What we are worried about
Two things, really.
The first is new. Anyone can now ask a computer to produce a photograph of a person who never stood there, at a birthday that never happened. As that gets easier, being able to say "this one is real, and here is the day it arrived" gets more precious.
The second is older and plainer: companies close, and websites disappear. If FutureRoots were gone tomorrow, your family should still be able to show that these are the memories you saved, unchanged.
What we do
A fingerprint, the moment it arrives
When you add a photo, a video, or a voice note, we work out a fingerprint of it: a short line of characters, calculated from the exact contents of the file. Change one pixel and the fingerprint changes completely. The fingerprint cannot be turned back into the picture, so it gives nothing away.
A public record, every night
Once a day we gather every new fingerprint into a single summary value, and we publish that value in a public place outside FutureRoots, using distributed-ledger technology. Once it is published, it cannot be edited or removed, by us or by anyone else.
Nothing personal is ever published. No names, no photographs, no messages, no titles. Only that one value, which reveals nothing on its own.
Years from now, anyone can take your file, work out its fingerprint, and compare it against that published record. They do not need an account. They do not need us to still exist.
What it means for your family
A green badge on a memory means we checked it, and it is exactly the file we recorded.
You can check any memory again yourself, whenever you like, in one tap.
You can share a certificate with someone outside the family, and they can check it without signing up for anything.
And if a file ever does look different, we tell you gently, in private, and help you work out why.
What this proves, and what it does not
We would rather be plain about this than let you believe more than we can deliver.
What it proves
- This file has not changed, by so much as a single character, since the day we recorded it.
- We recorded it on a particular date, and that date is published somewhere nobody can quietly move it later, including us.
What it does not prove
- It does not prove that a photograph shows what it appears to show. If a picture was made by a computer and then added to FutureRoots, our record faithfully shows that this computer-made picture has not changed since. It says nothing about how it was made.
- It does not prove who made it, or who took the photograph. We record the file, not the photographer.
- It does not stop a file being lost. This is a record, not a backup. Please keep your own copies of anything precious, as you always would.
We think what is left is still worth a great deal. It is the difference between "we believe this is the picture from that day" and "we can show this is the picture from that day."
Free for every family
Every family gets this, on every plan, at no cost. Every photo, video, and voice note is fingerprinted and included in the public record, whether you ever pay us anything or not. A promise about your family's memories should not sit behind a price.
FutureRoots Premium adds the paperwork: a Certificate of Authenticity you can print or share, a check across your whole archive at once, and an inheritance pack that still works on a computer decades from now.
Questions about any of this? Write to us at support@futureroots.app. We answer every one.