No decentralised attestation network for critical public facts

As synthetic media becomes free, the UK's mechanisms for establishing 'what actually happened' remain single-source: one returning officer's declaration page, one government emergency feed, one press release. Each is spoofable, none independently verifiable at scale. C2PA content-credentials adoption is voluntary and patchy; the Electoral Commission's deepfake-detection pilot is detection, not attestation. Nothing lets multiple independent witnesses (councils, broadcasters, observers) cryptographically co-sign critical facts (election results, emergency instructions, official statements) so that citizens and platforms can verify provenance rather than adjudicate plausibility.

Coordination requires common knowledge: everyone knowing everyone has the same uncorrupted record. Demos found 30% of adults saw a candidate deepfake before the May 2026 locals; by the first votes-at-16 general election, verification-by-default may be the only alternative to epistemic collapse. Detection loses the arms race; attestation doesn't have to.

A multi-witness attestation pilot for one fact class (e.g. declared local election results co-signed by returning officers, the Electoral Commission and accredited observers, verifiable by anyone), with staked/multi-party design so no single institution is the arbiter, then extension to emergency communications.

// Build together: Counterparty: returning officers and the Electoral Commission as co-signers; declared results data is already public.

When anything can be faked, critical facts still rest on spoofable single sources; a multi-witness attestation pilot is buildable and unowned, needing proof before the next general election.