Depending on the purpose of your digital ledger, you will set active dates for each ledger. Starting dates are mandatory, but ending dates are optional.
You may create ledgers for a variety of purposes.
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Ledger for a particular project
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Ledger for a fiscal period for a set of contracts and assets
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Ledger to track the lifetime contracts and transactions of an asset or set of assets
Depending on the purpose, you may set active dates for each ledger. Starting dates are mandatory, but ending dates are optional. For instance, you may create one ledger per fiscal year to cover all contracts related to ongoing operations at a particular site. Alternatively, you may create one ledger per asset. For instance, target a specific oil and gas well or track all lifetime transactions related to an asset, which may last several years.
Smart contracts running on a particular digital ledger may not become active before the ledger itself is active. However, due to the vagaries of data input timing, ledgers and contracts running on them may be able to accept additional data and additional blocks based on configuration.
For instance, a digital ledger that expires on December 31st at midnight may continue accepting transactions and blocks for its contracts up to 15 or 30 days later, as long as those transactions refer to physical events occurring before the end of the ledger’s active period.
Real-Life Example:
A delivery ticket to the site for an event that occurred on December 30th, but isn’t submitted to GumboNet until January 2nd of the next year. Since the event itself occurred during the active period it is admissible. As part of the digital ledger setup and configuration, you may set the look-back period for your ledger.
Contracts running on a particular ledger may not continue running past the look-back period of the underlying ledger, and will not be able to have active dates earlier than the active date of the ledger or later than the expiration plus the look-back period of the ledger.
Ledger Status
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Active – Created, may not yet have active contracts on the ledger for the entity; at some point has active contracts. Status runs from created date to the expiration date.
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Audit Access – Trigger is the expiration date. You will set a fixed look-back period to accept late arriving information for contracts running on the ledger. For example, the fiscal year has ended and no new blocks are created but the digital ledger remains accessible to many users in a given company for audit and tax purposes. Under European rules (GDPR), this can be up to a year after the end of the fiscal year the work occurred.
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Restricted – Limited Access – Access to the digital ledger is restricted to specific users granted permission for specific purposes. Under European rules (GDPR), this status covers years 3–10 of the life of the records.
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Restricted – Confidential – Access to the ledger is restricted within the company because information on the ledger is confidential. For example, exploratory wells have active digital ledgers but with access restricted by users in the companies participating.
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Archived – Equivalent to restricted, assumes the whole digital ledger is in cold storage and only those with required permission can move the ledger to query-able storage and grant specific access.