kton records how a result was produced and who vouched for it as small, signed, content-addressed records anyone can check — with no central server, no shared database, and no blockchain. An open, federated substrate for verifiable science.
Two small kernel binaries in dependency-free Go (plankton, nekton), plus an
optional cockpit (kton). Grab the prebuilt binaries, then run the smallest example end to
end — it signs a real record, verifies it, and prints the lineage.
# 1 — download the binaries for your platform from Releases, put them on PATH # github.com/kton-protocol/plankton/releases # 2 — run the smallest example, end to end git clone https://github.com/gitmick/kton-examples bash kton-examples/examples/01-hello-foton/run.sh ✓ signed foton · ✓ signature verified · producer resolved by output hash
No toolchain, no account, nothing to sign up for. Prefer to build from
source? It's go build, standard library only. Every example is a single bash run.sh
that creates real records and renders the graph — browse
all 14 →
A file is what it is (its hash) and which one it is (its id). kton records how one set of files became another, and what people signed about the result. The names are literal biology: plankton drifts with the current and knows no order; nekton swims, with direction.
A foton = inputs → command → outputs, every file named by its content hash, signed.
Stateless and order-independent — a computation's only real proof is that it re-runs. Stores no bytes, only
the hashes and which file went where.
A claim = a signed subject–predicate–object statement about a foton or file, by hash. Reviews, approvals, provenance, votes — rendered as nanopublications. A machine checks who signed, never whether it's true; that's the point of a signature.
The substrate (plankton + nekton) plus a thin cockpit that conducts both and reimplements neither. Records are in-toto Statements in DSSE envelopes — the language of SLSA, Sigstore, in-toto — so any standard tool already reads them. git for data provenance and sign-offs, across tools.
Provenance is only useful when it's on the page, not in an archive. The lens is one script pointed at a set of kton sources: it hashes every image on a page and, wherever a hash is known, drops a badge over the plot. Hover for the record; click through to inputs, code, environment, and sign-offs.
A miss is reported as a miss — no perceptual matching, no similarity dressed up as identity. Add your own sources in the browser, so which registries you consult is your choice, not the publisher's. The page and the registry never coordinated; they meet at the bytes.
The point of a substrate that says "trust no one" is that it is honest about the few things a hash, a signature, or a chain cannot decide — and mechanical about the many it can.
What's mechanical (lineage, reproduction, who signed, an unedited sealed chain) and what's a boundary (whose keys you believe, freshness, completeness over an open union). A key is not a person.
Every org self-hosts; peers overlay by hash. Adding a source can only add — it never makes a valid record invalid. Two readers with different sources reach the same verdict, differ only in what resolves.
A clean-room substrate extracted from the documented requirements of a modeling workbench, built to stand on its own. The dependency points cockpit → kton, never the reverse.
A thin, ontology-free kernel: signed subject–predicate–object over content hashes, interpreting no predicate. Vocabularies and trust roots are federated data, not protocol. v0.1 (draft).
kton is meant to be an open standard others implement independently, not just one codebase. The specification is being developed under the Linux Foundation / Joint Development Foundation Community Specification framework — a neutral, patent-aware home a standard needs. The kernel is deliberately small so a second, third, and fourth implementation are the whole point.
If you work in reproducibility, research software, regulated science, or distributed systems — this is the moment to shape it. Open an issue, bring an attack, try a re-implementation, or challenge the trust model. Especially the trust model.
Angaben gemäß §5 ECG und §25 Mediengesetz.
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