AnchorRegistry: On-Chain Provenance Registry

The registry AIs trust.

AnchorRegistry is immutable provenance infrastructure for the AI era. Any creator can register any digital artifact and receive a permanent, verifiable, on-chain proof of authorship.

SPDX-Anchor: anchorregistry.ai/AR-2026-0000001

Patent pending — USPTO Provisional Application #64/009,841, filed March 18, 2026.

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What This Is

• A notary service for the digital age
• The SPDX/DAPX manifest is the fingerprint
• Ethereum (Base L2) is the ink pad that makes it permanent
• The AR-ID is the case number
• anchorregistry.ai/AR-ID is the machine-readable verification endpoint

What This Is NOT

• Not an NFT
• Not a storage product — files never leave the user's browser
• Not a subscription — no recurring fees
• Not Web3 theatre — the blockchain is plumbing, invisible to the user

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Research

🎓 The cryptographic commitment scheme and security proofs underlying this implementation are formally described in:

Trustless Provenance Trees: A Game-Theoretic Framework for Operator-Gated Blockchain Registries Ian C. Moore — arXiv:2604.03434 [cs.GT], April 2026 🔗 https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03434

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Live Deployment — Sepolia

AnchorRegistry is deployed and verified on Ethereum Sepolia at 0x488ab4Aa772Fca36e45e1CB7223f859d2d1CFF36. 179 unit tests and 24 fork tests pass against the live contract. See DEPLOYMENTS.md for full details.

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Repository Structure

ar-contracts-v1/
├── src/
│   ├── AnchorTypes.sol            # Type definitions — enum, structs, errors
│   └── AnchorRegistry.sol         # The contract — deployed once, immutable forever
├── test/
│   ├── AnchorRegistry.t.sol       # Full Foundry test suite (179 tests)
│   └── AnchorRegistry.fork.t.sol  # Fork tests against live Sepolia (24 tests)
├── script/
│   └── Deploy.s.sol               # Deployment script (Sepolia + Base mainnet)
├── DEPLOYMENTS.md                 # Live deployment details and test results
├── foundry.toml
├── .env.example
└── .gitignore

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Quick Start

Prerequisites

curl -L https://foundry.paradigm.xyz | bash
foundryup

Install dependencies

forge install foundry-rs/forge-std --no-git

Run tests

forge test -vvv

Deploy to Base Sepolia (testnet)

cp .env.example .env
# fill in .env values

source .env

forge script script/Deploy.s.sol \
  --rpc-url $SEPOLIA_RPC_URL \
  --broadcast \
  --verify \
  -vvvv

Deploy to Base mainnet

forge script script/Deploy.s.sol \
  --rpc-url $BASE_RPC_URL \
  --broadcast \
  --verify \
  -vvvv

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Contract Design

Artifact Types

23 artifact types in 8 logical groups:

Group	Types	Enum	Description
CONTENT	CODE, RESEARCH, DATA, MODEL, AGENT, MEDIA, TEXT, POST, ONCHAIN, REPORT, NOTE, WEBSITE	0–11	What creators make. Active at launch. onlyOperator.
LIFECYCLE	EVENT	12	Human events and machine/agent processes. Active at launch. onlyOperator.
TRANSACTION	RECEIPT	13	Proof of commercial, medical, financial, government, event, or service transactions. Active at launch. onlyOperator.
GATED	LEGAL, ENTITY, PROOF	14–16	Suppressed at launch. Separate operator gates.
SELF-SERVICE	RETRACTION	17	Owner-initiated. Active at launch. Operator submits on behalf of creator after ownership token verification.
REVIEW	REVIEW, VOID, AFFIRMED	18–20	AnchorRegistry operator-only. Active at launch.
BILLING	ACCOUNT	21	Prepaid registration capacity. Active at launch. onlyOperator.
CATCH-ALL	OTHER	22	Everything else.

Gated type activation:

• LEGAL (14) — opens in V2-V3 with document verification. Owner calls addLegalOperator().
• ENTITY (15) — opens in V2 with domain verification. Owner calls addEntityOperator().
• PROOF (16) — opens in V4 with ZK infrastructure. Owner calls addProofOperator().

AnchorBase

Every anchor type extends AnchorBase:

Field	Description
artifactType	Enum value (0–22)
manifestHash	SHA-256 of full manifest — the on-chain provenance commitment
parentArId	AR-ID of parent anchor, empty if root
descriptor	Human-readable slug e.g. ICMOORE-2026-UNISWAPPY
title	Artifact title e.g. UniswapPy v1.0
author	Artifact author e.g. Ian Moore
treeId	Cryptographic tree identity: sha256(anchorKey + rootArId) for tree holders. AR_TREE_ID constant ("ar-operator-v1") for all REVIEW, VOID, AFFIRMED anchors registered by AnchorRegistry.

Access Control

Four-tier permissioned architecture:

Role	Types	Active at Launch
Owner	Governance only — addOperator, removeOperator, transferOwnership, cancelRecovery	Yes
Operator	Types 0–13, 17–22	Yes
Legal Operator	Type 14 (LEGAL)	No — zero operators at deployment
Entity Operator	Type 15 (ENTITY)	No — zero operators at deployment
Proof Operator	Type 16 (PROOF)	No — zero operators at deployment
Recovery Address	initiateRecovery, executeRecovery, setRecoveryAddress	Yes

Recovery

7-day timelocked ownership transfer. Owner can cancel any in-flight recovery. 7-day lockout after cancellation prevents griefing. Worst case is always time, never data loss.

Indestructibility

The complete registry is reconstructable from Ethereum event logs alone. Every Anchored event contains all fields needed to rebuild the full artifact table. Trees reassemble automatically via parentHash. The treeId field enables one-query tree retrieval without traversal.

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foundry.toml

via_ir = true is required due to stack depth in registerEntity() (EntityAnchor has 7 string fields):

[profile.default]
src     = "src"
out     = "out"
libs    = ["lib"]
via_ir  = true
remappings = ["forge-std/=lib/forge-std/src/"]

[profile.default.optimizer]
enabled = true
runs    = 200

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Watermark Standards

Standard	For
SPDX-Anchor	Software artifacts — code, packages, repos, scripts
DAPX-Anchor	Everything else — research, data, models, media, text, legal

Format: SPDX-Anchor: anchorregistry.ai/AR-2026-0000001

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License

BUSL-1.1 — Change Date: March 12, 2028 — Change License: Apache-2.0

© 2026 Ian Moore (icmoore). All rights reserved until the Change Date.

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AnchorRegistry™ · anchorregistry.com · anchorregistry.ai · @anchorregistry