Glossary
Append-only ledger
A record that can only be added to — never edited or deleted in place.
An append-only ledger is a list of events where existing entries are permanent. New information is added as a new entry; mistakes are addressed with a visible correction, not by rewriting the past. This is what makes a history hard to fake: you cannot slip in a false event without leaving a trace.
Every provenance event on Attesian is written to an append-only, hash-chained ledger. Each entry commits to the one before it, so removing or altering any event would break the chain and be detectable — including by Attesian itself.