Laboratory Methodology, Empirical Grading Rubric & Domain Provenance

Editorial Independence & Reproducibility Charter

DT.gl (Digital Trust and Threat Lab) evaluates cryptographic hardware, wallet coordinators, encrypted communications, operating systems, and anti-tracking defenses using observable packet captures, firmware source audits, and primary standards specifications. Every publication enforces zero affiliate monetization, version-controlled YAML grading rubrics, timestamped errata logs, and browser-enforced connect-src none verification tools.

1. Empirical Four-Axis Grading Methodology

Consumer privacy and cryptocurrency comparison sites routinely rank products by marketing claims while earning 30% to 70% affiliate commissions from the very VPNs, data-removal subscriptions, and closed-source hardware wallets they review. That economic model rewards sensationalism and conceals subtle architectural flaws such as unproxied JSON-RPC batch balance queries, unverified browser-extension supply chains, or closed-NDA Secure Element firmware.

DT.gl grades systems across four reproducible engineering axes stored in version-controlled YAML datasets under src/content/datasets/:

Evaluation Axis	Observable Verification Evidence Required	Disqualifying Failure Conditions (Grade C or Below)
1. Cryptographic & Silicon Auditability	Published primitive specs (NIST FIPS / RFC / EIP), open-source reproducible firmware builds, independent audit reports, open Secure Element architecture (`TROPIC01` or verifiable dual-chip anti-klepto)	Proprietary unreviewed ciphers, closed server-held cloud chat keys presented as private, or non-reproducible desktop/mobile wallet binaries
2. Signing Display & Orchestration Fidelity	Native `ERC-7730` clear-signing descriptors, full `PSBTv2` input/output path verification, explicit `Safe` `operation=1` `DELEGATECALL` and `EIP-7702` `0x04` warnings on trusted screen	Routine blind-signing fallback of opaque 32-byte hashes on high-value multisig or token-approval calls
3. Default Network & Metadata Hygiene	Cold-launch packet inspection confirming zero unauthorized analytics beacons, Tor/Oblivious relay or local node support, per-account RPC isolation, QNAME minimization, and zero ECS leakage	Batching all derived wallet addresses in a single unproxied default RPC HTTP request or transmitting crash telemetry containing user identifiers
4. Supply-Chain & Physical OPSEC Resilience	Subresource Integrity (`SRI`), deterministic release signatures, minimal retention of customer shipping/KYC PII, and statutory deletion compliance	Unpinned live CDN script imports in wallet connectors or indefinite retention of buyer home-address databases

2. Verifiable Client-Side Zero-Telemetry Engineering

Whenever DT.gl provides an interactive diagnostic or cryptographic utility in the Verification Workbench, we treat user input as adversarial-sensitive material. Rather than asking visitors to trust a legal privacy policy, our five offline secret-handling and file-sanitizing sandboxes enforce strict HTTP Content-Security-Policy headers at the Cloudflare edge:

Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'; style-src 'self'; img-src 'self' data:; font-src 'self'; connect-src 'none'; form-action 'none'; frame-ancestors 'none'; base-uri 'none'

Under connect-src 'none', Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit block every outbound network API (fetch, XMLHttpRequest, navigator.sendBeacon, WebSocket, and EventSource) after initial static asset delivery. In addition, our Astro 5 build compiles external stylesheets (inlineStylesheets: 'never') and omits analytics tags on all offline tool routes so network isolation is 100% verifiable in Developer Tools.

3. Domain Lineage, Non-Affiliation & Archival Citation Stewardship

Transparency regarding domain provenance is essential to institutional trust:

Historical Domain Usage (2020-2025): Between 2020 and 2023, dt.gl functioned as an alternate Ghost CMS domain and shortener for the privacy and decentralization publication Decentralize.Today, and between 2023 and 2025 as a federated Mastodon server before expiring.
Independent Ownership & Non-Affiliation: DT.gl (Digital Trust & Threat Lab) is an independent technical specification and security research organization. We have zero corporate, editorial, financial, or authorial affiliation with decentralize.today or its former contributors, and retired federated user handles (/@*) return permanent HTTP 410 Gone responses.
Public-Interest Link Preservation: Forensic review prior to launching DT.gl identified 61 historical editorial paths cited by enduring public references, including a U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary staff report on commercial cell-phone location data, English Wikipedia software articles (Briar, Conversations), GNU Jami documentation, and engineering discussions on Hacker News, Lobste.rs, and Tildes. To prevent dead scholarly and encyclopedia links without misrepresenting authorship, those 61 legacy URLs resolve via single-hop redirects to dedicated #archive-* provenance cards inside our seven flagship hubs, explicitly crediting the historical 2020-2022 citation context alongside our independent 2026 laboratory benchmarks.

