A grant is honoured only if the person who published it held a high enough tier in that space at the time, judged by the key that signed it. Grants failing this test are kept on the network but have no effect. The rule is what makes a role listing trustworthy: nobody can list themselves as a maintainer.

A person whose key is not yet approved by the network is shown as pending. Their grant is visible, but nothing they publish is counted until approval takes effect, which happens when the network next recomputes its trust state — minutes, sometimes longer.