About public and private anchors

An anchor can be public (which is the default) or private.

The proof receipt of a private anchor is only discoverable by its owner (see the /anchors endpoint). Thus, the owner needs to provide the proof receipt and the data to anyone wanting to verify the proof.

The proof receipt of a public anchor is discoverable by anyone knowing the hash of the data (including people with no Woleet account, see the /anchorids endpoint). This allows anyone to retrieve the proof receipt using only the data hash as input, and then to verify it using the Woleet API or any other mean:

  • use the /anchorids endpoint to retrieve the anchor identifier by the hash of the data
  • use the /receipt/{anchorid} endpoint to retrieve the proof receipt of the anchor
  • use the /receipt/verify endpoint (or any other Chainpoint compatible tool) to verify the proof receipt and get the data or signature timestamp.