Transparency

Daily measurement roots

Every UTC day, Agenstry computes a SHA-256 Merkle root over four classes of measurement we recorded that day. Anyone with read access to the same source rows on the same date can re-compute the same root. If our DB ever diverged from a published root, the discrepancy would surface in seconds.

The point. A registry is only as trustworthy as its history. WHOIS made domain ownership auditable. Certificate Transparency made TLS certificates auditable. This page is the same idea applied to agent measurement state. Once a root is published, claims like "agent X was at conformance grade B on 2026-05-19" are verifiable, not just asserted.

Algorithm

  1. For each UTC day, collect rows from four append-only tables: agents (live-probe snapshot per last_seen_ok in window), agent_card_snapshots (every card change), probe_runs (every probe), agent_revenue_snapshots (every per-window revenue settlement).
  2. Hash each row into a 32-byte leaf using SHA-256 over a NUL-separated, domain-prefixed serialisation of its key columns. The prefix (agent\0…, snapshot\0…, …) prevents cross-table collision.
  3. Compute a Merkle root per sub-tree using the RFC-6962 odd-leaf-carry variant (no duplication — avoids the second-preimage attack on classic Merkle).
  4. Concatenate the four sub-roots in fixed order (agents → snaps → probes → revenue) with their domain separator prefix, then Merkle-fold once more for the day's top-level root.
  5. Persist the root, the row counts, and computed_at in transparency_roots. The row is never updated; a mismatch on recompute is a flag, not a silent fix.
  6. Coming next: publish the root onchain (Base contract setRoot(date, root)) so even an attacker with DB write access cannot rewrite history. The schema's onchain_anchor_* columns are already shaped for that path; today's column values are NULL.

Reproducibility kit

The reference implementation is at app/transparency.py. The JSON API at /api/transparency/daily-root.json returns the latest root + row counts; per-date lookup at /api/transparency/<date>.json (replace <date> with any ISO YYYY-MM-DD).

Published roots · last 30 days

Date Merkle root Agents Snaps Probes Revenue rows Onchain anchor
2026-05-21 acbb9d07c41d89eebb99257a… 288 69 1,233 48 DB only · onchain pending
2026-05-20 3d9cb9979222aa9bf9a39e2e… 136 77 8,553 0 DB only · onchain pending

Same data, machine-readable: /api/transparency/daily-root.json. Want to verify? Pull the source rows for a date via the federation feed (/api/feed/all.jsonl.gz), run the algorithm in app/transparency.py, compare the root you compute with the row above.