How a Capture is checked

When you make a Capture with Proofmode, the resulting Submission can be checked without taking this website’s word for it. This page explains that path. Configure the app on the Proofmode page. Event rules live on Privacy.

The Garden Crawl is a public contest that uses this model: original Captures in official Gardens, published so others can check them.

The path

Home teases this chain as glass-to-glass verification. This page is the long form. A Capture moves through four stages: Capture, Upload, Attest, and Verify.

01 Capture
02 Upload
03 Attest
04 Verify

Capture

At shutter-press, Proofmode creates a Capture and a Proofset — the cryptographic evidence bundled with that Capture. Signing happens on the device. This website does not hold your signing key and does not create the Proofset.

The Wallet address is the persistent, pseudonymous public identifier associated with your later Attestations. It is not your name, email, or phone number. See Privacy for what the Public submission map does and does not display.

This event’s unit of competition is an original Capture made with Proofmode’s in-app camera, not a photo imported from elsewhere or a file stored only on our servers. Setup is on the Proofmode page. Validity rules are on Compete.

Upload

If the only copy of a Capture lives as a filename on one organization’s servers, anyone checking it has to trust that organization still has the file, has not changed it, and will keep serving it.

IPFS addresses Capture media and related Proofset files by a content identifier (CID). The CID is derived from a hash of the bytes. Change a byte, and the identifier changes. An Attestation can point at those files so reviewers and the Public submission map retrieve the same bytes.

Organizer pinning, unpinning, and takedown are explained on Privacy’s decentralized storage and removal sections. This page does not restate those rules.

Attest

The chain is a shared public ledger. Proofmode publishes the Attestation there so the claim is not held only inside the app or on this campaign site.

An Attestation is a structured on-chain claim: this Capture, this Wallet address, this place and time, pointing at the CID and Proofset. Anyone can look that Attestation up without asking this website. This site does not submit chain activity.

Eligibility and prizes rest on that public claim remaining look-uppable, not on a private database on this site. An on-chain Attestation is not removed by unpinning media or hiding a Submission on the Public submission map. See Privacy’s decentralized storage.

Verify

Checking means reading the ledger, fetching the bytes by CID, and confirming they still match — without this website as intermediary for that check. A checker confirms the file hashes match the anchored CID, the C2PA manifest is valid, and the ledger receipt matches.

A checkable Attestation is a signed claim of place and time. It is not proof that the GPS signal was authentic.

This website is not the verifier of record. Judges, other participants, or a stranger can check.

What a checker looks at

Wallet address: The persistent, pseudonymous public identifier associated with the Attestations.
CID: How the Capture media and related Proofset bytes are addressed on IPFS.
Attestation: The public ledger claim a checker looks up.

Location Protocol

Location Protocol is a specification for portable, signed location records. It is not a camera app and not this website.

Proofmode uses it so the place-and-time claim is bound to the Capture media by CID and can be checked outside this site. The in-app control is Location Protocol Attestation; how to turn it on is on the Proofmode page.

This Garden Crawl is that standard used in a public contest: official Gardens, original Captures, Submissions others can check.

Location Protocol was designed by EASIER Data in collaboration with Astral. Proofmode, from the Guardian Project, is the Capture app that emits the Attestation.

Event rules

Privacy is the canonical event-rules page. Read it before you install Proofmode or make a Capture. Use these sections rather than this teaching page for the lists and warnings: