How to Secure C2PA-Signed Content with Blockchain Proof: Simple Guide

In today’s digital landscape, where content can be easily manipulated, ensuring the authenticity and integrity of your creations is crucial. The Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) standard, developed by the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), provides verifiable metadata for digital content to combat misinformation. To further enhance the security and trustworthiness of this metadata, integrating blockchain technology offers an additional layer of protection, ensuring the authenticity of your content through digital content verification and blockchain authentication.

This article will guide you through a simple, one-step process to secure your C2PA-signed content with blockchain proof, ensuring that your content remains authentic and tamper-proof.

What You Need to Secure C2PA Content with Blockchain

Before you begin, make sure you have the following tools and accounts ready

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Capture Account

Capture consists of several applications, and is the primary creation tool in the Numbers Protocol network. Using Capture you can easily take a photo from your phone (iOs & Android), or you can upload your photos from the desktop using Capture Dashboard.

You can easily get a Capture Account by registering from this link.

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C2PA Tools / Photos already signed with C2PA Tools

Tools with C2PA signing feature could be a Generative AI Tools with C2PA support such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Adobe Firefly, or an image editor with C2PA support such as Adobe Photoshop.

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How to Add Blockchain Proof to Your C2PA-Signed Content: Step-by-Step Guide

Adding blockchain proof to your C2PA-signed content is a straightforward process. For this tutorial, we’ll use Capture Dashboard to register the blockchain proof, you can follow these steps.

Label your content with C2PA Metadata & Register it to the blockchain

If you already have a C2PA signed content, you can skip this step. Otherwise you can use your preferred C2PA-compatible software such as Adobe Photoshop (you may have to enable Content Credentials first) to create digital content and embed a C2PA metadata, then save the C2PA signed content file.

Alternatively you could also generate C2PA signed content directly with AI Tools such as ChatGPT as they support C2PA signing features.

Once you have your C2PA signed content, login to your Capture Dashboard and upload your C2PA-signed content. Once the file is uploaded, you can view the blockchain proof by clicking on ‘Publish’ and then ‘Share asset profile’. The asset profile link will be copied on your clipboard and you can paste it in your browser search bar to access it.

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The asset profile page will show all the necessary information about the asset. You can get the Nid of the asset you uploaded in this page, this Nid will be used as one of the verification methods.

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How to Verify Blockchain Proof for C2PA Content

Verification of blockchain proof is as important as its creation. The great thing about using Capture is, the verify engine makes it very simple to verify any content!

First, visit verify.numbersprotocol.io.

You can paste over the Nid of your asset, or you can simply upload your asset to the verify site.

Once you have uploaded your asset, the AI engine will match the asset with what you have uploaded, and then show you the result. You can then click on the result to be directed to the Asset Profile page.

In the Asset Profile page, you can find all important information on your asset. If you’d like to know more in details about the Asset profile page, you can read it here.

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Now back to the Asset profile page, you can check the blockchain proof of your asset, by scrolling down, and clicking on the metadata link.

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The Metadata will show important information such as what tool is the asset created with, as shown in ‘generatedBy’ line, and what tool is used to sign the C2PA metadata of this file as shown in ‘generatedThrough’ line.

As you can see, the blockchain proof can contain all the information available in the C2PA metadata.

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And there you go! Not as hard as it sounds, right? For a more streamlined process, you can simply upload your content directly to the Capture Dashboard. This way, you can skip most of the steps mentioned above.

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The Capture Dashboard is a versatile tool that not only allows you to get C2PA-signed content but also uploads it directly to the blockchain. By using Capture Dashboard, you ensure your content is both signed with C2PA and securely registered on the blockchain. You can also get your asset profile link directly through the Capture Dashboard!

Top Benefits of Blockchain Proof for C2PA Content Verification

By registering C2PA metadata on a public blockchain, anyone can independently verify the authenticity and history of the content, providing enhanced transparency. This transparency helps combat misinformation and builds trust with your audience.

Blockchain technology ensures that once the metadata is registered, it cannot be altered or deleted. As we previously discussed in another article, while useful, the C2PA label can be easily removed, along with few other issues that’s not yet being addressed, this makes it very important to integrate blockchain to complement the C2PA label. The immutability of the blockchain guarantees the integrity of your content, providing a higher level of security and ultimately leading to increased trust.

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Conclusion

By integrating blockchain with C2PA, you can secure your digital content and protect its integrity. Start using Capture today to register your content with blockchain and ensure its authenticity. According to a research report by Grayscale, blockchain can significantly mitigate these risks. By following this guide, you can ensure that your content remains tamper-proof and trustworthy.

If you are a developer, explore our API series for more automation options to streamline this process : 

1. Getting your Capture Authorization Token
2. Uploading your file with Capture API
3. Get the C2PA-signed file with Capture API

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Read more about Provenance, C2PA and Numbers Protocol

Learn more about how Numbers Protocol ensures digital media authenticity through blockchain and provenance standards. Explore our tech series for in-depth insights on securing digital content and combating misinformation. The goal of this multipart series is to discuss provenance at a high level and provide more technically inclined readers a full dive into how to execute digital provenance. You can find the full list of this series here :

Part 1: What is Provenance and why we need it

Part 2: What is C2PA, Add C2PA easily with Capture

Part 3: Take True Photo with C2PA Watermark from Mobile Phones

Part 4 : Add C2PA easily with Capture API

Part 5 : C2PA for Music and Video Platforms with Capture API

Part 6 : How Generative AI Companies Can Use C2PA with Capture API – Part 1

Part 7 : Integrating C2PA with Numbers Protocol for Generative AI – Part 2

Part 8 : Verify and Browse Content Information

Part 9 : How Numbers Protocol Enhances C2PA with a Sustainable Blockchain Solution

Part 10 : How C2PA and Blockchain Verify Election News and Combat Misinformation

Part 11 : How C2PA and Blockchain Technology Preserve Human History

Part 12 : You are here

Part 13 : How Numbers Mainnet Offers a Sustainable, Secure, and Inclusive Blockchain Solution