Glossary

Attestation

A signed record binding an identity commitment, a timestamp, and a witnessed state hash. NeuroCrypt's atomic unit. An attestation asserts that a subject was present; it asserts nothing about what the subject did, saw, or intended, and has no field in which such a thing could be written.

The Ring

Primary structure. Circumference 8.8 km; primary shaft depth 1,340 m. Figures controlled at NC-REG-0002.

Witness chain

The append-only Merkle substrate maintained by Program Lattice. Every attestation NeuroCrypt has produced, in order, permanently.

Sealing

The property that a written node verifies forever. Sealing cannot be waived; the substrate provides no mechanism by which it could be. An attestation cannot be revoked, amended, or withdrawn by the subject, by NeuroCrypt, or by any tier of clearance. Personnel are reminded of this at enrolment because it is routinely misunderstood as a rule rather than a fact.

Cold attestation

A chain node with no identifiable originating terminal. Structurally valid, fully verifying, not submitted by anyone. First characterized in 2015; see NC-INC-0012. Program Lattice's standing position is that cold attestations are a substrate artifact.

The Countinformal - not a standard term

Running total of cold attestations. Personnel use it for the current figure and, in the phrase "ahead of the Count," for the forward projection withheld at NC-TN-0204. Records has twice asked that the phrase be dropped from shift handover. It has not been.

Reconstruction

Derivation of the subject that must have been present to produce a given attestation, performed without access to that subject. See Program Cold Mirror. A completed reconstruction is itself an attestation, is appended like any other, and is sealed like any other.

Quorum

The minimum number of independent witnesses required to be present before a subject may attest at Ring floor. Standard quorum is three. Quorum is a requirement on the attestation procedure and not a condition the substrate evaluates; the substrate accepts writes from an authenticated terminal without reference to it, which is why a shortfall is a procedural finding rather than a rejected append. Quorum has been met by fewer than three witnesses on ██ occasions.

Tier, Band

One scale, named twice by convention. Documents carry a tier; personnel hold a band; the numbers correspond, so a Band 4 reader is cleared to Tier 4 material. The two words are not interchangeable in practice because the offices that use them maintain separate instruments, and Records has not proposed a single term.

Presence receipt

The subject-facing artifact issued on successful attestation. Contains the attestation reference and nothing else. A receipt is a courtesy; the record does not depend on it, and destroying a receipt has no effect on anything.