4. Open Data Licensing, Errata & Coordinated Contact

Original datasets compiled by DT.gl, including the CWE Cryptocurrency Incident Dataset (JSON) and CSV export, are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0). When citing empirical benchmarks or incident classifications, attribute DT.gl Digital Trust & Threat Lab with the canonical URL and verification date shown in the page Revision Ledger.

Technical Errata & Benchmark Updates: contact@dt.gl (include reproducible version numbers, commit hashes, or packet traces).
Security & Vulnerability Disclosures: security@dt.gl (for issues affecting DT.gl verification tools or active in-the-wild wallet/protocol threats).

5. Laboratory Testbed Environment & Reproducibility Protocol

To ensure every empirical grade published on DT.gl can be reproduced independently by external security engineers, our evaluations follow standardized instrumentation procedures across hardware, mobile operating systems, and network transport layers:

Network Telemetry & RPC Capture: Companion wallet desktop and mobile applications are launched inside isolated VLAN namespaces routed through transparent packet capture and TLS-inspection harnesses (where certificate pinning is absent) or passive DNS/IP flow collectors (where pinning is enforced). We record cold-boot connection counts, default JSON-RPC batching behavior across 5+ derived BIP-44/BIP-84 accounts, EDNS Client Subnet leakage, and crash-reporting SDK endpoints before any user opt-out toggle is touched.
Hardware Signer & Clear-Signing Stress Testing: Hardware wallets are tested against adversarial payloads modeled on real-world exploits: nested Safe execTransaction calls with operation = 1 (DELEGATECALL) disguised under benign inner selectors, Permit2 batch approvals with far-future expirations, vanity-poisoned recipient addresses differing only in middle bytes, and EIP-7702 Type-0x04 authorization tuples with chain_id = 0. Devices that fall back to blind hex digests on high-risk operations cannot receive an A-tier signing fidelity score regardless of Secure Element certification level.
Mobile OS & Browser Isolation Verification: Hardened Android builds are evaluated on Verified Boot cryptographic root-of-trust support with relocked bootloaders, hardware memory tagging (ARMv9 MTE) enforcement, sandboxed privilege boundaries, cellular baseband hardening toggles, and time-to-patch parity against monthly upstream Android Security Bulletins. Browser builds are audited across Canvas, WebGL, AudioContext, font enumeration, first-party state partitioning, and cold-launch outbound telemetry sockets.
Living Errata & Vendor Neutrality SLA: Vendors may submit public git commit links or signed firmware release notes when a previously documented telemetry leak or blind-signing gap is remediated. Upon independent verification by DT.gl engineers, the corresponding YAML dataset entry and specification Revision Ledger are updated at zero charge, maintaining a transparent historical audit trail of ecosystem progress.

Frequently Verified Technical Questions

Does DT.gl accept affiliate commissions, sponsored placements, or paid security audits from wallet or VPN vendors?

No. DT.gl enforces a strict zero-affiliate, zero-sponsorship editorial charter. No outbound link on dt.gl carries referral codes, affiliate parameters, or paid placement agreements, ensuring hardware signers, messengers, DNS resolvers, and browsers are graded solely on reproducible technical evidence.

What is the relationship between DT.gl and the historical Decentralize.Today website?

Between 2020 and 2025, the domain dt.gl operated first as an alternate Ghost CMS domain and shortener for Decentralize.Today and later as a Mastodon instance. Today, DT.gl (Digital Trust and Threat Lab) is operated by an independent security research team with zero corporate, editorial, or personnel affiliation to Decentralize.Today.

Why does DT.gl preserve archival citation anchors for legacy URLs?

Public-interest institutions including English Wikipedia, a U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary staff report, open-source documentation such as GNU Jami, and engineering forums maintain live citations to historical dt.gl URLs. Preserving dedicated #archive-* context blocks prevents link rot while providing updated 2026 empirical benchmarks.

How can researchers report a factual erratum or security issue on DT.gl?

Researchers may submit reproducible packet captures, firmware diffs, on-chain transaction hashes, or vulnerability disclosures to security@dt.gl or contact@dt.gl. Verified corrections are logged publicly inside the affected specification Revision Ledger with ISO timestamps.