For 78 days, teams at the Starling Lab and Reuters worked together to document the presidential transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden with an array of new image authentication technologies and decentralized web protocols.

The prototype archive that we created is a time capsule for both this historic moment in U.S. politics and a microcosm of the difficulties reporting the news in our digital age, as allegations of fake news and altered digital photos abound.

The methods and tools we evaluated address three challenges:

1. How can we securely capture digital photos?

2. How can we store them securely?

3. How do we verify the accuracy of their content?

The pixels, code, and analysis we present form a complex image of trust. They reveal both the presence and absence of trust in our politics and daily lives.