csoai/trust-chain-freshness

Trust-chain freshness

Two things in the Council of AI estate go out of date on their own, and this dataset is the receipt that somebody keeps checking them.

1. OpenTimestamps proofs

An OpenTimestamps stamp is created instantly and carries only a pending calendar attestation. Hours later the calendar's commitment lands in a Bitcoin block — but the published .ots file only says so once the completed path is fetched back and the file rewritten. Nothing does that on its own, so proofs sit reading "pending" long after they are attested, and the publisher looks weaker than the evidence it holds.

runs/run-<date>.jsonl has one row per published proof: its state before the run, its state after, and the Bitcoin block heights if it is attested.

• before_state / after_state — PENDING, BITCOIN, or NOT_A_PROOF
• after_blocks — Bitcoin block heights carried by the proof bytes
• rewritten — whether this run changed the file

manifest/manifest-<date>.json is the site's own manifest, rebuilt by its producer from the bytes on disk rather than edited to agree with anything. ots/ is an archive of the proof files themselves.

What "BITCOIN" means here, exactly: the proof bytes carry a BitcoinBlockHeaderAttestation, parsed by python-opentimestamps. It is not a check of that block header against a Bitcoin node — ots verify with a node does that, separately. A pending proof is a submitted request, not evidence of a time. Neither is called "anchored".

Upgrading is additive. It merges the completed path back onto the same commitment: the same message digest, the same operations tree. No subject file and no signed payload is altered. A proof whose calendar has not completed is not rewritten, and keeps saying pending.

2. The corrections ledger signature

https://councilof.ai/api/corrections publishes every claim this estate got wrong. Its own Ed25519 signature is checked on every request against did:web:csoai.org#board-attestation-1, and this loop re-derives that check independently from the served bytes. corrections-signature-<date>.json is that result, including the case where it does not verify.

Measurement, not certification. UNMEASURED and UNCHECKABLE are first-class states and are never printed as a pass.

Produced by scripts/pod-loops/trust-chain.sh in CSOAI-ORG/councilof-ai. CC-BY-4.0 — Council of AI (CSOAI Ltd, UK Companies House 16939677).

Objections, contact and corrections

To object to a row, ask for a re-check, request a correction or ask for a record to be withdrawn, email nicholas@csoai.org or use the appeals and dispute route at https://councilof.ai/dispute/. Corrections are listed in the corrections ledger at https://councilof.ai/api/corrections, with what changed and when. CSOAI Ltd (company no. 16939677, England and Wales) is the accountable publisher.

How to cite

CSOAI Ltd (Council of AI). Trust-chain freshness. 2026. Hugging Face dataset csoai/trust-chain-freshness. https://huggingface.co/datasets/csoai/trust-chain-freshness

@misc{csoai_trust_chain_freshness,
  title        = {Trust-chain freshness},
  author       = {{CSOAI Ltd}},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {Hugging Face dataset, https://huggingface.co/datasets/csoai/trust-chain-freshness},
  note         = {Corrections: https://councilof.ai/api/corrections}
}

Licence: CC-BY-4.0. Attribute Council of AI, CSOAI Ltd (16939677), https://councilof.ai.

Corrections and verification

• Corrections ledger (signed): https://councilof.ai/api/corrections. Corrections to CSOAI's published records are logged there with what changed and when.
• Verify a signed record yourself, free and without an account: https://councilof.ai/gspc-verify/ (step by step: https://councilof.ai/signed/HOW-TO-VERIFY.md).
• Conformance kit for signed-receipts/v1, with test vectors for implementers: https://councilof.ai/spec/signed-receipts/v1/conformance/