# Trust and Accountability In a shared route graph, trust is a practical signal about whether a route still does what it claims, not a cryptographic guarantee. The shipped model is reliability-oriented: routes carry success and failure behaviour, freshness, verification state, and folded-in feedback, and that composite signal moves good routes up and bad routes out of future shortlists. This is a continuous trust model in the sense the paper uses: quality is observed from real outcomes over time rather than asserted once at publish. The Maintenance Network paper then asks how a graph should express trust and enforce accountability once it carries meaningful traffic. Its answer is deliberately narrow. Higher-trust route tiers, accountable maintainers, and challenge mechanisms are the coordination tools; optional bonding may become useful as one mechanism among others, and the FDRY asset is best understood only in that narrow role. The paper is explicit that this is a quieter accountability layer, not a token-first redesign of the product. What does not exist today, and is described as forward-looking rather than shipped, is a full validator market, staking and slashing, or cryptographic attestation. The honest reading: practical reliability and verification ship now; the richer accountability economy is research direction, not current behaviour. The full structure of that accountability layer is detailed in three pages: [The Maintenance Network](/concepts/the-maintenance-network.md) (why access payments do not solve trust), [Route Trust Tiers](/concepts/route-trust-tiers.md) (open versus higher-trust routes and the open/trusted/premium surface), and [Accountable Bonding and Where FDRY Fits](/concepts/accountable-bonding.md) (bonding as a warranty not an ad slot, challenge mechanisms, and the deliberately narrow role of a coordination asset). Read those for the model; read [Where This Goes](/vision.md) for how it sequences behind the wedge. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.unbrowse.ai/concepts/trust-and-accountability.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.