Digital systems depend on three axes: data, identity, and time.
Data can be copied. Identity can be simulated. Time, in most digital systems, remains under platform control.
In conventional systems, temporal claims depend on internal logs, cloud infrastructure, private timestamp services, and vendor-controlled databases. This creates structural dependence on issuer-controlled chronology.
As systems scale and automation increases, model versions evolve rapidly, artifacts are reproducible, logs are mutable, and reconstruction depends on access.
Where chronology is controlled internally, it becomes contestable.
Anchoring addresses this by separating system control from chronological control. Anchoring externalizes the temporal commitment.
Many timestamping services claim authorship, copyright protection, ownership proof, or legal certification.
Anchoring deliberately limits its semantic scope. It establishes existence-at-or-before-T only.
This minimality increases robustness. A system that claims less is harder to invalidate.
A core property of anchoring is that verification survives the issuer.
After a proof is created: no account is required, no platform is required, no issuer-controlled infrastructure is required.
The proof remains verifiable via public ledger consensus.
This property is normative under IEC (Section 9).
Anchoring is ledger-agnostic. Any ledger qualifying under IEC may be used.
Ledger qualification requires: public verifiability, consensus-based ordering, resistance to unilateral timestamp rewriting, and reconstructible historical state.
Anchoring is infrastructure.
It is not a legal doctrine. It is not a rights management system. It is not identity verification.
It is a primitive for temporal commitment.