RCW 42.45 Compliance via Blockchain-Anchored Evidence

The Regulatory Baseline

Washington State's Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts, codified at RCW 42.45, requires commissioned notaries to maintain records of notarial acts for a minimum of 10 years per RCW 42.45.280(6).

This is a floor, not a ceiling. For documents with long-duration legal significance — deeds, estate instruments, business formation documents — a 10-year archive may be legally sufficient but practically inadequate. A deed dispute arising 30 years after execution requires evidence that survived 30 years, not 10.

EDN's Approach: Exceed the Mandate

EDN satisfies RCW 42.45 compliance through PROOF (Notarize.com), which maintains the statutory session archive per applicable requirements. But EDN's own platform adds a supplemental cryptographic layer that exceeds the statutory mandate without conflicting with it.

Every notarial act processed through an EDN concierge session generates a Security Audit Certificate — a cryptographic object containing:

• The SHA-256 document hash
• The SPHINCS+ signature over that hash
• The Ethereum transaction ID of the blockchain anchor
• The block height and timestamp of anchoring
• The session metadata (jurisdiction, notary commission, act type) — no PII

This certificate is not stored in a database. It is anchored in a public blockchain with no operator, no shutdown condition, and no expiration date.

Why Blockchain Anchoring Exceeds Database Archiving

A provider database — however well-maintained — can be deleted, acquired, hacked, corrupted, or discontinued. A blockchain anchor on Ethereum Mainnet cannot be deleted by any single party. It is replicated across thousands of independent nodes globally and secured by the full hash power of the network.

An EDN anchor created today will be retrievable in 2075 by any party who knows the transaction hash — regardless of whether EDN, Authentically Serving Freedom LLC, or any related entity still exists at that time.

Privacy-First Design: The 24-Hour Purge

To achieve this permanence without creating a long-term PII liability, EDN's data lifecycle separates the proof from the personal data:

• Raw document content and PII: purged within 24 hours of session completion
• Biometric data: never stored (processed and discarded in real-time)
• Security Audit Certificate (hash + anchor): retained indefinitely on-chain

This design is consistent with Washington's My Health My Data Act (MHMDA) and reflects a zero-PII-retention posture that exceeds what most notarization platforms offer.

The document is gone from our servers. The proof of its integrity is permanent.