Glossary

What is Provenance gap?

Updated September 1, 2026

A provenance gap is a record whose origin or chain of custody cannot be shown: who produced it, when, from what source, and through which hands it passed before it reached you. The record may be accurate. Nobody can prove it.

Provenance is the heaviest of the eight DTI dimensions, 25 percent of the score under the filed weights, so a gap marks a record down harder than any other single failure. A record with a complete chain of custody can be replayed and audited; a record with a gap can only be believed.

Zero-copy architecture is the structural answer: when data is verified where it lives instead of copied into another warehouse, the chain of custody never breaks in transit, because there is no transit.