ROOTPRINT

A real person. A continuing identity. A foundation for trust.

Rootprint is designed to connect a real human to a lasting digital identity using dental radiographs and a dentist’s confirmation of whom those images belong to. That identity connects to the person’s BOCA account and digital wallet, allowing their history, permissions, and reputation to remain connected to them over time.

For BOCA Prime, that connection is foundational. A system designed to coordinate care, move funds, and give participants a meaningful voice needs confidence in who is participating, what authority they hold, and whether their history belongs to them.

Rootprint is our proposed foundation for that confidence, beginning in dentistry and opening possibilities well beyond it.

A U.S. nonprovisional patent application has been filed for technology underlying Rootprint.

01 / WHY BOCA NEEDS IDENTITY THAT LASTS

Greater automation and shared authority depend on knowing who is participating.

BOCA Prime is designed to reduce administrative overhead, make the use of shared funds more accountable, and give patients and practices a meaningful voice in how the system operates. As software takes on more coordination and participants take on governing responsibilities, the system needs a reliable way to recognize the people involved.

Doesn't my phone already know who I am?

The identity problem BOCA faces is not unique to BOCA. Modern smartphones and security tools people use every day, such as Face ID and passkeys, can be very good at authentication: confirming that the person using a device, account, or credential is authorized to do so. But authentication is not the same as identity proofing.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) treats them as separate functions in its Digital Identity Guidelines. Identity proofing is about establishing that someone is who they claim to be—including resolving that claimed identity to a single, unique person, validating the evidence used to establish it, and verifying that the evidence belongs to them. NIST also describes reliably associating online activity with a single known individual as a challenge for online services.

Rootprint applies that problem first within the BOCA ecosystem: creating a trustworthy link between a digital identity and the real person behind it. If that link can be established, it could remain connected to the person as they change phones, accounts, wallets, credentials, or use authorized agents.

An account alone is not enough. A person can create another email address, register under another name, or abandon an account when its history becomes inconvenient. If that means escaping obligations or claiming benefits through multiple identities, everyone contributing to the system bears the cost.

Rootprint is designed to make that kind of reset extremely difficult. A new name does not create new dental anatomy. Working with DentAI, Rootprint would compare dental images to help identify someone attempting to register again under a different identity. An apparent match would trigger review, allowing BOCA to investigate rather than treating the new account as an entirely new person.

Protecting the system from abuse is only part of the value. A lasting identity could also help people keep the history, credentials, and participation rights they have legitimately earned. Within the BOCA ecosystem, a patient’s participation history can remain connected across visits and participating practices. A dentist’s verified credentials and professional history can remain attached to the person providing care. When participants help govern the system, a continuing human identity could help establish that each eligible person is represented once in decisions organized around one-person-one-vote.

Those benefits should not require exposing more personal information than necessary. Confirming someone’s eligibility to vote, for example, should not require revealing their dental images. Rootprint’s role is to establish the human connection and support the proofs each function needs while protecting the underlying private information.

As patients return for care, updated dental images and confirmations from treating dentists could add supporting evidence to the same continuing identity. Over time, that additional evidence could strengthen the connection between the person and their digital identity. Evidence already produced through dental care could help BOCA protect shared funds, support more reliable automation, and make participation easier—while allowing trust to accumulate, authority to be checked, and accountability to persist beyond any single account.

Together, these capabilities support the hypothesis behind Rootprint: authentication can establish who is authorized to use an account or credential; Rootprint could help establish who that identity belongs to and preserve that human connection over time. If that can be done reliably and privately, people could change accounts, devices, wallets, credentials, or authorized agents without their identity and history having to reset with them. That continuity could help BOCA entrust more of its operation to software and more of its governance to the people it serves.

That same capability could also have value beyond BOCA, wherever digital systems need to recognize a real, distinct person over time. Section 04 explores those possibilities.

02 / HOW ROOTPRINT ESTABLISHES THE CONNECTION

Dental evidence. A dentist’s confirmation. A digital identity that stays connected.

Rootprint’s proposed design brings together three forms of evidence: the anatomy visible in dental images, a professional’s confirmation of the person receiving care, and the digital credentials that connect that person to future interactions.

Biological continuity

The dental images help establish biological continuity.

Professional attestation

The dentist confirms whom those images belong to.

Cryptographic continuity

Cryptography protects the evidence and makes its connection to the identity verifiable.

