Update: Fox Corporation to Upgrade Verify Beta to Dedicated L2 Built with Polygon CDK, Announces TIME as First Publishing Partner

First launched as a protocol on Polygon PoS, Fox will use Polygon CDK to build Verify, an open protocol for content attestation. TIME will be the first external media company to utilize Verify.

Polygon Labs

June 18, 2024

tl;dr:

Update: Fox Corporation is transitioning the beta version of Verify to an independent zero-knowledge (ZK) blockchain using Polygon CDK, making it the first enterprise to launch a ZK-powered Ethereum L2
TIME will be the first external media company to leverage the Verify protocol for content licensing and verification.
Verify is developed by Fox Corporation’s Emerging Technology team in conjunction with implementation provider Gelato
More than 106k articles and 300k pieces of content have been registered on the beta version, built on Polygon PoS
End consumers will be able to verify the origin of content registered by media companies through the open protocol, as demonstrated on the beta app, verify.fox
The Verify team will release open source smart contracts, enabling publishers of all sizes to license their content to AI companies

Today, Fox Corporation has announced an update: The beta version of Verify, an open source protocol to prove the origin of registered media, is transitioning to a dedicated zero-knowledge (ZK) blockchain using Polygon CDK, with Gelato as an implementation provider. Additionally, TIME, a global media brand, has been announced as the first publishing partner to leverage the Verify protocol for content licensing and verification.

Fox Corp will use the ZK technology and infrastructure pioneered at Polygon Labs to transition Verify into a dedicated ZK chain focused on transparently proving the authenticity of registered content. With Verify, readers can check whether an article or image purportedly from a publisher in fact originated at the source using the beta app, verify.fox, so long as the media is registered.

TIME will be the first external partner to leverage the Verify and register pieces of content on the dedicated, Polygon CDK-deployed chain.

Leveraging Verify helps publishers like TIME establish a technical, cryptographic bridge to AI platforms. With its Verified Access Point, publishers access new commercial opportunities by utilizing smart contracts that set programmatic conditions for access to content. So as AI-generated text and images flow more widely online, Verify will be able to help consumers not only identify the veritable source of content, but also give media publishers more control over relationships with AI platforms scraping the web.

This announcement demonstrates the exciting design space that’s opened up when the future of media is indexed onchain.

Publishers like TIME will register individual pieces of content that are cryptographically signed onchain. Consumers then can verify content from trusted sources using the Verify Tool.

In short, content can be proved at its source.

Fox Corp launched a closed beta of Verify in August of 2023. Now, more than 300k pieces of content have been signed to Verify from a wide-variety of Fox-related brands, including Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports, and Fox TV affiliates.

TIME joins as the first external publisher.

The transition to a ZK chain is important for adoption. With a dedicated ZK chain, Verify upgrades to increased capacity for content that can be registered onchain. Verify will not have to compete for precious resources on Polygon PoS, but instead dedicate computation specifically to content attestation and provenance.

The Verify protocol is open source, with developers and users invited to contribute or fork the source code. Verify was originally developed in-house by the Fox Emerging Technology team, but will lean on Gelato to implement a dedicated chain with Polygon CDK.

In the future, Verify will also have the option to connect to the AggLayer and joain a horizontally scalable web of interoperable chains for seamless cross-chain message passing. Current chains connected to the AggLayer include OKX’s recently launched X Layer, Astar zkEVM, and Polygon zkEVM.

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