Abstract
Data forgery and manipulation can undermine trust in areas ranging from science to journalism. Artificial intelligence will probably exacerbate this problem, degrading our ability to distinguish between artificially created data and real recordings (such as those taken with a video camera). Here we report a recording device technology that establishes a cryptographic link between a physical process (the act of recording) and an immutable digital entity (such as an entry in a public blockchain). Our approach relies on a monolithic cryptographic sensor that integrates a sensor device with a hashing unit (that continuously hashes pieces of recorded data) and a cryptographic signature unit (that signs the hashes using a public key encryption scheme). The system then uploads the signed hashes to a trusted public repository. We provide a proof-of-concept implementation with a voltage sensor for extracellular recording of cardiac myocyte field potentials that is fabricated using 180-nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor technology.
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Data availability
Links to the data uploaded to the Sokol blockchain during the proof-of-concept (PoC) implementation can be found in Supplementary Section 3. Other data that support the findings of this study (including the electrophysiological recordings) are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by ETH Zurich (ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship to F.C.); the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) through project no. 205320_188910 (to A.H.); the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SBFI) through the SwissChips initiative (to A.H.); the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Eccellenza Grant (grant no. PCEFP3_187001 to F.F.); Projects in Life Sciences Grant (grant no. 310030_220209 to F.F.); and an SNSF Spark Grant (grant no. CRSK-3_220987 to F.F.). We thank N. Baladari (ETH Zurich and TU Delft) for help with analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) design, P. Rimpf (Cleanroom Facility Basel, ETH Zurich) for assistance with chip packaging and F.K. Gürkaynak and B. Muheim Bachl (Microelectronics Design Center, ETH Zurich) for valuable discussions.
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F.C., S.B. and F.F. conceived the project. F.F. and A.H. supervised the project. F.F., F.C. and X.Y. developed the algorithm and implemented the software. F.C., X.Y., R.B. and V.V. built the prototype. F.C. and J.L. performed the experiments. Q.Y. and S.B. implemented the verification software in Solidity. A.R. performed the power, area and overhead estimation analysis. F.F. and F.C. wrote the paper. A.H., A.R. and S.B. edited the paper.
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F.C., X.Y., R.B. and F.F. are inventors in a European patent application filed by ETH Zurich (application no. EP25164337.5). The patent application covers certain possible implementations of the monolithic cryptographic sensor discussed in the manuscript. The other authors declare no competing interests.
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Nature Electronics thanks Soumyajit Mandal and Fei Zhuge for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Supplementary Sections 1–4, Figs. 1 and 2 and Tables 1 and 2.
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Cardes, F., Bürgel, S., Yuan, X. et al. In-sensor cryptographic signature generation to link a physical process and an immutable digital entity. Nat Electron (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-026-01593-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-026-01593-5
