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 and none is independently verifiable at scale. C2PA content-credentials adoption is voluntary and patchy, and the Electoral Commission's deepfake pilot is detection rather than attestation. Nothing lets multiple independent witnesses, councils, broadcasters and observers, cryptographically co-sign critical facts 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 per cent of adults saw a candidate deepfake before the May 2026 locals. Detection loses the arms race, and attestation does not have to.

A multi-witness attestation pilot for one fact class, such as declared local election results co-signed by returning officers, the Electoral Commission and accredited observers, verifiable by anyone, with a 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.

Critical facts still rest on spoofable single sources, and the multi-witness pilot is buildable, unowned, and needs proof before the next general election.