Anchoring

Publishing a hash to an independent, append-only ledger so that a record can later be shown to have existed unchanged.

Anchoring puts a fingerprint somewhere you do not control. Afterwards, anyone can show that the record existed in that form at that time — because altering it would change the fingerprint, and the published one cannot be revised.

Only the hash is published. The underlying data stays where it was; nothing about the business is disclosed by the act of anchoring.

It answers the question a commitment hash alone cannot: not “is this arithmetic reproducible” but “was this record already like this before the question was asked”.

Commitment hash A hash over the exact inputs, factors and result of a calculation, so the same inputs always produce the same value.
Merkle proof A short cryptographic path showing that one record belongs to a set, without revealing the rest of the set.
Verifiable, not verified A record anyone can check for themselves is not the same as one an accredited body has audited. Both are useful; they are not interchangeable.