I-D Action: draft-reilly-webproof-01.txt

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Internet-Draft draft-reilly-webproof-01.txt is now available.

Title: WebProof: A Dual-Layer Web Provenance Protocol for Verifiable Digital Truth on the Internet
Author: Lawrence John Reilly Jr.
Name: draft-reilly-webproof-01.txt
Pages: 62
Dates: 2026-09-05

Abstract:

This document defines WebProof, a new protocol layer for the World
Wide Web that enables any web resource, document, dataset, media
artifact, or AI-generated output to be cryptographically proven to
exist in a specific form, at a specific time, under a specific
author's custody.

The web currently provides transport security (TLS), naming (DNS),
and resource identification (URI/URL), but no native mechanism for
verifiable provenance. Any web resource can be silently modified,
backdated, or repudiated. WebProof fills this gap by defining a
dual-anchored provenance layer that combines DOI-based archival
permanence with blockchain timestamping to produce a WebProof Record
(WPR): a machine-readable, independently verifiable proof of a
resource's existence, integrity, authorship, and timestamp.

WebProof introduces a well-known URI (/.well-known/webproof) for
resource-level proof publication, HTTP response header extensions
for inline provenance signaling, a canonical WebProof Record schema,
a generation and verification procedure, and a DNS TXT record
profile for domain-level WebProof registration.

WebProof is designed to compose with existing web infrastructure and
is intentionally non-disruptive: it does not require modifications
to HTTP, TLS, or DNS to function, operating as an opt-in provenance
layer that any web publisher can adopt independently. The protocol
builds on the Dual-Layer Digital Permanence methodology introduced
by Lawrence John Reilly Jr. in the Reilly EternaMark (REM) Protocol
[I-D.draft-reilly-rem-protocol].

The term "WebProof" is coined by Lawrence John Reilly Jr. and first
formally defined in this document.

This revision adds material to draft-reilly-webproof-00 without
removing or altering any text carried forward from it. The
additions are summarized in Section 18.

The IETF datatracker status page for this Internet-Draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-reilly-webproof/

There is also an HTMLized version available at:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-reilly-webproof-01

A diff from the previous version is available at:
https://author-tools.ietf.org/iddiff?url2=draft-reilly-webproof-01

Internet-Drafts are also available by rsync at:
rsync.ietf.org::internet-drafts

I-D Action: draft-reilly-webproof-01.txt internet-drafts