What is C2PA, and what does its "CAPTURE – STORE – VERIFY" lifecycle describe?

C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) is an open technical standard for attaching a tamper-evident, signed history to digital media across its whole life.

* An asset's origin is signed at capture, each edit appends a signed manifest, and anyone can later verify the chain. *

The lifecycle follows an asset from creation to consumption:

• Capture/Create — a C2PA-compliant camera or app records who/what/when at the moment of creation.
• Store / Edit — each edit (in compliant software) appends a new signed manifest describing what changed.
• Verify — anyone can later inspect the full chain and confirm it hasn't been tampered with.

The signed history is called a Content Credential (the consumer-facing brand, marked with a small "cr" pin icon). C2PA was published as a technical specification in 2022.

Tip: Think of it as a chain of custody for media — like evidence in a court case, every handoff is logged and signed.

Go deeper:

• C2PA technical specification (spec.c2pa.org) — the authoritative spec: manifests, cryptographic bindings, and the trust model.
• How Content Credentials work (Content Authenticity Initiative) — the "nutrition label for digital content" explained end to end.
• Content Credentials (Wikipedia) — overview, history, and adoption of the C2PA standard.