A digital identity that stays connected.

Biological continuity / Recognizing the same person

Dental radiographs reveal distinctive patterns in teeth, roots, surrounding bone, and existing dental work, many of which remain relatively stable over time. That combination of distinctiveness and durability is the basis for Rootprint’s proposed use of dental anatomy as an identity anchor.

Working with DentAI, Rootprint would compare those features across images to help recognize the same person—even when images are submitted through different accounts or practices. The comparison would account for treatment, tooth loss, and differences in image quality and positioning, providing evidence of continuity or flagging a discrepancy for review.

Professional attestation / Connecting the images to the person

A dentist confirms that the images belong to the patient receiving care. That confirmation connects the digital evidence to a real patient seen in the practice and identifies the licensed professional making the attestation.

As patients return for care, updated images and confirmations from treating dentists could add supporting evidence. When another treating dentist confirms the patient and contributes updated images, Rootprint could check whether the new evidence fits the established identity. Over time, the connection could be supported by a history of care and accountable professional confirmations.

Cryptographic continuity / Protecting the evidence and securing the connection

Rootprint is designed to keep dental images encrypted in protected storage and cryptographically link evidence from those images to the person’s digital identity. The account, app, or wallet would provide a way to use that identity without making the underlying images public.

That link would use cryptographic records that allow the system to check whether evidence has been altered and verify which professional signed an attestation. These records help preserve a verifiable connection between the protected evidence, the dentist’s confirmation, and the identity they support.

Privacy-preserving proofs could then allow a specific fact to be checked without revealing the images behind it. For example, an organization outside dentistry could use Rootprint to help verify that someone voting in a member election is a verified human who has not already voted under another account. The organization would receive proof relevant to participation—not the person’s dental images or clinical history.

Dental images would remain in protected clinical storage. Using Rootprint to verify identity would not itself grant another service access to those images or personal information beyond what the person authorizes for that interaction.

How the parts work together

The dental images help establish biological continuity. The dentist confirms whom those images belong to. Cryptography protects the evidence and makes its connection to the identity verifiable.

Once that connection is established, the person could use their BOCA app or wallet to authorize everyday actions through digital signatures. As care continues, new evidence could strengthen the same continuing identity, increasing confidence that the person using that identity is the same person whose history the system already knows.

03 / WHAT ROOTPRINT ENABLES ACROSS BOCA

One continuing identity. Several connected capabilities.

Rootprint would give different parts of BOCA a common foundation for recognizing participants. Each component could use the evidence or permissions relevant to its role, without receiving unrestricted access to the person’s information.

DentAI / Understanding patterns over time

An isolated treatment record tells only part of a story. Connecting records to continuing patient and provider identities could help DentAI evaluate patterns across encounters—including treatment history, outcomes, and inconsistencies that warrant review.

The relationship works both ways: DentAI helps evaluate the dental evidence supporting a Rootprint identity, while Rootprint helps keep DentAI’s analysis connected to the correct people over time.

Explore DentAI →

Rootline / Bringing relevant history into financing

If a patient needs help financing the balance of treatment costs remaining after Prime’s contribution, Rootline could build on an identity already established within BOCA. With appropriate authorization, relevant payment and participation history could give a financing provider additional context and reduce repeated information gathering.

Evidence of regular payments and an established history with a practice could help inform risk assessment alongside other underwriting requirements. That history would not guarantee approval or give a lender access to the patient’s clinical records simply because they use Rootprint.

Explore Rootline →

Governance / Giving verified participants a voice

Any voting system has to answer basic questions: Who is eligible to vote? How do we prevent someone from voting more than once? How can participants verify that their votes were counted?

Within BOCA, Rootprint could let patients and providers prove that they are eligible to vote without revealing their names, dental records, or more personal information than the voting system needs. Because Rootprint could recognize the same real person behind multiple accounts, it could help preserve one-person-one-vote and prevent that person from casting additional votes through separate accounts. That could strengthen confidence that participation reflects distinct eligible people rather than the number of accounts someone can create.

Blockchain could provide a tamper-evident record of accepted votes. Combined with privacy-preserving voting proofs, it could let participants check that their votes were recorded and included in the count without publicly linking their choices to their identities.

