Annex F — Conformance & Certification Criteria

This annex defines conformance verification requirements and certification issuance criteria under the Trust-State Standard.

1. Conformance Requirements

An implementation SHALL be considered conformant only if:

• Canonical serialization is byte-identical across independent executions.
• Rule identity hashes are deterministically reproducible.
• Replay equivalence evaluates TRUE under identical inputs.
• Artifact hash recomputation matches original issuance value.

2. Validation Process

Conformance validation SHALL include:

• Independent recomputation of evidence hash
• Independent recomputation of rule hash
• Replay execution verification
• Artifact integrity validation

3. Certification Eligibility

Certification MAY be granted only upon successful validation under all mandatory annex conditions.

Certification SHALL be:

• Version-bound
• Rule-identity-bound
• Revocable upon non-conformance

4. Ongoing Compliance

Certified systems SHALL maintain deterministic replay capability throughout the certification period.

Failure to maintain replay equivalence SHALL result in certification suspension.

5. Governance Authority

Certification governance SHALL be administered by VTI Foundation, Inc. or its designated accredited validators.