A chain answers only for what arrived
Take a plain audit log. Each entry has a sequence number, a payload, and the hash of the previous entry. Entry one has no predecessor. Entry two embeds the hash of entry one, entry three embeds the hash of entry two, and the rest repeat the pattern.
A verifier holding entries one through seven can recompute every hash edge. If entry four changed, entry five no longer points at it. If entry three vanished while four through seven remain, the numbering is wrong and the hash edge into entry four has nothing valid to land on. Interior deletion is loud. That is the easy case, and it is the case every design review talks about.
So the verifier can answer one question with real force: was anything in the material received altered after the chain was built? For entries one through seven that answer is local. No trust in the publisher is required. The bytes either connect or they don't.
A different question looks similar and isn't: is entry seven the latest entry?
