BID A
Contents held by supplierCommitment recorded
Original fingerprint matchedFull proposal shared with committee
FINGERPRINT
8f32…a410BIDSEAL / TRANSPARENT PROCUREMENTSeal first.
Seal first.
Reveal fairly.
Competition needs a fair starting line.
Commit bids before closing. Reveal them against the original fingerprint. Leave a verifiable trail from tender to award.
Walk through the tenderTENDER RFP–2026–118 ILLUSTRATIVE PROCESS
- 01 Seal
- 02 Close
- 03 Reveal
BID B
Contents held by supplierCommitment recorded
Original fingerprint matchedFull proposal shared with committee
FINGERPRINT
c710…6e29BID C
Contents held by supplierCommitment recorded
Original fingerprint matchedFull proposal shared with committee
FINGERPRINT
4b91…f70301 / SUBMISSIONS SEALED
Only fingerprints are on the ledger. The committee has no bid contents to inspect.
How it works
Seal first. Close on the ledger. Reveal under policy.
01Publish the tender
The buyer commits the requirements, evaluation criteria, committee members and decision policies to the ledger before any bid arrives.
02Seal each bid
Suppliers submit only a fingerprint of their bid before the deadline. The ledger records that a bid was sealed and in what order. Nobody, including the buyer, can read it yet.
03Close by committee
Submission closes at an agreed ledger height or when enough committee members attest the close. No server clock can be adjusted to let a late bid in.
04Reveal and match
Suppliers deliver their full bids into the committee's private collection. Each bid is accepted only if it matches the fingerprint sealed before closing.
05Evaluate and award
Evaluators score in private and attest their scores. The award is final only when the policy's required attestations are present.
Who sees what
Open process. Closed envelopes.
Collection membership and attestation metadata are visible. Private payload access depends on the organizations declared in each collection.
| Information | Bidder | Other bidders | Committee | Validators |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tender rules and policies | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| That a bid was sealed before closing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bid contents before closing | Own bid | No | No | No |
| Bid contents after closing | Own bid | No | Yes | No |
| Scores and award decision | As the tender rules publish | As the tender rules publish | Yes | Attestations only |
Award policy
No single official can award a contract.
The award rule is committed when the tender is published, so every supplier knows how the decision will be made before they bid.
- The procuring agency must attest the award.
- At least three of five evaluating organizations must agree.
- Either the finance or the legal authority must sign off.
policy: award_contract v1
- And
- Procuring Agency
- OutOf 3
- Evaluator 1
- Evaluator 2
- Evaluator 3
- Evaluator 4
- Evaluator 5
- Or
- Finance Ministry
- Legal Authority
Features
A fair process that proves itself.
Unreadable until closing
Only bid commitments are submitted to the ledger before closing; suppliers retain the full proposals.
Unchangeable after closing
A revealed bid must match its seal exactly. Any edit is rejected.
Ledger-ordered closing
Every node agrees on which bids arrived before the close, with no dependence on a clock.
Threshold decisions
Closing, opening and award use OutOf, And and Or policies instead of one person's login.
Private evaluation
Prices and technical proposals stay inside the committee's collection. Competing suppliers never see each other's bids.
Audit-ready trail
An audit office or ombudsman can be a declared member, with the full ordered history ready for any complaint.
The problem
Procurement fails when bids leak or rules bend.
Public and enterprise procurement is one of the largest sources of spending and one of the most common sources of disputes. Most of that comes down to who could see or change what, and when.
Bids leak before the deadline
Whoever can open an inbox or a portal database early can tip off a favoured supplier.
Late changes go unnoticed
A bid quietly edited after closing is hard to detect and harder to prove.
One official can decide
When a single officer controls opening and award, suppliers and auditors have to trust that person.
Complaints become lawsuits
Losing bidders challenge awards because they cannot see that the process was followed.
Who it is for
Buyers, suppliers and the people who audit them.
Head of procurement
A defensible process with fewer disputes and faster resolution.
Supplier
More confidence to compete, especially for smaller firms.
Audit office
Declared oversight access and a complete, ordered record.
Questions
What buyers and suppliers ask first.
Can anyone read a bid before the deadline?
No. Before closing, only a fingerprint of each bid is on the ledger. The bid itself remains with the supplier and is not submitted to the committee until reveal.
What if a supplier does not reveal their bid after closing?
The tender rules decide. Typically an unrevealed bid is treated as withdrawn and any bid bond conditions apply. Either way, the ledger shows exactly what happened.
How is the deadline enforced without a clock?
Closing is a ledger event: an agreed block height or an attested close by the committee. Every node sees the same order of events, so there is no argument about whether a bid was late.
Does BidSeal replace our e-procurement portal?
No. It can sit behind your existing portal as the tamper-evident record of sealing, opening and award. Suppliers can keep using the portal they know.
Are awards and scores made public?
That is set per tender. The attestations proving the award followed policy are always recorded; how much of the scoring is published follows your procurement rules.
ONE PROTOCOL. SHARED POSSIBILITIES.Understand the workflow.
Understand the workflow.
See the bigger picture.
Qkite is in active development with design partners.
Explore the protocol and the other applications built on it.