Nanopublication identifiers are trusty URIs: each contains a cryptographic hash computed from the nanopublication's own content. This makes the link between identifier and content permanent and verifiable — given a nanopublication and its identifier, anyone can check that the content has not been changed, and a given identifier can never end up pointing to different content. Nanopublications are therefore immutable: corrections are published as new nanopublications with new identifiers, linked to the old version rather than replacing it in place.

Resolution of the identifiers does not depend on a single server. The https://w3id.org/np/ identifiers are persistent redirects run by the w3id.org initiative, backed by a community commitment to keep them stable, and they can be redirected to whatever services are current. Behind them, the nanopublication network consists of multiple independent registry servers that each hold full copies of the published nanopublications, so no single party can lose or withhold them. Since the identifier itself verifies the content, a nanopublication retrieved from any source — a registry, a mirror, or a local archive — can be trusted to be authentic.