Certificates

Certificates are verifiable records that prove an action or data is authentic, timestamped, and tamper-proof, enabling trusted collaboration and audibility across regulated industries.

What is a Certificate?

In Circular, a certificate is a digitally signed record that proves something happened, was created, approved, shared, or verified, and that it hasn’t been tampered with since. Certificates can represent a wide range of actions or data points, from clinical trial approvals to the transfer of a research dataset or the completion of a regulatory milestone.

At its core, a certificate is a verifiable, timestamped, and immutable proof that an event or statement occurred. It is issued by an authorized actor, recorded in a decentralized system, and made available for anyone with permission to validate its authenticity.

What Problems Does It Solve?

In regulated industries, data integrity is not just a nice-to-have — it’s mandatory. Circular’s certificate model addresses critical issues in environments where trust, traceability, and auditability are essential:

Data Manipulation and Fraud

Certificates help eliminate risks tied to altered or falsified records by anchoring proof of existence and integrity in a distributed, tamper-evident infrastructure.

Lack of Real-Time Auditability

Certificates provide immediate, cryptographic evidence of an event or status change, enabling real-time auditing and regulatory reporting.

Siloed and Fragmented Workflows

By issuing verifiable certificates across organizational boundaries, teams can share trust without duplicating systems or paperwork.

Insecure or Unverified Sharing

Institutions can issue certificates to prove the authenticity of a shared file or dataset without exposing sensitive content.

Regulatory Compliance Pressure

Certificates help organizations meet standards like HIPAA, GDPR, and ICH GCP by providing a chain of evidence for every data point or action.

What Can a Certificate Represent?

A certificate can be applied to nearly any action, object, or document that benefits from independent verification:

• Approval of a clinical trial protocol

• Completion of a patient consent process

• Upload of a dataset for AI model training

• Issuance of digital credentials or access rights

• Verification of a signed document or report

• Registration of an intellectual property asset

• Timestamped release of sensitive data

Certificates in Circular are flexible, metadata-rich, and enforce strict versioning — ensuring that even updated certificates can be traced back to their origins.

How Certificates Work in Circular

Every certificate is issued by an authorized account, signed with a cryptographic key, and stored as part of a distributed, immutable ledger. Each certificate includes:

• The issuing account and metadata

• A timestamp of creation or approval

• A reference to the related object or document

• An optional human-readable label

• A secure hash of the original content or data

These certificates can then be verified by any permitted stakeholder, including auditors, regulators, or collaborators — without relying on a central authority or manual records.

Use Cases by Industry

Healthcare

• Timestamped consent forms

• Verification of medical record integrity

• Certified referrals and cross-institution transfers

Pharmaceuticals

• Certification of manufacturing steps

• Chain-of-custody tracking

• Regulatory compliance for clinical trials

Artificial Intelligence

• Proof of dataset authenticity

• Traceability of training logs and inputs

• Verification of model provenance

Scientific Research

• Authorship certification

• Timestamped experiment submissions

• Peer-review process anchoring

Summary

Certificates in Circular are not static files or PDFs. They are living, verifiable proofs of activity, intent, or approval, designed to support collaboration, compliance, and trust across critical industries. They provide a new standard for digital integrity, replacing outdated manual processes with cryptographic certainty.