the mechanisms that make contributing to the cybergraph more profitable than free-riding — and that make epistemic accuracy the unit of wealth
epistemic assets
the cybergraph creates a new category of financial asset. an epistemic asset is a claim on the knowledge economy's flow. unlike financial assets (claims on future cash flows) or utility tokens (access rights to service capacity), epistemic assets yield returns proportional to the information contributed to collective intelligence.
four asset classes:
cyberlinks are yield-bearing knowledge claims. every cyberlink accrues rewards over time as a function of the focus shift it generates:
$$R_{i \to j}(T) = \int_0^T w(t) \cdot \Delta\pi_j(t) \, dt$$
where $\Delta\pi_j(t)$ is the change in focus on target particle $j$ attributable to the link and $w(t)$ is the time-weighting function. four reward trajectories: viral (high $\Delta\pi$ early, fast decay), foundational (low early, grows as graph builds around it), confirming (shared reward via Shapley attribution), semantic bridge (moderate, persistent, cross-module).
eternal particles are positions burned into permanence. burning $CYB permanently anchors a particle's $\pi$-weight — the particle cannot be archived or deprioritized below the burn-weighted floor. the graph's long-term assertions: the claims whose importance the market cannot undo.
eternal cyberlinks are edges burned into permanence. the link cannot be forgotten by stake dynamics or ICBS market collapse. the graph's highest-conviction structural commitment.
ICBS market positions are YES/NO bets on the epistemic market attached to every cyberlink. position value grows as the market converges. early conviction rewards are unbounded — prices range from $0$ to $\lambda$. capital flows from incorrect beliefs to correct ones.
karma is the accumulated BTS score history of a neuron. not tradeable but structurally determinant: karma weights every future link the neuron creates in the tri-kernel effective adjacency. epistemic capital — the form of wealth that can only be earned by being right before the crowd.
the focus reward
every reward traces back to one quantity: how much did your action shift the tri-kernel fixed point $\pi^*$?
$$\text{reward}(v) \propto \Delta\pi(v)$$
$\Delta\pi$ is the gradient of the system's free energy. creating valuable structure literally creates value. no designed loss function — the physics of convergence defines what deserves to be optimized.
the hybrid reward function:
$$R = \alpha \cdot \Delta\pi + \beta \cdot \Delta J + \gamma \cdot \text{DAGWeight} + \epsilon \cdot \text{AlignmentBonus}$$
new $CYB is minted only when $\Delta\pi > 0$. the protocol's inflation is literally evidence of knowledge creation — there is no emission without demonstrated contribution to collective focus.
attribution
multiple neurons contribute cyberlinks in the same epoch. the total $\Delta\pi$ shift is a joint outcome. the Shapley value distributes fair credit: each agent's reward equals their average marginal contribution across all possible orderings. exact computation is $O(n!)$. the approximation:
$$R_i = \alpha \cdot \Delta\mathcal{F}_i + (1-\alpha) \cdot \hat{S}_i$$
complexity: $O(k \cdot n)$ with $k \ll n$, feasible for $10^6+$ transactions per epoch.
epistemic markets
every cyberlink carries a perpetual prediction market on its own truth. one atomic act — creating a link — simultaneously asserts structural knowledge and opens an epistemic market on it.
the market mechanism is ICBS:
$$C(s_{YES}, s_{NO}) = \lambda \sqrt{s_{YES}^2 + s_{NO}^2}$$
buying YES directly suppresses NO's price — TRUE and FALSE are geometrically coupled on a circle, the market analog of inhibitory weights in the tri-kernel. the effective adjacency weight:
$$A^{\text{eff}}_{pq} = \sum_\ell \text{stake}(\ell) \times \text{karma}(\nu(\ell)) \times f(\text{ICBS price}(\ell))$$
the 2|3 architecture: each cyberlink carries topology (binary: edge exists), market (continuous: ICBS price), and meta-prediction (ternary: valence $v \in \{-1, 0, +1\}$). this produces a two-dimensional epistemic signal: price encodes magnitude, meta-score encodes collective confidence.
honest signaling
the cybergraph achieves honest markets through Bayesian Truth Serum (Prelec, 2004). the valence field in every cyberlink is the BTS meta-prediction — no separate submission needed. honesty is a Bayes-Nash equilibrium: no neuron can improve their expected score by misreporting belief or meta-belief. karma compounds the trust multiplier: consistently right before the crowd → high karma → more adjacency weight per link → more reward per contribution → more resources to stake on the next correct insight.
the GFP flywheel
the optimal mining hardware and the optimal proving hardware are the same chip. the Goldilocks field processor exercises four primitives (fma, ntt, p2r, lut) for both PoUW mining and real workloads (stark proving, focus computation, neural inference). mining rewards bootstrap chip development. chips accelerate proving. proving serves users. users pay fees. fees replace emission. no stranded assets.
the evolutionary loop
contribute accurately → $\Delta\pi$ reward → accumulate $CYB → stake on more links → accumulate karma → links carry more adjacency weight → earlier $\Delta\pi$ attribution → more $CYB per contribution
the burn layer: burn on high-conviction particles → eternal weight → long-term yield floor → reduces risk premium for foundational contributions
the result: the unit of wealth is provably epistemic accuracy. the only sustainable path to large $CYB balances, high karma, and consistent ICBS returns is being right about what matters before the crowd recognizes it.
see cyber/tokenomics for the monetary plumbing (emission, policy, hardware). see learning incentives for the detailed reward function specification. see inversely coupled bonding surface for the ICBS market mechanism. see Bayesian Truth Serum for the scoring layer. see karma for the trust multiplier dynamics. see functions of superintelligence for how the autonomous neuron participates in the same economy.