Model Weight Registry: The Name Is Not the Model

Model Weight Registry Disclosure: AI tools were used for source collection and editorial review. The article was written by a human author, who checked the facts, code, and conclusions. Crypto risk disclosure: This article is a technical explanation, not investment advice. It is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any cryptoasset. Model Weight Registry should not treat a model name as a model identity. A name, repository, tag, branch, or user-facing label can point to useful software, but stable identity for AI weights starts with the exact bytes being loaded. That boundary matters for AI x crypto systems because onchain claims are expensive to correct after users rely on them. If a contract, agent, or audit trail says "model X," the next question should be "which file, revision, size, digest, and receipt?" Byte Identity A digest identifies bytes under a chosen algorithm and input. NIST FIPS 180-4 defines secure hash algorithms, while RFC 6920 describe