# Trust & Provenance > Canonical HTML: https://initkoa.org/technology/kristal/trust-and-provenance > Markdown mirror: https://initkoa.org/technology/kristal/trust-and-provenance/index.html.md > Route: /technology/kristal/trust-and-provenance > Source: app/technology/kristal/trust-and-provenance/page.mdx > Generated: 2026-04-09T23:01:26.288Z [Open the HTML page](https://initkoa.org/technology/kristal/trust-and-provenance) "How Kristals stay verifiable: provenance chains, signatures, authority channels, and contestability without central gatekeepers.", # Trust & Provenance A Kristal is designed to be **trusted without asking you to trust a platform**. It is not “true because a website says so.” It is **verifiable because it carries its origin, its evidence trail, and its publication authority in a form that can be checked**—including offline. ## What “provenance” means here Provenance answers: - **Where did this claim come from?** - **Who published it?** - **What evidence was used?** - **What rules were applied to compile it?** - **What changed since the previous version?** A Kristal is useful only if it makes those questions cheap to answer. ## What you can verify (without trusting the host) When you receive a Kristal, you should be able to verify: - **Identity:** which artifact it is (stable identifier) - **Publisher:** which authority signed it (person, institution, collective) - **Integrity:** that the content has not been altered - **Lineage:** what prior version(s) it descends from - **Evidence trail:** references or source anchors used to compile it - **Policy / scope:** what domain it covers and what it does *not* claim This is the baseline: **auditability by default**, not optional transparency. ## Trust is not one global score kOA does not assume one universal “truth authority.” Instead, trust is **domain-bounded** and **policy-driven**: - A health Kristal and a municipal budget Kristal do not need the same validators. - Different communities can adopt different trust policies. - The system’s job is to make trust choices **explicit and inspectable**. ## Authority channels (how communities decide what to trust) Think of an authority channel as a curated “trust list” + rules: - which publishers are recognized for a domain, - what standards they must meet, - how conflicts are handled, - and what recourse exists when something is wrong. This prevents invisible gatekeeping: the criteria are written down, and the channel itself can be governed. ## Federation (how multiple sources coexist) Kristals can be **composed across domains and publishers** without pretending disagreements don’t exist. Federation means: - a system can present a unified experience (search, navigation, summaries), - while still preserving **who said what**, under which rules, - and allowing multiple competing Kristals to coexist when reality is contested. The point is to avoid “silent merging” that hides value choices. ## Contestability & correction A trustable system must support: - **challenge:** flagging a claim, a source, or a compilation rule - **correction:** publishing a revised version with explicit diffs - **recourse:** a clear path for dispute resolution (institutional or community-based) - **exit:** the ability to leave a channel/publisher and adopt another policy without losing your data Kristals are built to make disagreement legible—not to erase it. ## Practical mental model - **Provenance tells you:** “This is what this artifact asserts, and here is why.” - **Authority tells you:** “These are the publishers I’m choosing to rely on for this domain.” - **Federation tells you:** “Here are multiple views, kept separate, with clear attribution.” ## Next pages - What Kristals do → - Portability & offline use → - Distribution & versioning → - Integrations →