The pieces existed.
The answer did not.
Easy to manage, but governance stays inside the provider's system.
Records could be independently verified, but privacy and everyday use remained difficult.
A way to govern data privately while keeping its history accountable.
The focus shifted to the record itself.
In 2021, during an extended stay in Bali following the lockdown, Tim Bansemer met Professor Ben Koo, who had worked and taught at MIT and was exploring how information could be published from a locally hosted environment under its owner's control.
Ben highlighted trusted publishing and the logic of double-entry bookkeeping: corresponding entries that allow a system to check itself.
Tim’s perspective was grounded in years of work across governance, security, and distributed infrastructure.
With the record now at the centre, the question changed:
Which system should we trust to maintain the record?
How can the record make its own history verifiable?
That principle became the foundation of data accounting.
A governance framework connecting three dimensions:
Every piece of data gets its own unique identifier.
Every entity that touches the data is identified with it.
Proof of when the data existed, and in which order.
Tim translated that framework into something that could be built and tested: Aqua Protocol.
From the first prototype toward real-world implementation.
- 2021
The first working prototype
“It doesn’t matter if I fail or if I succeed. This has to exist.”
The first prototype was a locally hosted system that could link, sign, timestamp, import, and export records without placing private data on a public blockchain.
- 2021–2022
Aqua Protocol v1.1 · Kolibri
The first public-sector research project used Aqua Protocol to secure education credentials.
- 2024
Aqua Protocol v1.2 · Guardian
An end-to-end prototype connected independent environments, allowing them to exchange accounted data without relying on a central intermediary.
Developed with a German university to support a public-sector research project on sovereign data markets within Gaia-X.
- 2024
Aqua Protocol v1.3 · Developer SDK
A development kit opened the protocol to outside developers, marking the first step from a research prototype toward a broader ecosystem.
- Since September 2025
Aqua Protocol v4 · Toward real-world implementation
Aqua is now in its fourth protocol iteration, with pilot projects moving it toward production-ready use.
Why Aqua is called Aqua.
Water is the infrastructure life depends on. Aqua brings that idea into the digital world.
The name captures two states:
Water is fluid, versatile, and essential.
Aqua applies those qualities to data.
Ice holds water in a fixed state.
Aqua preserves an exact reference to every version, so the data can keep changing without its past being lost or rewritten.
The next phase is implementation.
AquaFire, AquaAgents, and AquaNode apply the protocol to documents, AI actions, and governed data access.
These are the first three applications. Aqua Protocol provides the infrastructure for new products and industry-specific solutions wherever records must remain verifiable across systems.
The focus now is on pilot projects with organisations ready to put it into practice.