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Provenance

Provenance is the answer to “where did this record come from, who was responsible for it, and what changed after it was created?” PressChain treats provenance as a graph of explicit identities, hashes and relationships rather than a single publisher name. A Capsule starts that graph with an author, outlet context, content hash and metadata hash. Contributor records add co-authors and sources. Evidence adds source artifacts. Revisions preserve later changes. Transaction history adds time and actor context.

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Provenance is not ownership

Journalism has relationships that ownership language cannot represent cleanly. A reporter can author a story without owning the newsroom. A source can contribute evidence without being a co-author. An outlet can publish material written by several people. Keep those relationships distinct in your application model.

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Minimum provenance coordinates

For any projected protocol record, store enough chain information to trace it back:
For a state read that is not tied to one event, store the block tag or block number at which the read was made when reproducibility matters.

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Artifact provenance

For external content, preserve both location and integrity commitment. A URL describes where an application found bytes. A hash lets another consumer verify whether it found the same bytes. This becomes especially important if the URL points to a conventional web server that can change in place.

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Identity provenance

Do not replace an address with a display name and discard the address. Human-readable identities can change. Preserve the cryptographic actor and resolve display data as an additional layer. The same is true for outlet names. Keep the stable outlet identifier behind presentation labels.

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Revision provenance

A revision history should be append-only in the projection. The newest version can be the default presentation, but earlier commitments remain part of the Capsule’s provenance.

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Cross-system provenance

An application may combine PressChain records with external research or trust intelligence. Keep the source boundary explicit. A third-party risk label should say where it came from and when it was computed instead of being serialized into a Capsule as if PressChain authored it. This is particularly important for integrations with systems that have separate governance or legal ownership.

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Use case: syndicated reporting

Suppose Outlet A publishes an investigation and Outlet B syndicates it. Outlet B can preserve the original Capsule reference, author and content hash while adding its own publication context. Readers can then see that the content originated elsewhere instead of treating the republished page as a brand-new source. That is the practical value of provenance: the record keeps enough identity and relationship data to survive movement between applications.