The legal-identity stack
DocuSign was 2003.
This is what comes next.
DocuSign is a $14B/yr public company whose signature is literally an image of your name + an audit log they control. Hylaq Sign signatures are cryptographic, hash-chained, and anyone can verify them without trusting our database.
The paradigm break
Notarization exists because we don't trust each other's signatures. DocuSign exists because email auth was the best we had in 2003. Both are bandaids on the same wound: there's no universal cryptographic identity layer that a court can verify in 30 seconds.
Hylaq has Veritas — the universal identity layer. Wrap signatures in it: signing becomes a 1-click action, verification becomes a free public API call, and the entire $34B/yr e-signature + notary stack collapses into a thin protocol layer.
What we replace
DocuSign + Adobe Sign
$14B/yr public market
Identity is email + a click. We replace with Veritas device-key signatures.
Notary services
$20B/yr globally
Per-state notary commissions. Hylaq notarizes globally for $5/doc with cryptographic attestation.
Witness fees
$5B/yr legal admin
Lawyers + paralegals witnessing signatures. Veritas attests automatically.
Court e-filing systems
$3B/yr in lost productivity
State-by-state e-filing chaos. Hylaq Sign emits court-ready signed exports.
Six markets, one protocol
Freelance contracts
Designer, dev, copywriter, photographer. $2/doc beats DocuSign's $10–40/mo plans. Built-in HQ contract review flags risky clauses.
Real estate closings
Today: 6+ in-person notarized signatures. Hylaq Sign + Notarized kind: same legal weight, $5 each, 5 minutes total.
Employment offers + leases
The two most-signed legal artifacts in human life. Both today require email-clicked-OK. Both should be cryptographically signed.
Medical consent + school enrollment
Government-friendly signed forms with audit trails. Replaces fax-and-paper across $100B+/yr in administrative overhead.
WITNESS-kind for journalism
Whistleblower videos, citizen journalism, evidence collection. Hash-chain timestamp + GPS = deepfake-resistant proof of authenticity.
AI agent contracts
When an AI agent signs a contract on your behalf, DocuSign breaks (no email). Hylaq Sign works because @handles are agent-native.
Why only Hylaq
1
Veritas = the only identity layer with real cryptographic weight
DocuSign signatures rely on email auth — courts call this 'reasonable certainty'. Veritas device-key signatures are 'mathematical certainty'. Different evidentiary class entirely.
2
@handle = portable across vendors
DocuSign locks documents in their portal. Hylaq signatures work without us — anyone can recompute the digest from a downloaded copy. This is the Web3-style verifiability the current e-signature industry refused to build because their moat is lock-in.
3
HQ-aware contracts
HQ scans documents at upload — flags risky clauses, suggests counter-language, summarizes the deal. DocuSign + Adobe can't add this without a 5-year M&A spree.
4
Composes with the rest of the stack
Loadit settles the fee. Rail can route distributions to multiple signers. Sovereign issues equity contracts via Sign. Atlas registers the signed asset transfers. The stack works together.
Shipped today
- 3 Prisma models — SignDocument + SignSignatureRequest + SignSignature
- 4 document kinds — GENERIC / CONTRACT / NOTARIZED / WITNESS
- 6 lifecycle states — DRAFT → PENDING → COMPLETED | CANCELED | EXPIRED | REJECTED
- Hash-chained signatures — sha256(canonical(header) || bodyHash) locked at send time
- Body integrity verification — bodyHash check catches database tampering
- 11 API routes — document CRUD, signers add/remove, send, sign, reject, cancel, verify
- 4 consumer pages — landing, new (creator), sign (signer), my-docs (dashboard)
- signedDocumentExport — printable plain-text representation with embedded signature stamps
Phase 2 roadmap
- PDF upload + render — real DocuSign-class document UI with signature stamps positioned on the page.
- Veritas device-key signing — replaces stub signatures with real cryptographic signatures over the digest.
- Notary attestation flow — a Veritas-verified notary co-signs NOTARIZED documents.
- HQ contract review — on-upload AI scan that flags risky clauses + summarizes.
- Court export bundle — zip of body + every signature + verification metadata, in formats US courts accept.
- Multi-language + i18n — global jurisdiction support.
Every signed document on Earth, eventually flows through this protocol.
Identity won the email war. Identity wins the signature war next. Hylaq Sign is the legal-identity stack of the next 50 years.