MSD Protocol

Check content integrity, signer validity, and provenance without depending on the application that produced the data.

Data Loses Its Context When It Moves

As data crosses APIs, pipelines, and models, the ability to prove what it is, where it came from, and that it has not changed gets left behind. MSD (Meta Structured Data) attaches a cryptographically signed record to the data, either as a self-contained envelope or embedded inside the file itself. The protocol is published on the MSD Network.

Protocol Principles

• Content-addressed structure, so data identifies itself by its content.

• Ed25519 signatures that establish who produced the data.

• Portable metadata carrying source, timestamp, signing key, and confidence, so any change breaks the signature.

Valid Versus Trusted

Anyone can generate a key locally and produce a valid signature, but a valid signature from an unknown key says nothing about who signed it. Trust requires a key endorsed via the MSD Network, giving a chain back to the MSD root. Verification needs no setup and works offline.

Formats and Honest Maturity

Signing supports dictionaries and common file types including PDF, images, and Office documents; the reference implementation is the open-source Python SDK, currently early alpha. Nothing here implies production standardization or external adoption beyond available evidence. Staple's commercial implementation is Audit Readiness.

Scope

MSD is an open specification for provenance. It is not the Staple product, and the open SDK is not at commercial-platform maturity.

Visit MSD Protocol

Read the specification on the MSD Network, or explore the code on GitHub.