Investigative Evidence and Source-Safe Delivery

Permanent, tamper-proof evidence archives for investigative journalism, human rights documentation, and source-protected whistleblowing. Once it's on-chain, no takedown order can touch it.

Publish once. Censor never.

Evidence is only as strong as where it's stored.

Key challenges

Digital evidence disappears

Investigative journalism depends on primary sources - documents, communications, recordings. Hosting them on traditional servers means they can be deleted, altered, or simply expire when a domain lapses. Evidence that disappears cannot be verified.

Platforms comply with takedown orders

Cloud storage and social platforms receive thousands of government requests each year and comply with most of them. A document hosted on S3, Drive, or Dropbox can be erased by a court order, a compliance team, or a rogue employee.

Source files are silently tampered

A PDF stored on a web server can be replaced in place with an altered version - the URL stays the same, no one is notified. There is no native mechanism in HTTP or cloud storage to prove a file has not been changed since first published.

How Evercore protects the record.

Solution

Source identity never leaves your infrastructure

The source's identity is anonymised before any data is prepared for upload. A one-way SHA-256 hash of a source reference can be stored as a tag - enough to prove source consistency across documents without revealing identity. Evercore never receives personally identifiable information.

Evidence encrypted server-side before transit

The raw document is encrypted with AES-256-GCM using a key derived from your organisation's API credentials. The ciphertext is what reaches Arweave. Even a full network compromise cannot expose plaintext document contents without your organisation's credentials.

SHA-256 fingerprint proves document integrity

Before upload, the plaintext document is fingerprinted with SHA-256. The hash is stored as an Arweave transaction tag. Anyone with access to the original document can verify it has not changed since publication - the fingerprint is permanently on-chain.

TX ID is the permanent public record

Once confirmed, the Arweave transaction ID is immovable. No government, platform, or legal threat can cause a block to be rewritten. The document is accessible from any Arweave gateway globally. There is no server to seize, no domain to lapse, no compliance team to call.

A chain tip everyone can read - a story only you can decrypt.

Publication anchors ciphertext on Arweave with a consensus timestamp; only people with keys can decrypt - the existence of the TX is public, the payload is not.

• Uncensorable anchor: Once included in a block, the TX ID cannot be delisted at protocol level - there is no "compliance button" on Arweave the way there is on cloud storage.
• Source-safe tagging: Store hashed story refs and org codes on-chain; keep PII and source identifiers in systems that never touch public tags.
• Integrity by default: SHA-256 fingerprints ride alongside ciphertext so readers with the file can prove bytes match what was anchored.
• Post-newsroom survival: If the outlet disappears, gateways still serve the ciphertext - the chain outlives any single employer or domain renewal.

Can a journalist protect their source identity on Arweave?

Source metadata is never attached to Arweave transactions unless you explicitly tag it. File content is encrypted before upload. Arweave transaction metadata is public - use Evercore's anonymous upload relay to decouple upload identity from your team's wallet.

What happens if my newsroom closes?

Documents stored on Arweave are permanent by protocol. Any TX ID remains accessible via any Arweave gateway indefinitely - even if Evercore and your newsroom both cease to exist. This is the core value of permaweb archiving.

Can I prove a document existed before a specific date?

Yes. The Arweave block timestamp provides cryptographic proof of existence. Block hashes are verifiable on-chain by any third party. This is used to establish prior art, pre-publication drafts, and timeline evidence in legal disputes.