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The Simplest Answer

A Capsule is your article, plus:
  • Your identity at the moment you published
  • The specific claims your article makes
  • The evidence backing those claims
  • Everyone who contributed (authors, editors, researchers)
  • The full history of votes, disputes, corrections, and integrity findings
It lives permanently on PressChain. It can never be deleted. It can be corrected - but the original always stays visible.

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Why Not Just an Article?

Consider what’s missing when journalism is just a webpage: A Capsule is what journalism looks like when it’s treated as infrastructure - not content.

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What’s Inside a Capsule

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Your Identity Snapshot

When you publish, PressChain records exactly who you were at that moment:
  • Your PressKey address (your permanent journalist ID)
  • Your role (Citizen / Reporter / Verified Author)
  • Your outlet and whether its domain was verified
  • Your reputation score
  • Your bond state
This never changes. If you leave your outlet, get a new role, or change anything later - the historical record still shows who you were when you hit publish.

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Structured Claims

Claims are the specific assertions your article makes. Instead of treating your article as one big blob, PressChain structures what you’re actually claiming: Why claims matter: If someone disputes your story, they dispute specific claims - not the whole article. A politician challenging your vote count can’t use that challenge to invalidate your reporting on campaign finances.

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Evidence

Each piece of evidence you attach gets:
  1. Uploaded to the Vault Network (secure distributed storage)
  2. Hashed with SHA-256
  3. That hash stored permanently on PressChain
Later, anyone can take your evidence file, hash it, and compare to the on-chain hash. If they match - the evidence is unchanged. If they don’t - tampering is provable. Evidence types include:
  • Archived page snapshots (web pages as they existed when you reported)
  • Documents (filings, reports, records)
  • Transcripts (interviews, meetings)
  • Media files (photos, video, audio)
  • Data files (spreadsheets, datasets)

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Contributors

Your full newsroom team is documented:
  • Who wrote it
  • Who edited it
  • Who researched it
  • Who fact-checked it
Each person gets a share (in basis points) of any rights licensing revenue. A typical split: Author 70%, Editor 30%.

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The Lifecycle

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What “Canonical” Means

Canonical means your Capsule passed public acceptance - 60% weighted approval and 5% quorum of eligible voters, within 72 hours. It means:
  • Your article is permanently on the PressChain record
  • It displays a ”✓ Canonical on PressChain” badge
  • It enters the Press Network distribution feed
  • It’s eligible for rights licensing
  • It’s eligible for the Rights Marketplace
Non-canonical articles still live on your website - they just don’t have the protocol’s permanent record attached.

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Capsule vs. Article - Side by Side

Maya’s story about city council corruption: As a normal article: Published Tuesday. City attorney calls the editor Wednesday. Story is quietly updated Thursday to soften the vote count claim. No one knows the original said “7 members voted yes” - now it says “a majority.” As a PressChain Capsule: The original Capsule with “7 members voted yes” is permanently on-chain with the council session archive as evidence. If a correction is needed, a new Capsule is created pointing back to the original. Both remain visible. The correction has its own vote. The history is permanent.