A mark is only worth carrying if the issuer cannot quietly delete it. Every certificate Inkprint issues is appended to a log that is hash-chained and summarised by a Merkle root, so an entry cannot be inserted or removed retroactively without changing every later entry and the root itself.
Certificate identifiers are redacted below. The log proves how many marks exist and when they were issued; checking a specific one requires its id, which keeps private filenames out of a public index.
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SHA-256 Merkle tree, odd node promoted unchanged. Any certificate carries an inclusion proof that recomputes this root from its own leaf hash. Anchoring this root to an external timestamp authority is the next step, and it is what would stop the operator rewriting the log too.
| SEQ | APPENDED | LEAF (TRUNCATED) | CHAIN HASH (TRUNCATED) |
|---|---|---|---|
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Fetch the proof for any certificate and recompute the root without trusting this server:
The response contains the leaf hash and the sibling hashes. Hash them together in the order given, and the result is the published Merkle root. That is the whole proof, and it needs nothing from us but the data.