Starling Lab for Data Integrity is an academic research center that operates at the intersection of cryptography, decentralized web protocols, and the humanities. A joint initiative between the USC Shoah Foundation and Stanford University's Department of Electrical Engineering, the lab's mission is to develop and prototype tools and principles to establish trust in digital records. In an era of rampant misinformation and AI-generated content, Starling Lab is pioneering new methods to securely capture, store, and verify digital media.
The core of their work is the Starling Framework for Data Integrity, a comprehensive, open-source methodology for authenticating digital content. This framework is built on three pillars: Capture, which involves creating a chain of custody from the moment a photo or video is taken, Store, which uses decentralized networks like IPFS and Filecoin to securely distribute and preserve content, and Verify, which leverages immutable ledgers to register and audit the provenance of digital assets. This end-to-end approach has been applied in various real-world scenarios, from documenting the 78 days of the 2020 U.S. presidential transition with Reuters to preserving the USC Shoah Foundation's archive of 55,000 holocaust testimonies.
Project Information
Related Projects
Third Act Digital is a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace specifically designed for the theatre community, allowing fans to collect and own digital representations of memorable theatre performances and moments. It leverages the Hedera network for NFT creation and facilitates transactions for purchasing digital collectibles using the USDC stablecoin.
A core objective of Third Act Digital is to deepen fan engagement by providing a novel way to interact with and own verified pieces of theatrical history. The platform collaborates with renowned theatre institutions such as The Public Theater to curate unique NFT offerings that capture iconic moments from various performances. This initiative bridges the gap between traditional theatre and the world of digital collectibles.
Built on the carbon-negative Hedera Hashgraph, Third Act Digital emphasizes a sustainable approach to blockchain technology. To ensure a smooth user experience, particularly for new users, the platform integrates Venly's Wallet API. This facilitates easy onboarding and interaction with the marketplace, allowing a broader audience to participate in collecting theatre-related NFTs.
The Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) is a cross-industry community founded in 2019 by Adobe, The New York Times, and Twitter to combat digital misinformation and provide a verifiable layer of trust for online content. With a rapidly growing membership of over 4,000, the CAI brings together technology companies, media organizations, and civil society to develop open-source tools and standards that promote transparency and give creators credit for their work.
The primary service of the CAI is the development and promotion of Content Credentials, an open-source technology that functions like a "nutrition label" for digital media. This system allows creators to attach secure, tamper-evident metadata to their content, creating a verifiable record of its origin, authorship, and edit history. This provenance data is cryptographically signed and remains with the content as it is shared and modified. The technical specifications for Content Credentials are developed by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a standards development organization co-founded by Adobe.
Hashgraph Application Studio is a specialized no-code/low-code development platform designed to build and deploy enterprise-grade decentralized applications (dApps) on the Hedera network. It is the result of a strategic partnership between Joget Inc., an open-source application development firm, and The HBAR Foundation. The studio essentially provides a Hedera-centric version of the Joget platform, aiming to democratize dApp development by making it accessible to users with limited or no coding expertise.
The platform’s core functionality revolves around a visual, drag-and-drop interface. This allows users to design application workflows, create user interfaces, and manage data without writing extensive code. A key feature is the "Hedera Ledger Pack," a pre-built integration that simplifies complex interactions with Hedera’s native services. Through simple configuration, users can perform on-chain actions such as creating accounts, transferring HBAR and HTS tokens, minting and burning NFTs, and logging data to the Hedera Consensus Service (HCS).
By abstracting the technical complexities of blockchain, the Hashgraph Application Studio significantly accelerates the development lifecycle for Hedera-based projects.
Kabuto is a decentralized name service built on Hedera that allows users to register blockchain domains such as .hh and manage human-readable names secured by NFTs and smart contracts. It supports address and text records across multiple blockchains, making it easier for users to interact with digital assets and identities in a unified way. The platform was originally launched with a mirror node and explorer by LaunchBadge, providing tools for developers and users to view and interact with Hedera network data, though this component was later paused.
Kabuto continues to focus on decentralized identity and naming services, offering governance capabilities and DAO-ready features that allow users to participate in managing domain functionality and settings. By combining user-friendly naming with Hedera’s fast, secure, and scalable infrastructure, Kabuto aims to simplify blockchain interactions and promote wider adoption of the Hedera ecosystem.