Governance would define who has a say in each decision; Rootprint would help verify that those exercising that authority meet the rules. The same capability could have value beyond BOCA—in professional associations, cooperatives, and other organizations that need to give real people a verifiable voice.

Explore Governance →

Authorized Agents / Connecting automated actions to human authority

A patient might authorize an agent to arrange a payment within a chosen limit. A practice might authorize one to handle defined administrative tasks. As agents take on more responsibility, several different questions have to be answered: Who is the person or organization behind the instruction? Which agent is acting? What authority was it given? And does the action it is attempting fall within those limits?

Other systems would perform different jobs: authenticating the account or credential being used, identifying the agent, recording the authority delegated to it, defining its permissions, and enforcing those limits before an action is allowed. Rootprint could contribute one part of that chain by helping establish the continuing person behind the delegation.

For example, a patient could authorize an agent to pay a dental bill up to a specific amount. Rootprint could help establish the person granting that authority. The agent would carry evidence of the delegation and its limits. The receiving system could then verify that the agent is authorized, check that the payment falls within those limits, and reject it if it does not. An audit record could preserve what the patient authorized and what ultimately occurred.

This layered approach reflects a broader direction already emerging around agentic systems. NIST is examining identification, authentication, authorization, delegation, auditing, and the connection between agent identity and human authorization. Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, and Mastercard’s Verifiable Intent are also developing ways to establish which agent is acting, what a user authorized, what limits apply, and how that authorization can be verified later.

Rootprint is aimed directly at one of the trust questions beneath that emerging infrastructure: establishing the continuing human behind the authority being delegated. If Rootprint performs as intended, it could help keep that authority connected to the same verified person even as accounts, devices, credentials, or agents change.

The principle remains simple: an agent acting on someone’s behalf should have clear authority, stay within defined limits, and leave evidence of what was authorized and what occurred.

Explore Authorized Agents →

Financial Infrastructure / Checking who may move or receive funds

Before carrying out a payment, financial systems need to check the parties involved and the authority behind the instruction. Rootprint could help verify that a receiving account belongs to the intended participating practice, or that someone requesting a transfer is authorized to act.

These checks could support conventional payment services or selected smart-contract functions. Rootprint would supply relevant identity and authorization evidence; the financial infrastructure would apply the rules for moving the funds.

Explore Financial Infrastructure →

04 / ROOTPRINT BEYOND BOCA

Established through dental care. Useful wherever human identity matters.

As more of life moves online, the need to recognize a real person, verify their qualifications, or trust their participation extends far beyond dental coverage. AI-generated accounts, impersonation, and deepfakes make those questions increasingly consequential. If Rootprint can establish a reliable human connection within BOCA, other organizations could use it—with the individual’s authorization—to help distinguish verified, distinct people from fabricated identities, duplicate accounts, or bots posing as independent users.

Human verification / A person behind the account

An online community, professional network, or member organization may want to know that an account represents a distinct human without requiring that person to display their legal name publicly.

Rootprint could help someone demonstrate that they are a verified person while participating under a chosen public identity. Services could use that assurance to limit duplicate accounts, protect member benefits, or make coordinated manipulation more difficult.

As convincing digital impersonation becomes easier, a continuing connection to a verified human could also give services a stronger basis for checking who is behind a consequential request. The opportunity is to make legitimate participation easier to trust and false identities harder to sustain, without broadly exposing the personal information used for verification.

Portable credentials / Qualifications that can travel with their holder

Professional qualifications are often checked repeatedly as people move between employers, organizations, and services. Rootprint could help establish that a credential remains connected to the same person over time, while compatible credential infrastructure could allow another organization to verify who issued it, whether it remains valid, and the information relevant to that interaction.

There is now an open standards framework for this kind of exchange. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published Verifiable Credentials 2.0 as a web standard for credentials that can be cryptographically secured, privacy-respecting, and machine-verifiable. The standards also support approaches that allow people to disclose only the information needed for a particular interaction rather than exposing the entire credential.

Rootprint is not itself that credential standard, and W3C has not evaluated Rootprint. But if Rootprint proves reliable and compatible with open standards, Rootprint-supported proofs could potentially be used within a broader credential ecosystem rather than remaining confined to BOCA.

For dentists, hygienists, or registered dental assistants, that could include licensure, continuing education, and verified training. The same approach could support other professions whose members need to demonstrate qualifications across organizations. Employers, credentialing services, and professional associations could gain a more direct way to check those qualifications, while individuals could spend less time assembling and resubmitting documentation.

