Results a reviewer can check without trusting us
A number in a report is only as good as the trail behind it. Every call to the QCOS runtime leaves a record sealed under a SHA-256 Merkle root. Anyone can recompute the seal offline and see whether a single byte has changed.
- Seal
- SHA-256 Merkle root (RFC 9162)
- Bundle
- Schema 1.4
- Verifier
- softquantus-verify, open source
How it works
From run to verified result
- 01
Run
Run an experiment through the QCOS API, SDK, CLI or MCP server.
- 02
Record
QCOS records the circuit as received, the parameters, the backend where it actually ran, the result as returned and the software version.
- 03
Seal
Each item is hashed with SHA-256, the hashes form a Merkle tree in the RFC 9162 format, and the root seals the record.
- 04
Verify
Recompute the hashes on your own machine. For published QCOS evidence reports, softquantus-verify does it offline. If anything changed, the hashes no longer match.
What a seal proves
Precise about what is and is not shown
- Proves
- The record is unchanged since it was sealedAny edit to any item changes the Merkle root.
- Does not prove
- Who sealed the recordA seal is a hash, not a signature. Trust in the origin comes from where you obtained the root.
- Does not prove
- That the science is rightIt shows the record is intact. Whether the method answers the question is still for reviewers to judge.
- Works without us
- Offline verificationsoftquantus-verify is open source (MIT) and needs no account and no connection to SoftQuantus.
Who uses it
For anyone who has to defend a result
Research groups
Publish results with a record reviewers can recheck, instead of a screenshot of a dashboard.
R&D leadership
Review internal results knowing the record has not been edited after the fact.
Auditors and funders
Check that the reported numbers match the recorded run, without access to our systems.
Procurement
Compare vendor claims against evidence you can verify yourself.
Questions
Evidence questions, answered
Is a seal the same as a digital signature?
No. The seal shows the record has not changed since it was sealed. It does not show who produced it. Obtain the root from a channel you trust, such as a publication or a contract.
Do I need a SoftQuantus account to verify?
No. softquantus-verify is an open-source (MIT) Python package on PyPI that runs offline, without contacting SoftQuantus.
Why a Merkle tree rather than one hash?
A Merkle tree, in the format Certificate Transparency uses (RFC 9162), allows one item to be checked against the root with an inclusion proof, without sharing the rest of the record.
Do results come from quantum hardware?
QCOS results today come from simulators, and each record names the backend where the run actually executed. Hardware access through Softquantus Cloud is in development.
Further reading
Tools and standards
Check one of our results yourself
Open a published evidence report, recompute its hashes with softquantus-verify and compare. It takes minutes.