Deterministic Evidence Validation in A Byzantine Fault Tolerant File Registry

Abstract

A permissioned file registry needs both agreement among validators and a defensible rule for accepting evidence about a file. Consensus can order records consistently, yet it cannot establish that an asserted digest belongs to the intended document. This article develops a validation boundary for file hash, CID, identity and storage availability checks in a Byzantine fault tolerant registry. The method separates checks computable from a proposal from checks that depend on mutable external state. A transaction schema, acceptance states and registration strategies are derived and examined through logical failure cases. The analysis shows when a confirmed entry supports a byte binding claim and when it merely records a submitted assertion. It gives evaluation criteria for PBFT, BFT-SMaRt and HotStuff based deployments with an explicit definition of the work performed before and after confirmation.