Countries score below 50 out of 100 on the Corruption Perceptions Index 2025. The global average fell to 42, the lowest in a decade.
CPI < 50 122CPI ≥ 50 60Each dot is one country
Trust as a default, not a decision
Government records nobody can rewrite without everyone noticing.
Today, trusting a public record means trusting the office that keeps it. HardState makes that trust the default instead: every step is signed, every citizen gets a receipt, and a 32-byte fingerprint of the public log goes to Bitcoin every ten minutes — so edits, deletions and backdating become provable by anyone, with no need to trust the office.
- 36 bytes
- per daily anchor in Bitcoin
- 960 bytes
- to prove one record among a billion
- Zero
- personal data on-chain
₿ Bitcoin block 921,384
OP_RETURN 485353 01 93796826…✓ anchored — provable by anyoneAnchors, simulated feed
Checkpoint #48,121106c28…e1f2900 recordsblock 921,384Checkpoint #48,122e3adef…65651,237 recordsblock 921,390Checkpoint #48,123a8b340…c13b1,574 recordsblock 921,396Checkpoint #48,124d978d6…7cc81,211 recordsblock 921,402Checkpoint #48,125100099…c3021,548 recordsblock 921,408Checkpoint #48,126e4f6b3…5f211,185 recordsblock 921,414Checkpoint #48,127446bdf…40fb1,522 recordsblock 921,420Checkpoint #48,1280ae3c2…ba231,159 recordsblock 921,426Checkpoint #48,12930106c…9f551,496 recordsblock 921,432Checkpoint #48,130391c21…3d9d1,133 recordsblock 921,438Checkpoint #48,121106c28…e1f2900 recordsblock 921,384Checkpoint #48,122e3adef…65651,237 recordsblock 921,390Checkpoint #48,123a8b340…c13b1,574 recordsblock 921,396Checkpoint #48,124d978d6…7cc81,211 recordsblock 921,402Checkpoint #48,125100099…c3021,548 recordsblock 921,408Checkpoint #48,126e4f6b3…5f211,185 recordsblock 921,414Checkpoint #48,127446bdf…40fb1,522 recordsblock 921,420Checkpoint #48,1280ae3c2…ba231,159 recordsblock 921,426Checkpoint #48,12930106c…9f551,496 recordsblock 921,432Checkpoint #48,130391c21…3d9d1,133 recordsblock 921,438
Every bribe at a government window leaves a record that the same office can quietly edit.
Countries measure corruption through surveys and indexes. What no survey can measure is how often the paper trail itself was changed, because the only copy belongs to the office being audited.
Paid in bribes worldwide every year, about 2% of global GDP, according to the IMF.
Public service users in Asia paid a bribe in the past year: 836 million people across 17 countries.
Case study: Mexico+48.7%
Bribes in public procedures cost MXN 17,707 million in 2025, up from 11,910 million in 2023. Business licenses are the second most corrupt procedure in the country.
Sources: Transparency International CPI 2025; IMF, Corruption: Costs and Mitigating Strategies (2016); Global Corruption Barometer Asia 2020; INEGI ENCIG 2023 and 2025, constant 2018 pesos.
Why it holds up
Cheap enough to run for years, open enough to plug into anything, and anchored where nobody can quietly rewrite it.
$277
per year, all-in
Cheap enough to run forever
Anchoring every step to Bitcoin costs an institution about $277 a year — a flat cost, with no token and no fee per citizen.
One open standard to plug into
HSS-1 is public. Your system signs a 32-byte hash and posts it; the receipt drops straight into the notice you already send.
Permanent and public
Every batch is anchored to Bitcoin mainnet and checkable in any browser — no trust in the office, or in us.
Same records. Opposite trust model.
Every institution already keeps a registry. The question is who has to be believed. A private database asks you to trust the office. HardState makes tampering provable to everyone.
Private institutional registryHardState
Who do you have to trust?The institution's word, and whoever has database access.No one. SHA-256, signatures and Bitcoin do the trusting for you.
If a record is edited or deleted?It changes silently. The old version is simply gone.The hash chain and Merkle root break, and the audit points to the exact record.
Who can verify it?Only insiders, using the same system you're questioning.Anyone, in a browser, for free — against public Bitcoin explorers.
