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The credential
The LEXI credential: verify a legal opinion on-chain
What a LEXI credential records on Base, what stays off-chain, and the three-step check a relier runs. Specimen only; V0 runs on Base Sepolia testnet.
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Definition
An on-chain legal opinion, defined.
An on-chain legal opinion is a legal opinion whose signer, date, scope and current status are recorded on a public chain, so the parties it names can check them without asking the firm. A LEXI credential is a co-signed legal opinion committed on-chain. It records who signed, for which jurisdiction, as of which date, until when, under which governing law and for whom, and it binds the opinion's scope and text with two hashes. It is not a licence, a registration, or an approval by any regulator.
The opinion itself never touches the chain. A licensed lawyer reviews the LEXI engine's work product, runs their own diligence and co-signs the opinion. The opinion body stays off-chain, encrypted; the chain holds hash commitments to it and the metadata a relier needs. Reading that metadata is free. V0 records credentials on Base Sepolia, Base's public testnet. Nothing is live on mainnet, and mainnet is targeted post-audit, Q4 2026.
Clearing a jurisdiction means obtaining a co-signed legal opinion covering it, and one credential records one cleared jurisdiction. V0 clears VARA (Dubai); the EU (MiCA) and India (FIU-IND) are V1, next up. The flow that produces a credential is on how LEXI works; what a crypto legal opinion is, and why counterparties ask for one, is on crypto legal opinions.
- Chain
- Base. Base Sepolia (testnet) today; mainnet targeted post-audit, Q4 2026.
- Who signs
- One assigned licensed lawyer co-signs each credential. No AI signs anything.
- Who may rely
- The reliers the credential names, after accepting the reliance terms on record.
- Cost to read
- Free for the public on-chain metadata. Reliance access is a fixed USDC fee.
- Transferable
- No. The token standard is undecided, so no standard is named here.
What lives where
What goes on-chain, and what stays off it.
The credential is metadata plus hash commitments to a versioned opinion held off-chain. The chain is the integrity and reliance layer; the documents themselves stay where they can be corrected or withdrawn.
| Layer | Contents | Who can read it |
|---|---|---|
| On-chain, on Base | Firm ID, signatory, jurisdiction, as-of date, expiry, status (Live / Expired / Revoked), reliance mode (Open / Selective), governing law, scope hash, opinion hash | Anyone. Reading public on-chain metadata is free. |
| Off-chain, public | Scope text (the question covered and what is excluded), assumptions and reservations, permitted-use terms | Anyone. |
| Off-chain, gated | The opinion body: the licensed lawyer's reasoning and conclusion, encrypted in an EU-hosted confidential store | Named reliers who have accepted the reliance terms. Reliance access is a fixed USDC fee. |
There is no on-chain risk score and no numeric verdict, by design. The engine's risk read is internal work product, and no compliance score is published, on-chain or off. The verdict, if you want one, is a licensed lawyer's signature. Each field is defined in the glossary: as-of date, status, reliance mode, scope hash and opinion hash.
Their README (opens in a new tab) says the attestations should not be relied upon for any legal, compliance, or contractual purpose
.
Names the parties that may rely on it, carries a licensed lawyer's signature, and expires. The two do different jobs.
Fig. 01 The credential, on-chain and off-chain. Field list is the V0 target schema; no licence row exists on the record.
- Jurisdiction
- AE · VARA (Dubai)
- Governing law
- Dubai (onshore UAE)
- As-of
- dated at signature
- Expiry
- bound by scope
- Reliance
- Selective · named reliers
- Firm ID
- lexi:firm:0x0000
- Scope
- Whether the activities described in the submitted documentation require a VASP licence under the VARA framework. Tax and employment matters excluded.
- Scope hash
- 0x0000…0000
- Opinion hash
- 0x0000…0000
0x0000…0000
- 01Status is Live, not Expired or Revoked
- 02Scope and opinion hashes match the documents you hold
- 03You are a named relier and have accepted the terms
The relier check
Read a credential in three steps.
