Self-attested receipts vs independently verifiable receipts
A receipt is only as credible as the party that vouches for it. The two kinds of receipt differ in one place: who signs.
The distinction
A self-attested receipt is signed by the same platform that ran the agent. The platform vouches for its own agent, so you are trusting that platform's word about itself. There is no independent party in the loop, which makes the receipt an assertion rather than third-party evidence.
An independently verifiable receipt is signed and anchored by a party other than the one that ran the agent. Any counterparty can verify it without trusting the issuing platform. The check runs on your own machine, with no account at the issuer and no call back to it, so the receipt holds up even if the platform that issued it disappears.
Side by side
| Self-attested | Independently verifiable | |
|---|---|---|
| Who vouches | The platform that ran the agent | An unaffiliated party, separate from the one that ran the agent |
| Can a counterparty verify it | Only by trusting the issuing platform's word | Yes, on their own machine, with no account and no call to the issuer |
| Tamper evidence | The issuer can rewrite its own record | Each receipt links to its predecessor in a hash chain and anchors to external witnesses, so edits are detectable |
| Audit trail | Held by the issuing platform | Anchored and packed into a portable bundle a reviewer can take away |
The difference is structural, not a matter of trust in a brand. A self-attested receipt asks a counterparty to take the agent platform at its word. An independently verifiable receipt lets the counterparty check the claim themselves.
How Asqav does it
Asqav is the unaffiliated party in the loop. It signs as an operator independent of the agent's operator, so the receipt does not rest on the agent platform's word. The pipeline maps to five primitives.
- Sign. The action is signed server-side with an ML-DSA key (NIST FIPS 204) held under Asqav custody. The agent's operator never holds the signing key, so the recorded party cannot forge or backdate its own record.
- Attest. The receipt records the action context and the authorization behind it, so the signed claim is reproducible offline from the payload.
- Anchor. Each receipt joins the agent's hash chain and anchors through OpenTimestamps onto Bitcoin, so the tamper evidence does not depend on Asqav's clock or storage.
- Verify. Anyone holding the receipt resolves the public verify key and checks the signature themselves, with no Asqav account and no call to Asqav.
- Audit-pack. Receipts export into a compliance bundle, with PDF export for the EU AI Act deployer audit pack, portable to a reviewer.
Walk the whole flow in the quickstart, or scaffold a project and validate your setup with asqav quickstart.