Federated Causal Ledger

A **Federated Causal Ledger** is **not** the history of a federation. It is an index of **causal claims** derived from page journals and related evidence across many FedWiki sites. Each claim asserts that one event depended on, derived from, or referenced another (for example: a fork, a transclusion, or an explicit version reference). Multiple, even conflicting, claims can coexist, because the ledger does not override local authority or enforce consensus. Its invariant is to **avoid forced linearization**: instead of a single timeline, it forms a multi-rooted directed acyclic graph of claims that can be queried and traversed. pdf

This contrasts sharply with **Croquet reenactment**. Croquet enforces shared causality by running one deterministic event stream, producing an identical present for all participants. The Federated Causal Ledger works in the opposite direction: it **reconstructs partial causal orderings after the fact** from plural journals. Where Croquet reenacts *one walk*, the ledger enables navigation of *many pasts*. This makes it suitable for historical side roads, comparative lineage tracing, and cross-site rejoin points—without turning the federation into a single authoritative narrative.