A part outlives the cryptography that signs it.

2031 · TROPOSPHERE

The record is only as honest as its paperwork.

Counterfeit and falsified parts records are a safety problem wearing a paperwork disguise. A records-falsification scandal forced the industry to treat traceability as urgent, not optional. Coalitions are now publishing recommendations for uniform digital traceability, and legislation moving through 2025 pushes the entire supply chain toward digitized, permanent records. The direction is set. Aviation's records are going digital, and they are going permanent.

2036 · TROPOPAUSE

Permanent records. Temporary signatures.

The incumbents already moved, and they moved to permissioned ledgers signed with classical cryptography. Hundreds of thousands of widebody parts are tracked on back-to-birth platforms. Optical fingerprinting is paired with blockchain for provenance. Major IT providers and OEMs all run programs. Every one of them signs records with cryptography a quantum computer is expected to break inside the same thirty-year window those records must survive. The data will still be there. The proof of who signed it, and that it was never altered, will not.

RECORD LIFESPAN: 30+ YEARS  //  CLASSICAL SIGNATURE HORIZON: < 30 YEARS

2041 · STRATOSPHERE ✓ LOCKED

Signatures that do not expire.

Vextaris signs every record with a Dilithium3 and Ed25519 hybrid. One signature carries classical security for today and lattice-based, quantum-resistant security for the decades after the transition. A record signed on Vextaris is verifiable now and stays verifiable once classical signatures fail. We are not asking aviation to rip out the ledgers it is building. We are the integrity layer those ledgers anchor to, so the proof beneath them never has an expiry date.

2049 · MESOSPHERE

We design for horizons most software never reaches.

Durability across decades is not a feature we bolted on. It is how the work is built. Settlement at a Distance, our architecture for monetary and logistics systems beyond Earth, plans in horizons of thirty to a hundred years. The discipline that asks how a ledger survives the distance to another planet is the same discipline that asks how an airworthiness record survives the life of an airframe. The aviation problem and the off-world problem are the same problem at different scales: keep a record true across time no one party controls.

NOTES · SOURCED

What the rules ask of a record, and how long it has to hold.

• Post-quantum signatures for records that must last 30 yearsWhat breaks (forgery, not secrecy), the 2030–2035 timelines regulators are working to, and three ways to keep a record provable past its algorithm.
• How long must aircraft maintenance records be kept?FAA and EASA retention periods side by side, why "one year" is only half the answer, and what the FAA actually says about back-to-birth records.
• Electronic signatures on aircraft maintenance records: what FAA and EASA acceptThe current FAA and EASA guidance on electronic signatures and records, electronic release certificates, and the algorithm question both leave open.
• Falsified aircraft parts paperwork: the AOG Technics case and what changedOver 60,000 parts sold with forged certificates, the 2026 sentence, and why the industry coalition now recommends digitally signed release certificates.

All notes