Proof of when it happened?A timestamp column the same database can rewrite.A Bitcoin block height no one can move, not even us.
What the citizen holds?A screenshot or a PDF the office can deny.A signed receipt that verifies even if the office cooperates with nothing.
If the institution disappears?The records vanish with its servers.Receipts and anchors stay verifiable forever, with no server of ours either.
See it work
From a signed step to a proof anyone can check — without trusting the office that keeps the records.
The flow
- 1An official records a step
- 2It's anchored to Bitcoin
- 3The citizen gets a receipt
- 4Anyone verifies in the browser
One signature from an open session writes the event to the HardState Log — no prompts, no passwords.
Record a step
Session open · 2hCaseBP-2026-0002 · Business license
StepSite inspection — passed
OfficerAna Torres
Checkpoint#48,127
root 446bdf…40fb · 1,522 recordsanchored to ↓
₿ Bitcoin block 921,420
OP_RETURN 485353 01 446bdf…40fb✓ 6 confirmations✓ HardState receiptBusiness license · BP-2026-0002Site inspection — passed · Sep 2026
82dd31…0f020Verified
- ✓Fingerprint recomputed from public fields
- ✓Office signature is valid
- ✓Merkle path climbs to the root
- ✓Root found in Bitcoin block 921,420
- ✓Citizen receipt matches the record
The lab
The real engine, in your browser — SHA-256, Ed25519 signatures and RFC 9162 Merkle proofs; only Bitcoin is simulated. Follow one record from its fingerprint to the chain, then play the corrupt insider and watch the audit point to exactly what changed.
- 1Bases
- 2Process
- 3Result
- 4Verification
Bases
One record → one fingerprint
With a salt, even a guessable record gets a fingerprint nobody can reverse. HardState salts every record, so nothing personal is exposed.
The office log
Each record chains onto the one before
Play the insider
Tamper with a record, then run the audit
Result
Fingerprints fold into one root, written to Bitcoin
Current Merkle root
Bitcoin anchors (simulated)
Audit result
Open to everyone — who catches the tampering
Plain database
Root in Bitcoin, transaction id kept by the office
Run the audit to compare both designs against the same database.
HardState
Same anchor, plus record numbers, a hash chain, a public audit and citizen receipts
Run the audit to compare both designs against the same database.
Click any record or tree leaf to verify it step by step.
One standard, every record that has to be trusted
Institutions define their own event types — HardState reserves only identity and sessions. Here is the flagship use case in each sector, with the kind of steps an office would record.
Permits, licenses & inspections
Who approved this permit, and when? Answered by math, not by the same office you're questioning.
For exampleA restaurant's health inspection: the pass/fail is signed on the spot, and anyone can check it wasn't flipped later after a bribe.
- permit.apply
- inspection.result
- permit.decision
Diplomas & transcripts
Any employer verifies a degree in a browser, for free — even if the university's systems vanish.
For exampleAn employer drops a diploma PDF into the verifier and sees it was issued by the university on that date, and never revoked.
- credential.issue
- credential.revoke
Aid reaching beneficiaries
Each beneficiary holds a receipt proving they got aid, independent of the NGO's own books.
For exampleA family gets a QR slip for the food parcel they received — proof in their hands, even if a headcount is later inflated.
- beneficiary.enroll
- distribution.deliver
- report.submit
Whistleblowing & HR complaints
An employee holds Bitcoin-timestamped proof of when they filed — decisive in a retaliation dispute.
For exampleAn employee keeps a receipt for the day they reported wrongdoing — decisive if the company later says the report never arrived.
- report.file
- report.acknowledge
- investigation.close
Supply-chain provenance
A medicine or part carries a tamper-evident trail from manufacture to the hands that dispense it.
For exampleA pharmacist scans a medicine batch and sees its unbroken trail from the factory — a forged certificate no longer matches.
- batch.manufacture
- batch.ship
- batch.dispense
Notarized documents
A notarized act gets an anchor anyone can check, without a central registry in the middle.
For exampleA notarized contract gets a Bitcoin anchor the client can verify themselves, years later, with no registry to call.
