Submission for the Google I/O 2026 Writing Challenge.
I shipped Phase 1 of a C2PA marketplace on Tuesday. Google shipped SynthID into Chrome on Wednesday. This post is what I learned in the 48 hours in between.
Detection is the half I no longer care about
I want to be honest about why I almost did not write this post.
I have been heads-down on a small marketplace called Vericum for three months. The product is one sentence. A marketplace for human-authored content with cryptographic proof of origin and an automatic royalty chain. I shipped Phase 1 last week. C2PA verification engine. Stripe Connect payouts. Buyer verification fee. RLS on every table. Nothing flashy.
