The ALD genesis manifest is signed with an Ed25519 key. You can verify its authenticity yourself in three steps — without trusting us, without a server, without an account.
These files are openly available. Anyone can download and inspect them.
Download MANIFEST.md and manifest_envelope.json. Recompute the hash and compare it to manifest_hash_hex in the envelope.
$ python3 -c "import hashlib; print(hashlib.blake2b(open('MANIFEST.md','rb').read(), digest_size=32).hexdigest())"
49b44aeb1fa00978e3f7498da8f58e2dcaddbd7c315e48f47468b139a2f6ce9a
If they match, the manifest is unmodified.
Using the public key and the signed payload, you can validate the signature without any input from us. Requirement: Python package cryptography.
$ python3 verify_manifest.py
The script reads the files from the current genesis/ directory, recomputes the hash, verifies the Ed25519 signature, and derives the address from the public key. Three check marks = authentic.
The genesis address can only be produced from the public key shown above. The script verifies that BLAKE2b(pub, 20 bytes) base32-encoded equals the address ald1jrrvknsy0r8kllg280elfzqarfk8lerr.
Whoever holds the private key is the only entity authorized to sign future official ALD announcements.