ATL Protocol
The Infrastructure of Truth.
When AI hallucinates, logs get wiped, or deepfakes blur reality — where do you look? ATL is the Flight Recorder: mathematically unforgeable history where nothing can be deleted, inserted, or reordered. Even we can’t rewrite it.
The Problem
Digital history is mutable. And in domains where history matters — defense, intelligence, legal proceedings — that’s unacceptable.
“The logs say X.” — Who controls the logs?
“The AI didn’t do that.” — Prove it.
“This document existed before the lawsuit.” — Says who?
“Nothing was deleted between events A and B.” — How would you know?
Database administrators can rewrite records. AI outputs vanish after the chat window closes. Timestamps are trivial to forge. Entries can be silently removed from the middle of a log. We’ve built critical infrastructure on foundations of trust — and trust doesn’t scale.
The Solution
ATL provides mathematical guarantees where promises fail. The core insight: decouple verification from visibility.
Selective Disclosure
Prove the existence and integrity of a specific entry without revealing the entire log. Hashes are anchored publicly; data remains private. You can prove one AI inference happened without exposing your entire conversation history.
Chronological Integrity (Super-Trees)
Not just “this event existed” — but “nothing was deleted, nothing was inserted, the sequence is complete.” Multiple data trees aggregate into a single Super-Tree. Any two receipts can cryptographically prove they belong to the same unbroken history — offline, without contacting the server. If an entry was removed from the middle, the proof breaks.
Hybrid Anchoring
Trust derived from two independent, immutable roots:
- TSA (RFC 3161): Legal-grade proof of time, court-admissible
- Bitcoin: Eternal mathematical proof of existence via OpenTimestamps
Who Needs This
Defense & Intelligence
Supply chain integrity for weapons systems. Provenance tracking for intelligence data. Forensic evidence that survives classification reviews. When the question is “did this really happen?” — ATL provides the answer that holds up.
AI Accountability
Flight recorder for autonomous agents. Every prompt and inference hashed and anchored. When an AI violates safety protocols or generates harmful content — the cryptographic trail is undeniable and unalterable.
Legal & Compliance
Court-admissible evidence chains. NIST AI RMF compliance. EU AI Act traceability requirements. Ransomware forensics where you need to prove what existed before the attack.
Critical Infrastructure
Financial audit trails. Healthcare record integrity. Any domain where “the logs were modified” cannot be an acceptable answer.
Enterprise & SaaS
Prove to your customers not just that an event happened, but that the complete sequence of events is intact. Audit trails for fintech, insurtech, legaltech. Dispute resolution where both parties can independently verify the same unbroken history. When your client asks “show me everything that happened” — you can prove there’s nothing missing.
Technical Foundation
Open Standard (Apache 2.0)
ATL is designed as foundational internet infrastructure, not a proprietary product. NIST-aligned cryptographic primitives. RFC 8785 (JCS) canonicalization.
Reference Implementation
- atl-core: Cryptographic engine in Rust. Merkle Super-Trees.
- atl-server: 5,000+ RPS on a single node.
- atl-cli: Independent verification tool.
Learn More
Full protocol specification, architecture diagrams, and integration guides: