the one thing new money pays for in cyber: order the network gained that the crowd did not already expect.
two words, two filters. syntropy asks did the shared picture get clearer? surprise asks did anyone need you to make it clearer? the $CYB mint pays only where both answers are yes.
syntropy — the picture got clearer
focus $\phi^*$ is where the whole cybergraph puts its attention. syntropy is how sharp that attention is, in bits: $J = D_{KL}(\phi^* \,\|\, u)$ — zero when attention is spread evenly over everything (noise), large when it settles on a connected core that matters.
a cyberlink reshapes the graph, the tri-kernel settles again, and $J$ moves. the part of that move a link caused, counted only when it is downhill, is its impulse $\Delta\phi^+$. a link that adds noise moves $J$ the wrong way and earns nothing.
surprise — nobody saw it coming
syntropy alone would pay a copy: a perfect copy of a good link produces the same focus shift as the original. so every contribution also carries a serum report — the neuron's belief and its prediction of what everyone else believes. the serum scores how far the report beat the crowd's prediction of itself, and squashes it to a weight $\rho \in [0,1]$.
- a copy, a herd vote, an obvious link the crowd already predicted: $\rho \to 0$.
- a true link the crowd under-predicted: $\rho \to 1$.
the honest report is the equilibrium — lying about your belief lowers your own expected score (Prelec 2004; with no judge to resolve the market, the surprisingly-popular rule selects the truth — strong truthfulness).
the product of the two
the mint weighs every contributed link by its surprise before measuring the shift, then splits the result fairly among the contributors by their Shapley shares:
$$R(\nu) = \text{Shapley}_\nu(v^\star), \qquad v^\star(S) = \Delta\phi^+\!\big(A^{\text{eff}} \cup \rho\cdot S\big)$$
in words: you are paid your fair share of the clarity the network gained from what you said and others did not expect. that quantity is surprising syntropy.
three consequences fall out:
- copying earns nothing. a copy joins the mint with zero weight; its capital still ranks, so stake keeps its influence, it just mints no money.
- idle capital earns nothing. a passive stake has no report to surprise anyone with. staking earns from the mint only as an active bet.
- noise earns nothing. a surprising link that makes the picture blurrier has $\Delta\phi^+ = 0$.
what is not settled
- the discovery leak — a link that is right too early looks wrong at settlement: low market price, low surprise because the crowd predicted failure. it can earn later through the annuity, not through the pulse.
- coordinated rings can still manufacture surprise; the serum is proven against a lone liar, not a cartel.
both are tracked in the reward specification (§5, §12, §15).
see syntropy · impulse · Bayesian Truth Serum · Shapley value · karma · staking · mining · rewards · $CYB
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