What does Arkova actually do?

Arkova creates a permanent, independently verifiable proof of any credential or document. It anchors a tamper-evident fingerprint of the file to a public network, so anyone can later confirm the issuer, the timing, and the integrity — without Arkova ever holding the file.

How is this different from DocuSign, a notary, or a timestamp service?

DocuSign proves someone signed; a notary vouches with their seal — both depend on that vendor or person still being reachable years later. Arkova proves the exact document existed, unchanged, at a specific time, anchored to a public network no single company controls, so the proof survives even if Arkova, DocuSign, or the notary is long gone. It complements e-signature and notarization rather than replacing them: sign or notarize as usual, then anchor the result for permanent, independent verifiability.

Do you store my documents?

No. For documents you upload, fingerprinting happens in your browser and only the fingerprint and minimal metadata are transmitted. For documents pulled from a source you connect, such as DocuSign or Google Drive, the file is fingerprinted in memory on our servers and then discarded immediately; it is never written to our database, logs or storage. Even if we were breached, your documents stay private — because we never had them.

Can my document be reconstructed from the fingerprint?

No. A SHA-256 fingerprint is a one-way function: it maps any file to a fixed 64-character value that cannot be reversed back into the original. It confirms two files are identical without revealing anything about the contents. We can prove your document is authentic; we cannot read, reconstruct, or reproduce it — and neither can anyone who intercepts the fingerprint.

What does "tamper-evident" actually mean?

If a single byte of the original document changes, its fingerprint no longer matches the anchored one and verification fails. Integrity is provable by mathematics, not asserted by us.

What happens if Arkova goes away?

The proof outlives us. Because the fingerprint is anchored to a public network, a record stays independently verifiable even if Arkova's servers are offline or the platform that issued it shuts down.

What is the "public network" you anchor to?

An open, permanent, widely-replicated public network that no single company — including Arkova — owns or can quietly rewrite. Because the fingerprint is committed there rather than to our servers, anyone can independently check a record without trusting us, and the proof keeps working even if Arkova does not.

How does someone verify a record?

Every record has a public ID. Anyone can look it up — on the Verify page or with a single API call — to see the issuer, the anchor time, and the tamper-evident status. No account, and no access to the original file, required.

Can a record be revoked or corrected after it's anchored?

The original proof is permanent by design — that's what makes it trustworthy. But a record also carries a live status (Active, Revoked, Superseded, or Expired), and an issuer can revoke a record or publish a corrected version that points back to the original. Verification always shows the current status alongside the immutable anchor, so you get both an unforgeable history and an up-to-date state.

Can I integrate it with my systems?

Yes. A REST API (single-call and batch), HMAC-signed webhooks, and direct anchoring from sources like DocuSign plug into the SIS, LMS, HRIS, and ATS stacks you already run — with a full audit trail of every call.

The verification layer runs in production today; the full product is in early access. Join the waitlist and we will reach out to scope a pilot.

Arkova Monthly — July 2026

Who we are

Arkova is the trust layer for records, humans and AI agents alike. We create a cryptographic fingerprint of each document and anchor that proof to a public ledger, so anything issued once can be verified forever, by anyone, without trusting us or anyone else to hold the original. Our updated deck can be found here.

This month at Arkova

In July, Arkova moved from building product to signed business. HakiChain, a legal-technology platform serving Kenya, signed as our first paying customer, with pilot go-live set for August 10. Login Defense signed as a paying integration partner, and another prospective partner is in active negotiation (just missing the cutoff for this newsletter). Our independent verification layer is complete end to end, which means a customer, an auditor or an AI agent can take an Arkova proof and verify it themselves without querying Arkova at all. A demo of our dashboard verification can be found here, and a demo of our DocuSign integration can be found here.

Our SDK package carries a full MIT licence and is fully active (see the demo here). On security, we commissioned an independent external assessment of our codebase and infrastructure this month.

Our SOC 2 Type II readiness work continues. Our provisional patent application is filed! We would like to thank Menlo Park Patents for advising us throughout the process. We hold CSA STAR Level 1, the entry tier of the Cloud Security Alliance’s trust program, and are partnering with Sekura to provide SAST + DAST scans, as well as continuous cybersecurity monitoring.

Arkova was accepted into Claude for Startups, Anthropic’s program for early-stage companies building on Claude. Additionally, after several lovely conversations with multiple members of the team, Carson will be visiting spARK Labs by Ark Invest in Tampa Bay next month. Conversations continue with higher education consultants, and we would like to welcome Jenny Parks to the team as our Higher Education Advisor. As we continue to make headway with the credentialing and professional licensing markets, having someone with a deep understanding of higher education and digital credentials is critical to our success. Jenny brings over 30 years of experience to the team, and has been critical to helping us understand the current landscape and making crucial introductions.

We are also delighted to welcome a business development lead for Africa: a huge welcome to our new colleague Uyiosa! Uyiosa has been our colleague on various projects for years. As we continue to make headway on the continent, he will be in charge of discovering and closing sales, representing us at events, and providing insight into current regulations on the continent.

Product update

This month we shipped:

Independent verification, end to end. Proof bundles now carry everything needed to verify a record without us: the document hash, the ledger transaction, the block header and the Merkle path. Proofs are embedded in the PDF certificate, returned by the API, signed against our DID, and checkable with a reference verifier we now publish. If you’d like to check one yourself, look up ARK-2026-14D7694B on search.arkova.ai.
Webhooks complete. Partners now get a full event catalogue, signed test pings, and a replay and dead-letter queue view, so every event Arkova sends can be inspected, tested and re-run.
Verified continuing-education credentials for CPAs and attorneys. Accountants and lawyers can now verify and display their continuing-education credits right on their Arkova credentials, including NASBA CPE credit details for CPAs and ethics-hour breakdowns for CLE. Anyone can confirm them on our public verification page, and audit-ready PDF and JSON compliance exports are now live, alongside a new organisation-level dashboard.
CTDL data layer for credentials. This month we ran a live test against Credential Engine’s own registry: we took a published Nursing Assistant certificate from Career Discover Academy and fed its registry page into Arkova. Our system fetched the page itself, correctly identified it as a Nurse Aide Training Program, fingerprinted it, and anchored it to an immutable cryptographic ledger — start to finish, about ninety seconds, and it’s now permanently recorded. But the more interesting result came by accident: while selecting a good example, we checked six registry records and found two already dead — a third of a small, random sample had already rotted. That’s the gap Arkova closes: a registry entry only promises that a page says something; once the page is gone, no one can prove what it said. We turn that promise into permanent, verifiable proof.

Momentum

First paying customer. HakiChain signed as our first paying customer. Kenya pilot go-live is set for August 10.
Integration partners. Login Defense signed as a paying customer and an active integration partner. A second customer and integration partner is in active negotiation.
Ecosystem and credentialing. Credential meetings and integration are progressing, with exciting conversations open across higher education led by Jenny Parks.

On the calendar

Grand Rapids Tech Week. Carson is hosting an event on September 15.
Midwest Bitcoin Conference. Carson is speaking on September 23–24, 2026.
Decentralized World. Uyiosa is attending on August 15 in Lagos, Nigeria.

What we shipped, in one email a month

Arkova moves from building product to signed business: HakiChain signs as our first paying customer, Login Defense signs as an integration partner, and independent verification ships end to end.

Who we are

This month at Arkova

Product update

Momentum

On the calendar

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