How this works
Five short lessons and two things to try. Ten minutes, no technical background needed.
1. A fingerprint for a file
Every file can be boiled down to a short code called a A short code worked out from the exact contents of a file. Change one letter in the file and the code changes completely. It cannot be turned back into the file.. The same file always gives the same code. Change a single letter and the code changes completely. And you cannot work backwards from the code to the file, so sharing the code gives nothing away.
Fingerprint
2. A public record book
A A public record book, kept by thousands of computers around the world (Solana). Once something is written in it, nobody can quietly change or backdate it. is a record book kept by thousands of computers at once. Anyone can read it and nobody owns it. Once a line is written, it stays: the computers all hold copies and agree on what was written and when. PollyPay uses one called Solana because a line costs a fraction of a penny and lands in about a second.
3. Why it cannot be backdated
Each new page of the record book includes the fingerprint of the page before it. Change anything on an old page and every page after it stops matching, which thousands of computers would notice at once. That is why a record's time can be trusted: to fake it, you would have to rewrite the whole book everywhere.
Try it: three pages, each holding the fingerprint of the one before. Edit page 1 and watch pages 2 and 3 stop matching.
4. What a record proves, and what it does not
A record proves that this exact file existed at that time, and that the account that recorded it had it then. It does not prove who wrote the file, that the contents are true, or that nobody else had it. For a claim about a thing rather than a file, use a statement: it carries your account as the one saying it.
5. Checking a file
Anyone can drop a file on the Check page. Their device works out the fingerprint, PollyPay looks it up, and if it was recorded you see when. A file that has changed since, even by one letter, will not match.
The certificate also carries a The code the public ledger gives back when something is written to it. Paste it anywhere on PollyPay to find that record., the ledger's own reference for that line. With it, a record can be checked on the ledger directly, without PollyPay.