Research

Aqta Research (2026). Decision Receipts: A Verifiable Primitive for AI Evidence That Survives a Challenge. Working paper v0.1, Aqta Technologies, Dublin. https://aqta.ai/research/working-paper/

@techreport{aqtaresearch2026receipts,
  title       = {Decision Receipts: A Verifiable Primitive for AI Evidence That Survives a Challenge},
  author      = {{Aqta Research}},
  institution = {Aqta Technologies},
  address     = {Dublin, Ireland},
  year        = {2026},
  month       = {6},
  type        = {Working paper},
  number      = {v0.1},
  url         = {https://aqta.ai/research/working-paper/}
}

Page last updated 2026-07-25.

Our thesis

The core claim

ATTESTATION-v1 is an open protocol; Seal is the reference implementation. Three pillars follow.

Reference implementations

Verify the claims

Four commands, no account. Once the key and the pack are on disk, nothing calls back to us:

$ pip install aqta-verify-receipt

$ curl -sL https://app.aqta.ai/security/pubkey.txt -o aqta.pub

$ curl -sL https://app.aqta.ai/samples/sample-evidence-pack.zip -o pack.zip
$ unzip -oq pack.zip -d pack

$ python <<'PY'
import json
from aqta_verify_receipt import verify_receipt
key = open("aqta.pub").read().strip()
print(verify_receipt(json.load(open("pack/receipt.json")), trusted_public_key=key))
PY

VerifyResult(valid=True, reason=None, key_source='pinned', envelope='ATTESTATION-v1')

The pack holds a receipt the production gateway emitted and signed, plus the policy text in force at that moment. The key it is pinned against is fetched separately from app.aqta.ai/security/pubkey.txt, not read out of the zip. Change one character in pack/receipt.json and the signature stops matching. To sign a receipt yourself in the browser, use aqta.ai/verify, which runs on a separate demo key rather than the production one.

Selective disclosure preview. BN254 Schnorr verification is live; a Groth16 verifier runs over a fixed demo circuit. Early research, not a shipped feature.

Proof

The dated public artefact

The same signing pipeline that produces Seal receipts demonstrates the mechanism on a dated prediction. The primitive does not care whether the decision is a policy call or a forecast.

Open questions

Open research questions

If any of these resonate, email hello@aqta.ai with subject prefix [research].

Protocol

• Cross-provider receipt aggregation. When agents run on three model clouds, how should receipts under different regimes be aggregated and queried as one evidence corpus without breaking offline verifiability?
• Post-quantum migration. Minimum-disruption path from a classical signature to a post-quantum one such that classical-regime receipts remain verifiable indefinitely. The signature is already a tagged field, not the format.
• ZK receipts for sensitive prompts. Extend BN254 Schnorr + Groth16 so a receipt proves policy was enforced and the right model was called, without revealing prompt or output, while staying offline-verifiable.

Application

• Regulator-readable export. Right export format for a multi-month receipt chain so a Central Bank examiner can ingest, query, and verify with off-the-shelf tools.
• Audit-cost economics. Real cost of producing, storing, and querying a signed receipt at bank scale, and where the receipt layer pays for itself against one contested decision.
• Receipt and differential privacy. When receipts aggregate across organisations under a DP budget, how do per-receipt guarantees and privacy guarantees compose without one eroding the other?

Support

Infrastructure

AWS Activate supplies self-serve startup credits for gateway infrastructure. Auth0 is the identity vendor for enterprise SSO (SAML/OIDC). Selected for WeBuild Cohort 2 under the Shared Island Enterprise Scheme (programme selection, not institutional backing).