I-Corps: Blockchain-backed system that establishes the provenance of digital images and videos

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project explores translation of a media authentication technology. In an increasingly digitized world, this technology allows for anyone to instantly check the authenticity of an image or video. This technology can be used in a number of applications, such as verification of video recordings, copyright management, supply chain management, chain-of-custody processes, and other uses. This I-Corps project advances the development of blockchain-backed technology to provide a visual proof of occurrence of an event. The technology frontend allows a controlled capture of images and/or videos, computes a unique signature of the media, and collects metadata such as date, time, ownership. and device identification. In the backend, a blockchain places the unique signature and meta information in a block committed upon consensus by two-thirds of the blockchain participants. Blockchain consensus guarantees the immutability of the media once the block is committed. A certified recipient can re-compute the unique signature from the file, search the blockchain for a matching block, obtain proof that the media is authentic, and instantly obtain the metadata, such as the date and time. The content creator could be anonymized or copyright information can be validated.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.