Anchor does not create or govern attestations as a general institutional object. Within the current Suite, Attestor remains authoritative for Trust Statements and other Attestor-owned trust artifacts.
Anchor's role begins only when the integrity of an attestation, Trust Statement, endorsement, challenge, or related artifact should be preserved through an Integrity Reference.
An attestation may express support, challenge, observation, witness, qualification, relationship, or trust-related judgment.
Anchor does not determine the meaning or validity of that statement. Anchor preserves the integrity relationship for the defined artifact representation.
An Attestation Artifact is a statement, endorsement, challenge, declaration, Trust Statement, or other governed representation that may become an Anchor integrity-preservation candidate.
FoundationAnchor should preserve the Source Institution, Source-System Identifier, signer, issuing role, or other attribution necessary to understand who or what governs the attestation artifact.
FoundationBefore anchoring an attestation artifact, Anchor should define the exact representation and boundary to which the Integrity Reference applies.
FoundationAnchor may preserve an Integrity Reference that allows later reviewers to determine whether the reviewed attestation representation remains consistent with the representation that was originally anchored.
FoundationAttestor remains authoritative for:
Anchor may preserve the integrity of those artifacts. It does not become the trust authority.
A claim is an assertion. An attestation may support, challenge, qualify, witness, or otherwise respond to a claim. Anchor may preserve integrity for either artifact without adjudicating their relationship.
An attestation may itself be evidence, may reference evidence, or may merely express a judgment. Anchor preserves artifact integrity rather than deciding evidentiary weight.
Certifier may evaluate an artifact or body of evidence under its own standards and methodology. Anchor may preserve integrity for the resulting attestation-related artifact without becoming Certifier.
A Trust Statement may contain or function as an attestation, but the trust judgment remains Attestor-owned. Anchor verifies integrity, not trustworthiness.
Anchor should preserve only the information needed to make the integrity relationship independently reviewable.
Attestation artifacts often depend on attribution. Anchor may preserve signer references, key references, issuing roles, Source Institution, or producing-system metadata where needed for later verification.
An attestation may later be withdrawn, superseded, corrected, revoked, challenged, replaced, or reissued by its Source Institution.
Anchor should preserve the earlier integrity relationship rather than silently rewriting it.
If Attestor or another Source Institution changes the attestation itself, that is a Source Artifact change.
If Anchor recorded the wrong attestation artifact, digest, representation boundary, timestamp, signer metadata, or verification material, that may require an Anchor Correction.
Each institution remains authoritative for its own canonical object.
Anchor should preserve the integrity of an attestation artifact when that preservation has durable institutional value, while leaving attestation meaning, trust judgment, dispute resolution, and lifecycle authority to the institution that owns the attestation.