Chain · Public Ledger
Questions from auditors, regulators, and curious patients.
Honest answers. The chain is in Phase 1 founding state with a single internal validator and a published roadmap to multi-institution Byzantine-fault-tolerant consensus. We tell you what is in force today and what is on the roadmap.
Q1
Is the chain a blockchain?
Yes, in the technical sense — append-only, cryptographically chained, consensus-finalized. It is not a public blockchain like Ethereum or Bitcoin. It is permissioned for writes, public for reads. We chose this trade-off deliberately for clinical workloads. Today the chain runs Proof-of-Authority consensus (CH-PoA) with one internal validator; Phase 2 introduces multi-institution BFT consensus.
Q2
Can a fraudulent event be removed?
No event is removed. Fraudulent events are reversed: a reverse event is appended, signed by the authorizing key, and the resulting balances reflect the reversal. The original event remains on chain forever, with its reversal alongside. A regulator or auditor can always reconstruct exactly what happened, in what order, and who authorized each step.
Q3
How many validators are there?
Today: one. Conceptual Healthcare Corporation operates ch-validator-1 (Conceptual Health® HQ — Destin, FL), which signs every block under Proof-of-Authority consensus. The current set is read live at /validators.html directly from the chain itself — there is no marketing roster. Phase 2 introduces a multi-institution Byzantine-fault-tolerant set drawn from licensed healthcare institutions, regulated custodians, and at least one sovereign health authority. We will not list any institution as a validator on these pages until it is signing real blocks.
Q4
Can I run a validator?
Validator nominations open in Phase 2. If you represent a licensed healthcare institution, a regulated custodian, or a sovereign health authority and are interested in being considered, contact us at marketing/contact.html with subject "Phase 2 validator candidate." Nomination criteria, slot count, jurisdiction policy, and the BFT threshold will be ratified by the CH governing body and recorded as on-chain governance amendments before Phase 2 goes live.
Q5
How do I cite a chain event in a paper?
Every event has a stable URI on the chain explorer. Block hashes are stable forever (the chain is append-only) and the IP-attestation pages each carry a SHA3-256 fingerprint that is independently verifiable with a single shasum command. For peer-reviewed citation, reference the explorer URL together with the SHA3-256 hash and the publication date. A formal citation generator (BibTeX, APA, AMA) is on the roadmap; until it ships, format the citation manually with those three fields.
Q6
Why isn't the chain on a public network like Ethereum?
A clinical ledger needs deterministic latency, regulator-acceptable governance, and the ability to invalidate fraudulent events without hard-forking. Public blockchains satisfy none of these. Conceptual Chain is permissioned for writes (so PHI provenance is regulator-acceptable) but fully public for reads (so anyone can verify a given event happened). That combination is hard to get on a public blockchain.