Journal · 2 September 2026
Begin with the signature, not the summary
A signature is a door into one transaction. The reading room starts there, before any summary written by the project.
Most first visits begin with a paragraph someone else wrote: a project post, a thread, a line in a newsletter. The paragraph already knows the conclusion. At the Yongsan table we set that paragraph face down and ask for a signature instead.
A signature identifies one transaction on the public record. It is not the whole story of a program, and it is not a verdict. It is a door with a specific time, a fee payer, a set of instructions, and a list of accounts that were touched. That is enough for the first page of a field note.
What goes on the first page
We ask readers to write five lines and then stop. The time. The account that paid the fee. The names of the instructions, copied as they appear. The accounts those instructions touched. And one question the signature does not answer. The fifth line matters more than the first four, because it keeps the note from pretending to be finished.
Readers often stumble by treating an internal movement of tokens as the purpose of the program. The signature will show the movement. It will not, by itself, tell you why the program exists. That is a later page, and it usually needs the program account and the document that described the program when it was published.
Where the summary is allowed back in
After the five lines, the face-down paragraph can come back. You read it as a claim. Each sentence either points at something you just saw, or it does not. Sentences that do not point at the record go in the margin as claims still waiting. We do not cross them out. We label them.
If you want company the first time you do this, that is what the ledger reading session is for. Bring one signature. Three hours is enough to write the first page properly and to see what the second page would have to hold.