VeritasChain Standards Organization (VSO) today announced the public release of its World-First Claim Verification Report for the VCP v1.1 Nasdaq OUCH/ITCH Evidence Pack.

The report formally verifies that the published evidence pack constitutes the first openly available conformance test dataset demonstrating cryptographic audit trail implementation for high-frequency trading (HFT) systems using Nasdaq OUCH 5.0 and ITCH 5.0 protocols.

The verification report, identified as VSO-EVIDENCE-NASDAQ-001, concludes with high confidence (95%+) that no prior publicly available work satisfies all required technical and evidentiary conditions necessary to invalidate the world-first claim.

This conclusion was reached through an exhaustive, independent investigation conducted using four autonomous research systems, collectively reviewing more than 700 sources across academia, open-source software, regulatory frameworks, commercial platforms, and industry standards bodies.

■ Independent Multi-System Verification Methodology

Unlike typical technology announcements, the world-first claim was subjected to a structured and adversarial verification process. Each research system operated independently and was explicitly instructed to identify any prior art that could invalidate the claim.

The research scope included, but was not limited to, the following categories:

・Open standards and specifications, including IETF RFCs, ISO TC68, IEEE initiatives, and FIX Trading Community publications

・Academic literature across arXiv, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, SSRN, and Google Scholar

・Open-source implementations of Nasdaq OUCH and ITCH protocols

・Regulatory initiatives such as SEC Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), MiFID II RTS 25, and ESMA guidance

・Commercial trade surveillance and market analytics platforms

・Cryptographic transparency infrastructures including Certificate Transparency, Google Trillian, and SCITT

Across all categories and sources, no prior art was identified that met all required criteria simultaneously.

■ Six Mandatory Criteria for the World-First Claim

To qualify as invalidating prior art, an implementation would need to satisfy all six of the following criteria at the same time:

(1) Publicly Available・Openly published and accessible without NDA or proprietary restrictions

(2) Cryptographic Audit Trail・Use of hash chains, digital signatures, and Merkle proofs・Simple logging or timestamping alone is insufficient

(3) Nasdaq Protocol Specificity・Explicit implementation for Nasdaq OUCH 5.0 and/or ITCH 5.0・Generic FIX or non-Nasdaq protocols do not qualify

(4) Nanosecond-Level Timestamp Precision・Nanosecond timestamp granularity required・Millisecond-only precision is insufficient

(5) Independently Verifiable・Third-party verification possible without proprietary tools・Public keys and verification artifacts available

(6) Conformance Test Dataset・Published sample dataset enabling external validation・Specification-only documents do not qualify

The verification report confirms that no identified candidate satisfied all six criteria. The highest partial match achieved only four out of six, which is insufficient to invalidate the claim.

■ Why This Gap Existed Until Now

The report identifies a long-standing structural gap between two mature but historically separate ecosystems:

・Nasdaq protocol implementations that prioritize ultra-low latency execution but do not provide cryptographic integrity or immutability

・Cryptographic transparency frameworks that offer strong tamper-evidence but are not designed for HFT environments or Nasdaq binary protocols

Bridging these ecosystems presents a fundamental engineering challenge.

Cryptographic operations such as digital signature generation and Merkle tree construction are orders of magnitude slower than the microsecond-level latency budgets required for high-frequency trading. Embedding such operations directly into the execution path would destroy trading performance.

The VCP Nasdaq Evidence Pack demonstrates, using published data, that this challenge can be resolved through a sidecar-style architecture that preserves trading performance while enabling cryptographically verifiable audit trails.

■ Contents of the Published Evidence Pack

The publicly released Nasdaq Evidence Pack includes the following components:

・An anonymized, production-format event dataset derived from Nasdaq OUCH 5.0 and ITCH 5.0 message flows

・SHA-256 hash chains establishing immutable event ordering

・Ed25519 digital signatures enabling non-repudiation

・Merkle tree constructions with inclusion proofs・External timestamp anchoring records

・Integrity manifests enabling full offline verification

All verification procedures can be reproduced using standard cryptographic tools, without reliance on proprietary software or trusted intermediaries.

■ Regulatory and Market Significance

Global regulatory frameworks increasingly mandate audit trails for algorithmic and AI-driven trading systems. However, existing regimes such as SEC CAT and MiFID II RTS 25 focus primarily on record retention and timestamp synchronization, rather than cryptographic verifiability.

The VCP Nasdaq Evidence Pack demonstrates a concrete, verifiable approach to closing this gap. By publishing both the dataset and the independent verification report, VSO enables regulators, exchanges, auditors, and market participants to independently evaluate how cryptographic audit trails can be implemented in real-world high-performance trading environments.

■ Verified Claim Language

Based on the findings of the verification report, VSO recommends the following precise claim language for publication:

“First publicly available, open-licensed conformance test dataset implementing cryptographic audit trail verification, including hash chains, digital signatures, and Merkle proofs with nanosecond timestamp precision, specifically designed for Nasdaq binary trading protocols (OUCH 5.0 and ITCH 5.0).”

■ Availability

The full World-First Claim Verification Report (VSO-EVIDENCE-NASDAQ-001) is publicly available at:

https://github.com/veritaschain/vcp-nasdaq-rta-reference/blob/main/VSO-EVIDENCE-NASDAQ-001_WorldFirst_Verification_Report.pdf

The associated open-source evidence pack and verification materials are available at:

https://github.com/veritaschain/vcp-nasdaq-rta-reference

■ About VeritasChain Standards Organization (VSO)

VeritasChain Standards Organization (VSO) is an independent, non-profit standards body focused on the development of open specifications for cryptographically verifiable audit trails in algorithmic and AI-driven systems.

Its flagship specification, the VeritasChain Protocol (VCP), is designed to function as an “AI flight recorder,” enabling third-party verification of system behavior for regulatory, audit, and compliance purposes.

https://veritaschain.org/