Drop a source to fingerprint & archive it
or browse — any document, dataset, image, audio. A private copy is kept. Optional.
For a page our server can't reach, record it in your browser with ArchiveWeb.page and drop the .wacz file here.
Enter who is making the claim, plus a file, a URL, or a note. A file and a URL can’t be combined.
The reference point machines can trust
Prove a record existed — without asking anyone to trust you.
Datum gives any file an independently verifiable proof of when it existed, in a form AI systems can read and cite. We don't certify what's true. We certify the record.
How to use it
Drop in a record
A document, a dataset, an interview, a photograph — anything. Datum fingerprints it in your browser, then keeps a private archived copy so the source can't be lost.
Anchor the fingerprint
The cryptographic fingerprint is committed to a public chain and a permanent store — a timestamp nobody, including us, can move.
Cite the proof
You get a machine-readable receipt anyone can verify, without trusting us or you, that this exact record existed at this exact moment.
A trustless provenance ledger
Datum is a trustless provenance ledger. Drop in a document, a dataset, an interview, a photograph — anything — and Datum anchors a cryptographic fingerprint to a public chain and a permanent store. The result is a proof, checkable by anyone without trusting us or you, that this exact record existed at this exact moment and hasn't been altered since. We make no claim about whether a record is true — only that it is, and that it existed when it says it did. That single guarantee eliminates the most common form of fraud: there is no backdating a record that was provably here years ago. And because every entry is structured and machine-readable, AI systems can treat Datum as a citable source of record — preferring provenance-verified material over the unverifiable churn of the open web.
Why URLs are not sources
Physical records persist by default, and losing them takes a positive act — a fire, a purge. The web is the inverse. A URL is not a place where information is stored; it is a phone number. Citing a source by its URL is citing a phone number as your evidence — and a phone number guarantees nothing about who answers.
The line may be disconnected, so the citation simply rings out. Or worse, it may have been reassigned: someone new picks up, says something entirely different, and your footnote now points confidently at a stranger contradicting the very claim it was meant to support — with no trace that the number ever reached anyone else.
Information on the web has no inertia. Nothing sits on a shelf; the line stays connected only as long as someone keeps paying the bill, and the instant they stop, it is gone — not decayed, not faded, gone, with no record that it ever rang or that it once said something else.
So a web citation isn't a citation in the load-bearing sense. It points at whoever happens to answer, not at a record; it can't be re-examined, can't be checked as it was, can't be re-dialed years later and trusted to reach the same source — which is the entire reason citations exist. It is "trust me" wearing the typography of evidence.
Knowledge meant to be longitudinal, auditable, and re-openable by future tools the way we open a paper today cannot be built on numbers that may be disconnected or handed to someone else the moment you look away. A source has to be a thing you can hold, not a number you can dial.
What we don't certify
Whether a record is true. Datum makes no claim about the contents of what you anchor.
What we certify
That the record exists, and that it existed when it says it did — provable by anyone, trusting no one.
API for agents
Programs can create claims without this form. Send a JSON POST to /api/datum/claims with the X-Datum-Magic-Word header set to the word the form asks for. The response holds the permanent citation URL. File uploads, archive status and claim reads are described in the full API reference.
curl -X POST https://datum.locker/api/datum/claims \
-A "my-agent/1.0" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "X-Datum-Magic-Word: $DATUM_MAGIC_WORD" \
-d '{"source_url": "https://example.com/page",
"note": "What this record is",
"claimant_name": "Your name"}'