Richard’s Minerals
Every specimen has a history. Most of it gets lost.
Where it was found, who dug it, who cut it, who owned it. That history usually lives in someone’s memory, in an old email, or on a label that gets separated from the stone. When it goes, what’s left is whatever the current seller says.
This is an attempt at somewhere for a specimen’s history to live that stays attached to the object, and that a stranger can read and judge for themselves.
What happens when someone taps a specimen
- A tag is mounted on the stone or its base A thin contactless tag with a real cryptographic chip in it, not a printed code.
- Someone taps it with a phone No app and no account. The chip wakes up on the phone’s own power, counts the tap, and signs a fresh message that has never existed before and will never be produced again. Proves this exact chip is present
- The phone opens a web address the chip just built The signature travels in the address itself. A photograph of the tag, a copied link, or a forwarded screenshot all carry an old signature, and an old signature is refused. Proves the tap is happening now
- The server checks it and answers with the record It recomputes the signature using a key unique to that one chip, and checks that the tap counter moved forward. Then it shows what is known about the specimen. Does not prove which stone the tag is on
That last line is the honest limit and it is dealt with below, not hidden.
What is actually on the tag
An NXP NTAG 424 DNA chip. It holds a set of AES-128 keys that are unique to that one tag, derived from a master key that never leaves a separate machine and is never written into the database. The chip will not reveal them, and it never sends them anywhere. It only ever sends the result of a calculation done with them.
It also keeps its own tap counter, which only ever goes up. That is what makes a replayed link detectable: the counter in the copy is behind the one the chip has already reached.
What a record entry holds
- What happened, and when
- Bought, cut, assessed, exhibited, photographed. The date it happened, which is often not the date it was written down.
- Who wrote it down
- Recorded at the time and kept forever, so the entry keeps its author even if that person’s account is later closed.
- Who the claim belongs to
- Separate from who wrote it down, and this is the important one. If a locality came from the dealer who sold the stone, the record says so, with their name on it, rather than quietly adopting it as the owner’s own statement.
- Photographs and documents
- Stored by the fingerprint of their contents, so the record can tell whether an image is still the one that was filed.
- How much of it is public
- Set per entry. Some things are for anyone, some for whoever is holding the stone, some for nobody but the owner.
Why entries cannot be quietly changed
Nothing in the record is ever edited or deleted. Entries are only ever added, and each new entry carries a signed fingerprint of the one before it. So the entries are linked in a line, and each one holds the one above it in place.
Change an old entry and its fingerprint no longer matches the one recorded by the entry below it, and the break is reported. Correcting something means adding a new entry that supersedes the old one, and both stay visible, so a correction reads as a correction rather than as the record having always said the new thing.
The newest entry is the exception, and the page says so rather than pretending otherwise: nothing has sealed it yet, because nothing has followed it. It becomes protected as soon as the next entry lands.
Holding the stone earns more than a link does
A tap and a forwarded link are not the same thing and do not get the same answer.
- Anyone with the link
- The public summary. This can be screenshotted and passed around, and it is meant to be.
- Whoever just tapped the tag
- More, because they have demonstrably got the object in their hand. This is the level a buyer standing at a table gets.
- The owner
- Everything, including whatever is being kept back for good reason.
What it does not prove
Worth being straight about
It cannot prove a stone came from where someone says it did. No system can do that from the stone alone. What it can do is make the chain of who said what, and when, permanent and readable, so a buyer can weigh it themselves instead of taking one sentence on faith.
It cannot prove the tag is on the right stone. A genuine tag moved to a different specimen would still read as genuine, because the chip proves the chip and says nothing about what it is glued to. The defence is a photograph of the tag mounted on the specimen, taken the day it was issued and kept in the record, so a later viewer can compare it against what they are holding. That comparison is done by a person, not by the system.
An unbroken record is not a proven one. It means nothing has been altered in a way the system can detect. The key that signs the entries lives on the same machine as the record, so someone with both could in principle rewrite them consistently. That is a real limit, it is the reason this project says intact and never says verified about a history, and it will stay that way until the seals are anchored somewhere outside that machine.
Where this is
Early
The system is built and running. The specimen above has a record: bought in May 2025, with the seller’s locality description recorded as the seller’s description and marked as unverified, and a photograph taken on the summit nine days later. The page that shows all of that to a visitor is being built now, and the first physical tag has not been issued yet.
If you sold, cut, collected or dug a specimen and can add something real to its history, that is exactly what this is for, and you will be credited by name for what you contribute.