Persistent reputation / A history worth keeping

A trusted professional or long-standing community member may have years of useful history that a new service cannot easily recognize. Rootprint could help people carry verifiable evidence of that history—such as confirmed participation, completed work, or reviews tied to genuine interactions—into another setting.

The receiving organization would decide which evidence matters for its purpose. A professional marketplace might value verified work history; a member organization might value a record of participation. Individuals could demonstrate an established track record without having to build credibility from zero each time.

A more continuous dental history / Records connected through the patient

Within dentistry, Rootprint could also provide an identity foundation for a patient-authorized virtual chart: a way to connect relevant records held by different participating practices into a more continuous view of care.

With the patient’s permission, a treating dentist could access available radiographs and treatment history from earlier care, including care outside BOCA. Rootprint would help establish that the records belong to the same person. Record-sharing infrastructure and agreements would determine how those records become available.

This remains a development possibility, but its purpose is practical: help patients and clinicians assemble a useful history that might otherwise remain scattered across offices.

The commercial opportunity / Value for organizations and individuals

Rootprint could become a service that organizations integrate and individuals choose to use wherever reliable human verification, portable credentials, or an established reputation matter.

If Rootprint proves reliable, privacy-preserving, useful, and compatible with open credential standards, its proofs could potentially be used as an identity input by other digital services or agent platforms. That could allow organizations to add Rootprint-supported identity verification to existing digital services without requiring those services to become part of the BOCA ecosystem.

For individuals, the value could be a verified identity they can carry across participating services. Someone could demonstrate that they are a distinct human while keeping their legal name private, present professional qualifications to a new organization, or carry an established reputation into a new marketplace. Optional paid services could make those capabilities available beyond BOCA.

For online platforms, Rootprint could help prevent one operator from presenting hundreds of automated accounts as hundreds of different people. Services offering rewards, promotional credits, or member benefits could check that those opportunities reach distinct eligible participants rather than networks of fabricated accounts. Marketplaces and review platforms could combine verified human participation with evidence of actual transactions to make manufactured reputations harder to build.

Professional platforms could use it to verify credential holders. Dental software could use it to help connect patient records across participating sources.

Financial services could use it as an additional identity check during a credit application, account opening, or account recovery. With appropriate authorization, a verified connection to relevant payment history could also provide context for lending decisions. The proposed value is greater confidence that the applicant is the person they claim to be—and that the history being considered belongs to them.

For Cadmus, these applications could support organizational licensing, integration services, and optional individual subscriptions. The commercial case would depend on measurable benefits and willingness to pay: organizations reducing fraud and repeated verification work, and individuals gaining a useful way to carry their identity, qualifications, and credibility across services.

BOCA would provide the initial setting in which to develop and test the technology. If successful, Rootprint could serve both sides of a much broader need: people who want to demonstrate their authenticity and organizations that need a reliable way to recognize it.

05 / WHAT NEEDS TO BE DEMONSTRATED

The promise depends on the proof.

Rootprint’s proposed capabilities need to be tested under the conditions people, practices, and participating systems would actually encounter.

That means demonstrating reliable identity matching across changes in dental anatomy, treatment, image quality, and positioning. It also means testing whether Rootprint can recognize duplicate identities where uniqueness matters, distinguish legitimate changes from attempted impersonation, and provide a fair process for correcting mistaken matches.

The professional attestation model also has to hold up in practice. Rootprint would need to demonstrate that dentist confirmations can be trusted, verified, and corrected when necessary without creating another weak point in the identity system.

Privacy and security are equally important. The underlying dental information must remain protected, permissions must work as intended, and people must be able to recover access after losing a device or compromising a credential without allowing someone else to take over their identity.

For Rootprint to become useful beyond BOCA, other organizations would also need to be able to verify its proofs and credentials across compatible systems. That requires demonstrating interoperability with relevant standards and showing that Rootprint provides measurable value beyond identity-proofing methods that already exist.

The standards and emerging infrastructure discussed on this page help establish that these are real and increasingly important problems. They do not establish that Rootprint solves them. That has to be demonstrated through research, development, testing, and evidence.

These are central questions for the research and development program. The goal is to establish whether Rootprint can deliver the confidence described here while remaining practical for the people and organizations that use it.

Explore the Research →