creating Blockchain applications – with our easy to use API”.

Prices

“Our pricing is very dependent on the level of implementation required and whether they opt for all our verification methods”, Fairclough described, citing “peer-to-peer, cryptocurrency ledger injection (using Bitcoin) and now we are also making use of nationally printed newspapers to provably lock in data”.

The company accepts bitcoin as well as traditional currencies. “Our lowest price will start from just $12.50 per month,” he said, adding that there will be a wide range of package and pricing options.

What do you think of Veriphant? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Tierion, Factom, and Veriphant

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