Black-Hole Entropy and the Information Paradox from a Null-Boundary Ledger Architecture

We propose a boundary-first interpretation of black-hole entropy based on a finite exterior protocol supported on a horizon patch, with the horizon treated, at the protocol resolution, as an effectively classical apparatus built from Planck-area substrate cells. The framework assigns a geometric ledger, a fixed-reference modular ledger, and a classical record ledger, related by an event-wise balance law for coarse-grained horizon updates. Black-hole entropy is then identified not with interior bulk microstates, but with the logarithm of a stitched, cover-independent count of distinguishable horizon-apparatus update histories compatible with fixed exterior macrodata. In this sense the count is intended as the black-hole sector of the underlying ledger quantum-gravity architecture, while Gibbons--Hawking and Wald entropies are recovered as its stationary semiclassical equilibrium projection. We also clarify the coefficient 1/4: it is both the normalization required by the reversible local gravitational sector and the conversion factor from microscopic horizon substrate to faithful classical recording capacity.