The words, defined once.

Canonical JSON is one agreed byte form for a JSON value, defined by RFC 8785, so that the same data always hashes to the same digest.

Keys are sorted, whitespace is removed and numbers and strings are written one way only.

A day file is the small canonical JSON file Upvera Day Roots publishes for each UTC day, holding that day's root, the digest of the previous day and the head of the rule registry.

It carries digests only, with no counts and no personal data, and an OpenTimestamps proof sits beside it.

A day root is the single digest that sums up everything Upvera sealed in one UTC day: the Merkle root over that day's minute blocks.

Change any sealed record of that day and the day root changes, and so does every later day file that links to it.

Genesis is the first record of Upvera's chain of day files, the one the first day's prev field points to, written when minute sealing began on October 13, 2026.

An inclusion proof is the short list of sibling hashes that lets anyone recompute a Merkle root from one record, showing that the record is in the tree without revealing the others.

For a tree of about three billion records the list has up to 32 hashes.

k-anonymity is the guarantee that any group shown in public contains at least k people, so no one can be singled out from a small number.

Upvera uses k = 5 for counts of private activity, such as views and saves, and hides any smaller group.

A minute block seals the records Upvera wrote in one minute into a Merkle tree and carries that tree's root and the digest of the block before it.

An OpenTimestamps proof is a small .ots file that links a file's SHA-256 digest to a Bitcoin block header, showing the file existed no later than that block's time.

It proves when, not who or whether the content is true.

A pairwise identifier is a user ID that an identity provider makes for one site alone, so two sites can't match the same person by their ID.

A proof-of-personhood tier says which signals a sign-in met, from an unsigned session to a key in a genuine app on a genuine device, without saying who the person is.

Upvera ID reports it as unsigned, web_key, device_key or device_attested, with the month it was reached.

A receipt is the line-by-line explanation that comes with every change in Upvera Value, written in whole millionths so the lines add up to the change exactly.

Upvera Value is computed by Upvera and unitless; it is not a price and not what a company is worth.

The rule registry is Upvera's append-only list of every version of the rules behind it, each with a fingerprint of its content, a fingerprint of the code that runs it and a link to the version before it.

Every day file carries the registry's head, so the rules in force are timestamped along with the record.

A rule version is one entry in the rule registry, named by its family and number, such as value@1 or days@1.

Seen is the stamp a founder's post receives when the change it describes appears in the startup's own verified site, repository or store listing.

An assistant may suggest which claims to check; a rule with no AI in it decides.

A shadow run executes a candidate rule beside the live one on the same events, records what it would have produced and uses none of it.

The candidate goes live only as a new rule version, after its results have been compared.

The Eye is Upvera's observer of a startup's own product: it checks with fixed rules whether the product is up, what stage it is at and whether a new version shipped.

Upvera Value is a reading of a startup's verified work, computed by Upvera and unitless; it is not a price and not what a company is worth.

The same events and the same rule always give the same number, and every change comes with a receipt.