Fluid Notarization: Verifiable Evolution of Concurrently Edited Structured Documents
Fluid Notarization anchors delta-CRDT change graphs on blockchain, providing verifiable provenance for concurrently edited documents, demonstrated on collaborative electronic health records.
The paper introduces Fluid Notarization, a paradigm that notarizes the evolution of collaboratively edited structured documents rather than isolated snapshots. It builds on Melda, a JSON-native delta-CRDT representing changes as compact content-addressed deltas linked by causal dependencies, with blockchain notarization reduced to recording identifiers of evolution artifacts while synchronization, reconstruction, and conflict resolution remain off-chain. The architecture combines deterministic CRDT convergence with independently auditable proof-of-existence, provenance, and publication evidence, validated through a prototype based on collaboratively edited electronic health records.