Attestations vs. Clearance

Guardian gives partners two verification tools. They answer different questions, and using the wrong one is the most common integration mistake.

Clearance answers: is this player eligible?

Scope: a player, over a period of time.

Roster clearance looks at standing — bans, flags, upheld reports, trust, and whether their most recent verified scan is recent enough to mean anything. It is the right tool for eligibility: who is allowed to enter, who can play this weekend, who should be reviewed before the bracket is published.

It is a judgement about a person's record. It does not tell you anything about the machine sitting in front of them right now.

Attestations answer: was this machine clean, just now?

Scope: one machine, at one moment, for one match.

An attestation is produced by the Guardian client on the player's own PC and is short-lived and one-use. It is the right tool for check-in: proving that the machine about to play a specific match passed a scan minutes ago.

Consuming an attestation redeems it. A second attempt to consume the same token fails — which is precisely what stops one player's pass being shared around a team.

Use both

For anything with stakes, the two compose:

1. Before the event — clearance on the roster. Catch banned and unverified players while there is still time to do something about it.
2. At the match — an attestation per player at check-in. Prove the machine in front of them is the one that passed.
3. After the match — a match receipt, signed, so a dispute three weeks later can be settled with evidence rather than memory.

Using only attestations means a banned player passes as long as their machine is clean today. Using only clearance means a cleared player can swap to a different machine for the final. Neither gap is theoretical.

Quick reference