How Trace works
Trace is the read-only face of IXO. Every public object — a domain, an account, a claim collection, a claim, a token, a group, a proposal, a bond, a room — has a page, and every fact on it is one click from the signature that made it. It has no wallet, no session, no model and no way to change anything.
Reading a page
The first line is the verdict: status, name, kind, proof, age. Below it are four faces. The card says what it is; the web, what it is connected to now; the biography, how it got here, as signed transactions in the order the chain ran them; the proof, why to believe each fact — its sources, and the request you can run yourself.
Proof marks
- ChainL2A node served the block, or the chain's own current state, that says it.
- Two sourcesL1Two independent machineries say the same thing, or the bytes hash to the proof the chain records.
- One indexL0One index says so. True as far as it goes; nothing independent has confirmed it.
- MismatchSources disagree. Both values are shown; Trace never picks one.
- UnverifiableThere is nothing to check it against.
- EncryptedIt exists and is not readable — Matrix rooms and claim bodies are end-to-end encrypted.
Where facts come from
- chaina node's blocks and current state
- node indexthe node's own transaction index (from block 17,296,899 on mainnet)
- BlocksyncBlocksync, IXO's indexed copy of the chain
- Trace indexTrace's own index of who touched what, built from Blocksync and verified daily
- MatrixIXO's Matrix: public room summaries, public profiles, published media
- domain indexerthe domain indexer, for finding names
- Cellnode (legacy)Cellnode, where older domains still keep files — read only when the bytes match the chain's hash; claim bodies never
Every biography ends with what each history covers: the blocks the node still serves (about a week on mainnet — rows there are proven by their block), where the node’s index begins, and the height Trace’s index was built to.
Traces
From any object, trace walks two ways through links its pages already hold. Upstream is what made it: a claim’s collection, that collection’s domain and protocol, a domain’s class, a token’s claim and class, and the account that signed each one’s creation. Downstream is what it made: the tokens a claim’s approval paid, the collections a domain opened. It stops at three hops each way or twelve objects, and says so. Every event on the path — each object’s birth and what joins it to its neighbours — reads as one feed, each row with its own proof.
What you can do
- Check it yourself. On a transaction, a block, or any event the chain itself confirms, your browser asks IXO’s node for the block, its commit and the validators, and checks the signatures itself — Trace is not involved. The node keeps about a week of blocks. An example
- See where tokens went. A token class shows its latest movements as a flow, minted on one side and retired on the other; an account shows what passed through it. SUPA-ZMW
- Follow something across the network. Press Trace on any object, then see the same walk drawn on the atlas, its stops numbered in the order things happened. A claim’s trace
- See the whole network. The atlas draws every domain, collection and account that does something; find anything, choose it to light its links, or press play to watch the network grow. The atlas
- Read what a claim asks, and who may act. A collection shows its protocol’s claim form as questions — never anyone’s answers — and the accounts allowed to submit or evaluate there, with their limits. A collection
- Open a domain’s files. A resource opens beside the page, read as what it is — a card, a profile, a page, a form — with its hash checked against the chain, and the raw file one link away.
What Trace never does
It never signs, sends, posts or writes. It never reads encrypted content: claim bodies and room messages stay sealed, and Trace says so where they would be. It never follows Cellnode. When sources disagree it shows both and chooses neither, and when it cannot see something it says so in one line.
Privacy
Draft · awaiting Peter's sign-off (PLAN §8.8)
Trace shows only what IXO's public infrastructure already serves to anyone who asks: the chain, Blocksync, public Matrix profiles and room summaries, and documents published at public addresses. It makes that public record easier to read in one place — an address's names, roles and history across domains — which is the point, and also a responsibility. Names shown for accounts are the display names their holders chose on IXO's Matrix, marked as such. Trace keeps no accounts, sets no cookies and stores nothing about who reads it beyond its host's standard request logs.