Verification is a read against the credential record, in one call. Each step reads one on-chain field.
Status is Live, not Expired or Revoked.
As-of date, expiry and revocation are on-chain.Does it still speak as of a date I accept?
The scope and opinion hashes match the documents you hold.
Hash the PDF and the scope text and compare them with the on-chain commitments.Is this the document the lawyer signed?
Your entity is a named relier and has accepted the reliance terms.
The credential names who may rely on it; the reliance record shows you accepted the terms.Am I expressly authorised to rely?
Live means unexpired and unrevoked. It does not mean the opinion is a current legal conclusion; the as-of date and the regulator events after it tell you that. The corridor tracker lists those events and what each does to an opinion's scope or date.
Status
Live, Expired or Revoked, read from the on-chain record with its as-of date and expiry.
Hashes
Drop the opinion PDF and the scope text; the page hashes them locally and compares them with the on-chain commitments.
Named relier
Your entity appears in the reliance list and has accepted the reliance terms on-chain.
Fig. 02 The verify page, as designed. Static illustration: nothing here runs, and nothing on this site reads mainnet.
The V0 interface
Verify in one call, on Base Sepolia (testnet).
The listing below is the V0 draft interface. The values are illustrative, and no contract address or transaction hash is published until the CTO confirms them.
// V0 runs on Base Sepolia (testnet). // Mainnet is targeted post-audit, Q4 2026. // 0x8df7…7747 is a V0 test credential id, // not a transaction hash. read credential(0x8df7…7747) on base-sepolia → status: Live | Expired | Revoked → asOf: <date> expiry: <date> → jurisdiction: <ISO code · regulator> → governingLaw: <text> → scopeHash: 0x0000…0000 → opinionHash: 0x0000…0000 → relianceMode: Selective | Open → reliers: [named]
Draft interface, values illustrative. The id shown is a V0 test credential id, not a transaction hash, and the fields beside it are placeholders, not the record behind that id. Addresses publish once confirmed by the CTO.
For exchanges, VASPs and Licensed Distributors
For exchanges and reliers.
The check in a listing team's language.
Compliance officers and listing teams read credentials; they never sign them. LEXI never sits in the listing decision; it tells you what the opinion covers, who signed it and whether it is still live. The relier page covers:
- What a compliance file asks for today, and where each item sits on the credential.
- The three-step check, reading free, reliance a fixed USDC fee.
- The Licensed Distributor as the worked relier under VARA's Broker-Dealer Services Rulebook.
- The design-partner relier structure: non-paying, VARA first, Base Sepolia only, with no reliance on any testnet credential.
The relier page: For exchanges, VASPs and Licensed Distributors
The briefing: How exchanges verify a token legal opinion
- Reading public on-chain metadata
- free
- Reliance access: the gated body plus an on-chain reliance record
- fixed USDC fee
- Credential issuance, paid by the protocol
- USDC, per credential
- One credential
- one cleared jurisdiction
- Holding $LEXI
- never required
LEXI has not issued a token and is not a listing agent. If you are an exchange, you are a relier: here is how a credential is read.
Reliance
Reliance is explicit, and recorded.
A named relier is a party the credential lists as entitled to rely on the opinion. Reliance attaches only after that party accepts the reliance terms, and each acceptance is written on-chain as a reliance record: a transaction signed by the relier, carrying the fixed USDC fee, that proves reliance was granted on a given date. Under Selective mode, a party that is not named may read the public metadata but cannot rely on the opinion and cannot open its body.
Reliance mode is the on-chain field that says who may rely. Selective, the default, means only the reliers named on the credential. Open means any party may become a relier by accepting the reliance terms and paying the USDC reliance fee. In both modes, reliance attaches only after the terms are accepted and the acceptance is recorded on-chain; reliance is always explicit.
