Etch has evolved from a single-app provenance system into a general-purpose System-of-Records primitive. Every record submitted gets a cryptographic receipt — a Merkle-MMR proof that you can verify against the public root without trusting the issuer.
What Changed
Etch v2 introduces:
- >`/v1/records` API — Submit any structured record (clinical trial, signed PDF, AIS ping, contract decision) and receive a receipt with a Merkle inclusion proof.
- >Namespace isolation — Tenants get isolated record streams with independent roots and audit boundaries.
- >API-key authentication — Production-grade key management with per-namespace scopes.
- >Portable receipts — A receipt is a small JSON blob you can verify offline, against the public Merkle root, with no Etch dependency.
TrialSight as First Integration
[TrialSight](/portfolio/trialsight) is the first canonical integration. Every record pulled from its 10 public biomedical sources — ClinicalTrials.gov, PubMed, OpenAlex, NIH RePORTER, openFDA, USPTO, Europe PMC, SEC EDGAR, ClinVar, UniProt — is stamped through Etch on ingestion.
The receipt travels with the data. A biotech analyst can hand the JSON to compliance and they can independently verify: this trial record was present at this hash at this block height, not retrofitted later.
Why a Records Primitive?
Most "verifiable" systems are vertical: DocuSign for signatures, Chronicle for files, blockchain for transactions. The thesis behind Etch is that provenance is horizontal — every system that produces records needs the same primitive, and gluing a verifier into each domain is wasteful.
One API. Append-only Merkle MMR. Compact receipts. Bring your own schema.
What's Next
- >Assent ([assent.to](https://assent.to)) is the first canonical app on top of Etch — verifiable e-signing.
- >Maritime Intelligence AIS pipeline stamps every vessel ping.
- >Forecast outputs receive receipts so a prediction can be audited against the inputs that produced it.
The portfolio is converging on a shared substrate: every record, every prediction, every signature provable without trusting the vendor.