Vatnipedia: Taking Out The Trash

Proof Against Erasure: How Vatnipedia Will Lock Down Evidence of War Crimes

In an age where war crimes are live-streamed—only to be denied, deleted, or distorted hours later—the need for permanent, tamper-proof evidence systems has never been more urgent.

Vatnipedia, a collaborative intelligence project tracking disinformation and geopolitical influence, is building a layered trust framework to defend truth. And part of that defence means locking down the evidence of atrocities before they disappear.

Here’s how we intend to do it.

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🧩 Step 1: Collecting and Classifying Evidence

Whether it’s satellite imagery, Telegram leaks, or battlefield footage, raw data flows into Vatnipedia’s graph network (built on Neo4j). Each artifact is:

• Tagged by source

• Linked to relevant events, actors, and narratives

• Versioned and annotated by users, investigators or partnered OSINT groups

This preserves context, not just content.

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🧱 Step 2: Creating a Cryptographic Fingerprint

We don’t store raw videos on the blockchain. That would be wasteful and expensive.

Instead, Vatnipedia generates a SHA-256 hash of each file or record:

• This hash is a unique digital fingerprint.

• Even a one-pixel change in the source file produces a different hash.

• It proves the evidence hasn’t been modified—ever.

Think of it like sealing the evidence in a glass box, with a digital signature burned into the lock.

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🔗 Step 3: Anchoring to the Blockchain

That hash—along with metadata like:

• Time of upload

• Source verification (e.g. Bellingcat, Syrian Archive)

• Analyst who submitted or verified it

...is written to a public blockchain. This becomes a permanent anchor in a tamper-resistant ledger.

We use lightweight, low-cost blockchains (e.g. Filecoin, Polygon, Arweave) for:

• Anchoring trust events

• Time-stamping evidence

• Recording analyst attestations

No one—not a regime, not a judge, not even Vatnipedia itself—can edit or delete this chain.

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🧠 Step 4: Federated Trust and Dispute Resolution

Disputes about evidence or source authenticity don’t happen in a vacuum.

Vatnipedia’s Public Trust Layer records:

• Analyst reputations

• Community votes of confidence

• Withdrawal of trust (e.g. if an uploader is later found to be manipulating data)

These trust events are also periodically anchored to blockchain, preserving a record of who trusted whom, when, and why.

This builds a chain of accountability, not just data.

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💡 Why It Matters

• When governments erase videos or platforms auto-delete posts, Vatnipedia keeps a fingerprint on-chain.

• When propagandists say “that never happened”, the blockchain says otherwise.

• When war criminals are brought to trial, the evidence trail includes cryptographic proof, not hearsay.

This isn’t just a nerdy NAFO obsession with decentralisation. It’s a strategy to preserve truth under fire.

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🛡️ Bottom Line

In the fog of war—and the blizzard of disinformation—truth is fragile.

By anchoring evidence cryptographically, Vatnipedia offers a resilient system that makes denial futile, revisionism detectable, and justice just a little more possible.

Because if we can’t lock down the truth, someone will always try to erase it.