One scan is a data point, not a fact
Anyone can mis-scan a tag or catch a price mid-correction. A fresh scan starts at Pending for exactly this reason.
Independence is the whole mechanism
If ten friends walk in together and scan the same tag, that’s not stronger evidence — it’s one event, ten timestamps. DataChan counts scans as meaningful agreement only when they’re genuinely independent of each other.
Verification reflects the current count, not a permanent record
A price sits at whichever tier its current scan count supports — Pending at 1, Likely at 2+, Verified at 3+. If new, disagreeing scans build a bigger competing count, the tier shifts to match. The record follows the strongest current evidence; it doesn’t lock in a first answer.
What it doesn’t mean
Crowd-verified doesn’t mean DataChan staff checked it by hand, and it isn’t a contractual guarantee. It means enough independent shoppers reported the same thing that it’s trustworthy enough to act on — a different, and in some ways stronger, kind of confidence than a single “official” source, because no one party gets to be the sole authority.