📄️ Certification Tiers
The four-tier certification model that classifies tracks by verification depth — from Gold (highest) to Declared (user-submitted).
📄️ Value Chain & Maturity Model
The two-axis maturity model showing how completeness and assurance combine to determine certification levels and practical applications.
📄️ Enrichment & Cross-Source Validation
How TrackForge enriches track metadata against multiple authoritative sources and resolves conflicts between them.
📄️ Canonicalisation
How TrackForge transforms Golden Record metadata into a deterministic canonical form suitable for cryptographic hashing.
📄️ Hashing
How TrackForge computes a SHA-256 cryptographic hash of the canonical metadata form, creating a unique fingerprint of the rights data.
📄️ Merkle Tree Construction
How individual track hashes are assembled into a binary Merkle tree, producing a single root hash that commits to every track in a certification batch.
📄️ Blockchain Anchoring
How the Merkle root hash is anchored to a public blockchain via the OpenTimestamps protocol, creating a permanent and independently verifiable timestamp.
📄️ Independent Verification
How any party can independently verify a TrackForge certification without access to TrackForge systems, using standard cryptographic tools.
📄️ Re-Certification
How metadata changes after initial certification are handled through versioned re-certification, maintaining a cryptographic chain of title at the data level.