- document.notarize
Open resource
A public map of who you can actually verify
The Coverage Index scores every institution on HardState — identity, anchoring and openness — and plots it on a map anyone can consult. It is a free dataset for journalists, auditors and citizens, not a dashboard locked behind a login.
Open the coverage mapWhat the simulation shows
We played the corrupt insider: someone who holds the signing key and edits, deletes or back-dates records to hide a bribe, running each attack 600 times. Every cover-up breaks the receipts citizens hold — so the more people check theirs, the more we catch. Drag the slider to see it.
Detection rises with each citizen who checks a receipt
Edit a record before the next anchorDelete a record and renumber the restInsert a backdated recordDetection follows 1 − (1 − p)k, where k is the number of receipts an attack invalidates. Covering one deletion breaks every receipt after it, so cover-ups get harder to hide the more they touch.
Show the numbers as a table
| 0% | 5% | 10% | 25% | 50% | 75% | 100% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edit a record before the next anchor | 0% | 23% | 42% | 71% | 94% | 98% | 100% |
| Delete a record and renumber the rest | 0% | 22% | 42% | 68% | 86% | 98% | 100% |
| Insert a backdated record | 0% | 25% | 43% | 71% | 89% | 97% | 100% |
9 sTo reverse a leaked unsalted record fingerprint on one CPU core. With HardState’s 256-bit salt: about 1061 years.
1,046Signed records per second on one core in our test. A busy office handles a few per minute.
Method, code and raw numbers are in the repository: sim/run.mjs and sim/RESULTS.md. Deleting the last record of a batch can leave no gap in the numbering, which is why the receipt matters even for simple deletions.
Priced so the honest office can always afford the truth
Citizens verify, hold receipts and check proofs free, forever. Institutions pay by the assurance they need — never per record. The free tier only ever widens.
Community
Free
for public bodies, schools and NGOs
Everything a public office needs to be auditable, for good.
- 10,000 records a month (the limit only goes up)
- Daily Bitcoin anchor + OpenTimestamps every 10 min
- Console, officials, sessions and API
- QR receipt for every citizen
- Explorer and Coverage Index listing
Professional
$390
/ month · $3,900 billed yearly
For notaries, companies and single offices that want more assurance.
- Everything in Community
- Hourly Bitcoin anchors + 10 express anchors a month
- Verified-domain badge and branded receipts
- Monthly signed audit report
- 100,000 records a month
Institution
$990
/ month · $9,900 billed yearly
For ministries, large universities, municipalities and aid programmes.
- Everything in Professional
- 99.9% SLA with service credits
- Express anchors on demand, up to 5 departments
- Onboarding, integration and quarterly audits
- 1,000,000 records a month
Government
From $60k
/ year · sales-led
For states, national agencies and multi-municipality programmes.
- Dedicated node and anchors, data residency
- Own-operator option and witness node
- Training and custom SLA
- Procurement paperwork, multi-year price protection
- Records by contract
Prices exclude tax and are shown in your local currency at checkout (USD, MXN, EUR). Registered NGOs and public universities get a standing 25% off. See the full comparison on thepricing page.
From a working product to a public good
HardState is open source and designed to be run by many hands: offices write, universities and civil society audit, anyone verifies.
- 1
October 2026
Core is live on Bitcoin mainnet with passkey signing, plus the open simulation and this very demo.
- 2
National scale
Permits, inspections and public purchases, with one national root a day and express anchors on demand.
- 3
Open standard
Registered as a Digital Public Good so any country can plug in its own legal timestamping authority.
A public-good model: citizens verify free, forever; small institutions run free up to ~10,000 records a month; paid plans start at $390/month and only widen the free tier. Adoption starts with institutions that want to prove they are clean.
Serves UN Sustainable Development Goal 16: targets 16.5 (reduce bribery), 16.6 (transparent institutions) and 16.10 (public access to information).
Built on a decade of precedent
Anchoring government records already works. What earlier systems lacked was a receipt in the citizen's hands — the piece HardState adds.
Estonia
KSI hash chains protect health, court and business registries against insiders — but citizens can't check them on their own.
Georgia
Land titles anchored to Bitcoin through a private chain. It worked because the registry was already digital and trusted.
Argentina
The Official Gazette is stamped daily on the federal blockchain BFA, free of charge.