1. Proof is the industry leader in digital identity and online notarization. How is the company making online transactions more secure and trusted, particularly in areas like estate planning?
Our mission at Proof has always been grounded in trust, and that started by rethinking how we securely bring life's most important moments online.
For most of history, establishing trust meant meeting in person. You showed up, a notary looked at your ID, watched you sign, and notarized your document.
That worked until life moved online. So much of everyday life was suddenly at our fingertips, but executing critical documents was still out of reach. You could refinance your student loans at midnight from your banking app, but you couldn't execute a power of attorney or buy a home without appearing in person.
To bring those moments online, Proof raised the identity proofing bar for notarial acts- the naked eye can only do so much, so we moved the notarial industry toward modern technology to secure identities, signatures, and documents, and detailed audit trails to prove who did what.
This matters most in estate planning, where trust is everything. Estate planning documents have a life well after they are signed, and they often face scrutiny over time. Proof delivers a verified identity, a tamper-evident record, and a full audit trail of who signed what, providing the evidence that protects a person's intent well into the future.
2. Proof recently launched x401, a protocol that verifies both AI agents and the people behind them. Why is "proof of authorization" so important in the age of AI, and what impact could x401 have on industries like financial services and estate planning?
So much of what we do online rests on a simple assumption: that there's a real person on the other end. AI is quickly breaking that down.
It's now easy to fake a face, a voice, or a document, which makes fraud and impersonation cheaper and more convincing than ever. At the same time, the internet is becoming less human driven. AI agents are now booking travel, buying goods, and taking actions for us, and machine-generated traffic recently surpassed human traffic online for the first time.
So how do we trust that a real person authorized an agent? x401, an open protocol developed by Proof, answers that by requiring proof before an agent acts. A system can verify the credentials an agent carries, things like verified identity, signing authority, or proof of humanness, along with what that agent is actually authorized to do. Identity establishes who an agent represents. Authorization establishes what it's permitted to do. x401 binds the two together.
That matters because agentic commerce is moving fast, and it won't stop at booking flights. As agents start helping people with higher-stakes decisions, like choosing a life insurance policy or working through an estate plan, everyone involved needs confidence that a real person authorized the action and defined its limits. Just as Proof had to rethink trust for executing critical documents, we built x401 to establish that same trust for the next chapter of the internet.
3. You've spent years at the forefront of digital trust and identity. What's the biggest lesson you've learned about driving innovation in a highly regulated industry?
Partnering directly with policymakers has been the key to unlocking innovation at scale. Too many companies still see laws and regulations as a roadblock. We see them as the path to bringing compliant products to market and earning the trust of our regulators and our customers.
The specific lesson? Actively partner with policymakers in writing the rules of the future. When I joined Proof, only a patchwork of states allowed notaries to legally perform remote online notarization. We didn't wait for the rest of the country to catch up. We went state by state, made the case to lawmakers, and helped build the legal foundation the whole industry now runs on. That only works if regulators trust that you're trying to raise the standard, not route around it. Trust is the real currency, and you build it by showing up with a higher bar than the one being asked of you.
4. Proof has been a leading advocate for nationwide online notarization. Which states remain the biggest outliers, and what's been the greatest challenge in helping lawmakers embrace secure digital notarization?
Consumers can already access the security and convenience of online notarization nationwide, but a handful of states haven't authorized their notaries to perform them. Every state is different, and in many of the ones that remain, the question isn't whether to modernize, it's how to do it while honoring legal traditions those states value deeply. Several are what's known as attorney closing states, where long-standing frameworks call for an attorney to oversee a real estate closing.
The encouraging news is that these goals aren't in tension. In 2023, Massachusetts became the first state to preserve the attorney's role within a remote closing process. Online notarization was never designed to replace attorneys. It gives them better tools to serve more clients during one of the most important moments in their lives. We think Massachusetts offers a helpful model, and we're optimistic that more states will find their own path forward in the years ahead.
5. What excites you most about LIVE's mission to modernize estate planning while maintaining trust and security, and what would you say to organizations considering joining the coalition?
Real change in a regulated space rarely happens alone. Through the last decade of policy work, I’ve seen that coalitions are what turn a shared goal into actual progress, which is exactly why we're proud to join LIVE as a founding member.
Bringing modern estate planning to consumers in all 50 states is one of the last remaining hurdles to fully digitizing life's most important moments. LIVE is committed to clearing it.
Trust is the common thread in everything we do at Proof, and LIVE's founding principles reflect that same commitment: expanding access, strengthening security, reducing barriers, and preserving legal integrity.
For anyone on the same mission, joining LIVE means joining a diverse community of estate planning, legal services, and technology companies, united by a shared goal, one driven by consistent, technology-neutral policy that strengthens the estate planning process and makes protecting your legacy easier for millions of Americans.
