Open Record
Everything that happens, written down to be read.
The open record — what is written, how it is read, and why it is auditable end to end, before and after a wave.
Most participation online happens inside a closed box. You are shown an outcome and asked to accept the path that produced it. The open record is the other way round: every participation, every outcome, and every contribution is written down as it happens, in a form anyone can read.
It is not a private database that Veraq quotes from. It is the source, kept in the open. Before a wave runs, the mechanism that will decide it is already on the record. After the wave ends, the outcome and the defined share that flows to a cause are on the record too. Nothing material happens out of sight.
The seven entities
- Wave
- One round of participation. Everything below attaches to a wave, and a wave links to the exact mechanism that decided it.
- Mechanism
- The published selection method (commit-reveal-v1). Committed to the record before the wave, revealed and provable after.
- Participant
- A person taking part, on terms they can read in advance.
- Participation
- A single act of taking part in a wave, recorded as it is made.
- Outcome
- What the wave produced, derived from the revealed mechanism and checkable against it.
- Contribution
- The defined share of the outcome, routed automatically to a cause and written from outcome to cause.
- Cause
- A verified, participant-chosen destination for the contribution, named openly.
How the entries link
The seven entities are not seven separate logs. They form one chain you can walk. A participant makes a participation in a wave; the wave names the mechanism that decided it; the mechanism produces an outcome; a defined share of that outcome becomes a contribution; the contribution reaches a cause.
Because every link is recorded, you can start at any point and follow it to the others. From a single outcome you can reach back to the mechanism that produced it, and forward to the cause its defined share reached.
Commit, then reveal
- 01
Commit
Before a wave begins, the mechanism is committed to the open record. The deciding method is fixed and published in advance, so it cannot be changed once participation is open.
- 02
Participate
Participations are written to the record as they are made, against a wave whose mechanism is already committed.
- 03
Reveal
When the wave closes, the mechanism is revealed. Anyone can confirm the revealed mechanism matches the earlier commitment.
- 04
Verify
The outcome is derived from the revealed mechanism and the recorded participations. You can reproduce it from the record and confirm the contribution reached the cause it names.
Provable before it runs, provable after it ends.
How to read an entry
Identity
Each entry carries a stable identifier and the wave it belongs to, so you always know which round you are reading.
Links
An entry names the entities it connects to. From there you can move to the mechanism, the outcome, or the cause without leaving the record.
Timing
Entries are timestamped, so the commit clearly precedes participation and participation precedes the reveal.
Proof
Commitments and reveals carry the values needed to check them. You confirm the mechanism by hand, not by trusting a label.
Open format and references
The record format is documented and the mechanism reference (commit-reveal-v1) is published. The contracts and protocol references are open, so a reader can verify a wave independently or build on the same rails Veraq does.
The point is not that the record looks transparent. It is that you can act on it: read a wave, reproduce its outcome, and follow its defined share to the cause it reached.