How to Archive DeFi Documentation and Receipts
A simple filing method for links, transaction records and changed terms.
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Web pages about DeFi disappear in a way that ordinary documents do not. A documentation site can be replaced wholesale, a forum thread can be edited, a dashboard can show a number that never existed. If you are relying on a page as evidence of what a protocol did or promised, the page is not evidence — a saved copy with a timestamp is.
What is worth saving, and what is not
Save pages that state a fact you may need to prove later. Protocol terms at the moment you relied on, a dashboard reading you based a decision on, an incident disclosure with the affected contract named, the fee schedule in force when you transacted. These are the pages where “it said this at the time” is a claim you might actually need to support.
Do not bother saving navigation, marketing, or anything behind a login you may lose access to. A saved copy of a page that only you could see is worth less than it appears, and a private dashboard snapshot has no evidentiary value to anyone else.
Do not treat a screenshot as an archive. Screenshots lose the URL, the date, and anything scrolled out of view. They are fine as a quick reference inside your own notes and poor as a record you intend to point at later.
Two ways to save, and when each is enough
A plain copy of the page text with its URL and the time you took it. This is enough for almost every documentation and policy claim. Store it as plain text next to the transaction or decision it relates to, not in a folder named by topic, because you will not remember the topic later.
A cryptographic timestamp for anything you might dispute. If a protocol’s operators are the kind of organisation that might rewrite history, capture the page, hash the capture, and submit the hash to a public timestamping service. The timestamp service proves the capture existed at that time; it does not prove the capture is honest, which is why the URL and the full page content matter as much as the hash.
Linking receipts to the action they justify
The reason to archive is not the page, it is the connection. A transaction receipt on its own says funds moved between two addresses. A receipt stored next to the terms you accepted, the setting you had enabled, and the interface version you used says something defensible about the conditions of that action. Keep one record per action rather than one archive per year.
Practical constraints
Archived pages are not proof of what was deployed. A contract’s source can differ from its bytecode, and a documentation page can describe a feature that was never shipped. When an archived document and on-chain state disagree, the chain is what happened and the document is what was claimed. Keep both, and label which is which.
Storage is the other constraint. Full page captures with images are large; text-only captures of documentation pages are small enough to keep indefinitely. Decide at the start which category you are in, because migrating a large archive later is far more work than starting small.