Reliance letters, and what replaces them
A PDF opinion may be relied on only by its addressee and by anyone the firm expressly authorises, and it speaks as of its date. Opinion practice has held both rules for years; the American Bar Association's Core Opinion Principles of 2017 state them in sections 4.1 and 4.2. A party outside the addressee line asks the firm for a reliance letter, which is often granted only as of the original date and sometimes marked as delivered but not to be relied upon. A LEXI credential puts the reliance list, the as-of date and the expiry on-chain, so the question of who may rely, and as of when, has a recorded answer instead of a letter.
Nothing is edited after signing. A refreshed opinion gets a new credential with its own date; the old one is left to expire or is revoked. That is why the second step of the check works: if the document set changes, the scope hash stops matching.
Checking the signatory
The signatory and the firm ID are public on-chain fields, so a relier can check the licence with the issuing bar or register. For a Dubai-registered signatory, the Government of Dubai Legal Affairs Department publishes a public directory of advocates and legal consultants (opens in a new tab) showing status, registration number and licence expiry. Registration-number lookups work; the directory covers Dubai (onshore) registrations only. The specimen on this page shows "A. Signatory", a fictional placeholder.
Limits
What the credential is not.
- Not a licence, a registration, or an approval by any regulator. It records a licensed lawyer's scoped opinion, nothing more. LEXI is not licensed or endorsed by VARA, and no regulator takes part in recording a credential.
- Not transferable. A credential is bound to its engagement. The token standard is an open engineering decision, so no standard is named here.
- Not a compliance score. No number, no rating, no verdict on-chain beyond the opinion itself and its status.
- Not the opinion body. The reasoning stays off-chain, encrypted, readable by named reliers who have accepted the reliance terms.
- Not legal advice from LEXI. LEXI is not a law firm. The opinion is the licensed lawyer's, issued to named reliers under a defined scope, and no attorney-client relationship arises from reading a credential.
Questions
Questions reliers ask.
How does a relier verify a LEXI credential?
A named relier runs three checks against the credential record on Base: the status is Live, not Expired or Revoked; the scope and opinion hashes match the documents the relier holds; and the relier's entity is a named relier that has accepted the reliance terms. Reading the public on-chain metadata is free. V0 runs on Base Sepolia testnet, and nothing is live on mainnet.
Is a LEXI credential a licence or a regulator approval?
No. A LEXI credential is a co-signed legal opinion committed on-chain. It is not a licence, a registration, or an approval by any regulator, and LEXI is not licensed or endorsed by VARA. LEXI is not a law firm; the opinion belongs to the licensed lawyer who co-signed it.
Is the credential the legal opinion itself?
No. The credential is metadata plus two hash commitments to a versioned opinion held off-chain. The opinion body stays encrypted in an EU-hosted confidential store and opens only to named reliers who have accepted the reliance terms. The scope text, the assumptions and reservations, and the permitted-use terms are public off-chain.
What does it cost to read a LEXI credential?
Reading the public on-chain metadata is free. Reliance access, meaning the gated opinion body plus an on-chain reliance record, is a fixed USDC fee. Price points publish at mainnet. Holding $LEXI is never required.
Sources
- American Bar Association, Business Law Section, Core Opinion Principles (approved 28 March and 7 April 2017), sections 4.1 and 4.2. scbar.org, PDF (opens in a new tab)
- Coinbase Verifications, repository README (last commit 2024-08-14), checked at source on . github.com/coinbase/verifications (opens in a new tab)
- Government of Dubai Legal Affairs Department, directory of advocates and legal consultants, checked at source on . lpsprd.legal.dubai.gov.ae (opens in a new tab)
This page describes LEXI's own vocabulary and the V0 design. It is not legal advice. The V0 flow was confirmed end to end on Base Sepolia (testnet) by the founding team on ; dated entries are in the build log.
The trust layer for institutional Web3.
Reliers read credentials for free. Licensed lawyers co-sign with a stake behind the signature.