Overlay Network Transaction History Tracking
An index that only keeps current data cannot answer questions about how something got to be the way it is. This extends the index to retain the spent history as well, so past states remain queryable.
18 standards
Provenance
Proving that what you hold is the same thing that was issued, by following the outputs back to the origin. Standards here define how that chain is recorded and how a verifier walks it.
Also searched as origin, origin tracking, chain of custody, remittance, lineage.
Filed under
18 standards, spread across 5 of the 12 topics.
Start with
BRC-150
1Sat Provenance Remittance for Basket `1sat`
Proving an item is the genuine one, and not a copy of it, means tracing it back to where it began. This packages that trail so it can be checked without asking any service for help.
Filed under Tokens
Standards about this
Provenance is the main subject of these 5.
64 150 1Sat Provenance Remittance for Basket `1sat`
Proving an item is the genuine one, and not a copy of it, means tracing it back to where it began. This packages that trail so it can be checked without asking any service for help.
156 Latched 1Sat Provenance for Basket 1sat (Withdrawn)Withdrawn by the author. Do not implement.
Sometimes a standards document gets written, then the people behind it change plans and stop building what it described. If nothing marks that document as dead, other developers can still find it, assume it works, and build against something that was never finished or safe to use. This document exists to stop that from happening by pointing everyone to the real, working approach instead.
247 Identity-Key Issuer AttestationDraft (proposed number, not a BSVA assignment)
Anyone could mint a digital asset on Bitcoin and slap a name on it, but a person holding that asset later had no reliable way to know who actually made it or whether a signature claim was real or copy-pasted from somewhere else. Without a fixed, checkable link between an asset and its creator, buyers were trusting unverifiable labels, and marketplaces had no consistent way to show provenance. This makes it possible to prove, cryptographically and tied to the exact transaction, which wallet identity issued a given asset.
252 Short Proofs for Bitcoin Native TokensOpen
Proving that a token transfer is legitimate normally means checking its entire history back to the moment the token was created, and that history gets longer every time the token changes hands. For a token that has traded thousands of times, a wallet would have to download and verify thousands of past transactions just to accept one payment. This makes long-lived, actively traded tokens slow and expensive to receive, no matter how simple the actual transfer is.
Standards that touch it
These are about something else, and deal with provenance on the way.
63 Genealogical Identity Protocol
Proving who you are online generally means trusting a company to vouch for you. This explores building identity from family records instead, tying genealogical documents to keys so the claim rests on evidence rather than an authority.
107 Enhanced Mandala Token Protocol
A minimal token protocol leaves amounts as plain numbers, which anyone in the chain could quietly alter. This adds a cryptographic commitment so tampering is detectable, without abandoning the minimal design.
145 Registry-Free Typed Content Anchor with On-Chain Code Provenance
Committing to a piece of content along with what kind of thing it is usually means registering the type somewhere. This derives a single fixed-length commitment from the type and content directly, so no registry is needed.
147 1Sat Ordinals Basket Profile for BRC-46 / BRC-100
Wallets and applications both need to agree on where collectible items live and how they are described. This reserves the group name and pins down what may go in it and how it is labelled.
158 Outpoint BEEF
Sometimes you need to prove something about one specific piece of a transaction, like a single stamped token, rather than the whole transaction. Existing proof formats bundle everything needed to trust a transaction, but they assume the thing you care about is the transaction itself, not one output buried inside it. Without a way to say "prove this particular output," you either send far more data than needed or leave out the odd extra transactions a token proof actually depends on.
159 1Sat Ordinals — Single-Satoshi Tokens and Origin Tracking
A single satoshi, the smallest unit of bitcoin, can be moved around like any other coin, but there was no agreed way to treat one specific satoshi as a unique, trackable item that keeps its identity as it passes from wallet to wallet. Without that, you cannot build things like collectibles or one-of-a-kind tokens directly on bitcoin transactions, because every coin looks fungible and interchangeable. This gives that single satoshi a permanent name and a way to prove where it has been, so it can act like a non-fungible token.
174 Consensus-Unique Name Tokens — Identity Binding and Verified Resolution
Typing a name into a send box only works safely if that name provably belongs to one person and cannot be hijacked, forged, or silently reassigned by whoever runs the lookup service. Before this, uniqueness and identity for human-readable names depended on trusting a registrar or domain operator rather than on something a client could check for itself. This makes it possible to resolve a name to a payment-ready identity key and know the answer is correct without trusting whoever served it.
210 Derived Collectibles
A digital collectible is normally just a picture plus a boring list of past owners nobody looks at. This standard describes a way for the picture itself to change over time and with use, so that a piece can visibly age, shift with the seasons, or wear a mark its owner chose, all computed fresh by anyone looking rather than fetched from a server.
222 Consent Envelope: Verifiable Multi-Party Document Signing with On-Chain Signing Order
Signing a contract online today means trusting one company's database to say who signed, in what order, and when. If that company shuts down, gets bought, or gets compelled by a court, the "proof" you have is just whatever it says it is. This makes it possible for the proof of a signing to survive and be checked by anyone, long after the company that ran the signing is gone.
224 Block Media Format (BMF) — Composable On-Chain Audio/Video
Audio and video on chain is usually a single large file that cannot be edited, reused in part, or owned by more than one person. This describes it as a short timing document referencing separately owned pieces instead.
248 Offline Issuer Identity PackagesDraft (proposed number, not a BSVA assignment)
When a wallet shows you who issued an item, all it usually has is a public key, a string of letters nobody recognizes. Getting a real name and picture for that key has meant trusting a web link that can rot or change, or calling out to a server every time you want to show it, which fails the moment that server is down or lying. This makes it possible to show a trustworthy name and image for an issuer using only data the wallet already has, with no live lookup required.
255 Bitcoin Native Tokens (BNT): Compact FormatOpen
Some token designs on Bitcoin require a recipient to check every past transfer back to the very first issuance of the token before trusting a payment, and each of those historical records repeats a long identifying code plus a full public key for every step. That repetition makes the proof a recipient has to check grow large and expensive with every hop, and makes combining several received amounts pull in even more history. A smaller way to write the same kind of token lets wallets and recipients do that same trustless checking with far less data moving around.
257 Proving Service for Bitcoin Native Tokens, 1Sat Ordinals and BSV-21Open
A token can change hands hundreds of times, and each new holder is expected to check the token's full history back to its creation to be sure it is real. For a long-lived token that check gets slower and more expensive every time it trades, to the point where a wallet on a laptop simply cannot do it fast enough. This makes it possible to hand a newcomer a single small proof instead of the whole history, while still letting them verify it themselves rather than trust whoever gave it to them.
Usually read alongside
Concepts that keep appearing on the same standards as this one.
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