Most data loses its history the moment it changes hands. The file arrives, the context that explains it does not, and the people who made it have no way to show they did.
XnY is a data lineage and royalty protocol built to keep that history. It records provenance, contributions and rights on a ledger that belongs to no single party, while the source payloads stay off-chain.
Three things the record keeps
- Where the data started. Each contribution is fingerprinted, so a later copy can be checked against the original rather than taken on trust.
- Who added value. Contributors are attributed at the level of a single contribution, not a whole dataset, so their share is traceable.
- What stays private. The chain holds fingerprints, shares and grants. The data itself does not go on-chain.
What is live and what is not
Royalty settlement is rolling out. The tagline, Turn contributions into royalties, describes where the protocol is heading. It is not a claim that production payouts are live today. We will say so on this blog when that changes.
Read next
- From one piece of data to an asset: the protocol overview, with figures.
- Why the URI is already final before the upload finishes: how identity and delivery are separated.
- How We Tested Verifiable Storage on GCS and Filecoin: storage verification, tested on Calibration.
- Gasless Adapter: x402 payment support for an immutable ERC-20 token.
- ERC-8004: MCP on Ethereum: agent identity, reputation and validation.