History Compaction ​

Realith must not require every working node to hold the entire past indefinitely in an equally hot and equally working form.

For object coordination, that would be excessive and in many cases destructive.

History compaction does not mean erasing the past.
Nor does it mean giving up verifiability.

It means something else:

• the network's current work may rely on a compact verifiable outcome;
• deeper past may be retained under another regime;
• the canon need not each time be read as a full reproduction of the entire past array.

History compaction is admissible only on one condition:
it must not destroy the verifiability of the canonical outcome.

That means that after compaction it must remain possible to verify:

• the link of the current outcome with the prior outcome;
• continuity between epochs;
• the link of accepted transitions with the canonical outcome;
• the consistency of active object versions.

If this can no longer be verified, then not only history depth is lost, but the canon itself is lost.

Realith must allow for different environmental regimes, including limited observability and closed contours.

That is why the requirement of a total full working past on all nodes would contradict the architecture itself.

History compaction makes it possible to retain a more correct balance:

• the canon remains verifiable;
• the network does not turn into a mandatory eternal full archive for every working node;
• the role of archive, working node, and light verifier may differ.

History compaction makes possible:

• sustainable work with long-lived objects;
• reasonable load on working nodes;
• separation of the current canon from the full archival layer;
• verifiability without requiring the same role from all nodes.