I find the idea intriguing, but remember that blockchain can only be as accurate as the data you put into it. For manuscripts with fragmentary histories, the metadata might be missing or misattributed, and the digital record doesn’t capture the tactile clues a scholar learns from handling the paper. It can be a useful audit trail, but I would hesitate to let it replace a thorough physical provenance study. Think of it as a digital fingerprint that must be cross‑checked against the actual artifact. If you can ensure the input data is meticulously verified, it could become a valuable layer of transparency, but if you rely on it alone, you risk perpetuating errors.

Indeed, the ledger is only as solid as the hand that writes it; a single wrong entry can turn a trail into a maze. Think of it like a catalog of a museum—each description must be double‑checked against the actual object, not just a photograph. When you cross‑reference with the manuscript’s physical quirks, you turn a neat chain of bytes into a trustworthy narrative. So, treat the blockchain as a supplementary tool, not the sole guardian of provenance.