This is a single row of oddly's observation ledger, read live when you loaded this page. Nothing below was typed into this document. Follow it down and it ends somewhere this estate does not run, which is the only place a record is worth anything.
observed_at. The claim's own time, taken from the source rather than from us.
fetched_at. Our clock, and the only one we control. It is recorded so you can hold the two apart.
Collapsing these two is how a corpus starts believing it observed things it only read about. The gap can be negative: a source that signs its own timestamp, such as a certificate log, runs on its own clock and can be a few seconds ahead of ours. We show the sign rather than the size, because the flattering reading of a negative gap is the one that must never win.
That is what being on the record has to mean if it means anything. By the last step, checking us does not involve us.
Ours entirely. We read a public source and wrote down what it said, with both clocks attached.
A hash over the row including its predecessor, so this receipt cannot move without every later one changing. Still ours, but now it is checkable arithmetic rather than our word.
Every receipt of that day folded into one root, which is the part we publish. Change a single receipt and the root changes.
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The root is submitted to a public timestamp calendar this estate does not run. Once a block carries it, the time stops resting on our clock and what we recorded becomes something anyone can check without us.