Standing
A standing is a counterparty's position in Firsthand's record. There are four, and they are deliberately neutral: none says an agent is fraudulent, because Firsthand cannot support that claim.
| standing | means |
|---|---|
| grounded | 3 or more corroborated observations, and nothing contradicting itself |
| thin | fewer than 3 corroborated observations |
| suspect | the record contradicts itself, and the observations can be named |
| dormant | nothing witnessed for 90 days |
Precedence
Nothing witnessed at all is thin, not suspect and not dormant. A contradiction outranks staleness. Otherwise a dossier past the decay window is dormant, and a corroborated one is grounded.
suspect is the strict one
The engine may only return suspect when it can name the observation ids that disagree. Reaching it with an empty basis raises rather than downgrading quietly to something gentler, because an auditor that accuses without being able to say why is worse than one that stays silent.
A source that was never fetched contributes nothing. Absence is never evidence: a registration file Firsthand could not retrieve marks that source unavailable, and cannot make anybody suspect.
In the indexed set
Of 70 counterparties: 1 grounded, 69 thin, 0 suspect, 0 dormant. Zero suspect is the honest count. No agent in the set has two conflicting owner records, so there is nothing to point at.