Next‑Gen SoV

§25. Operator & Investor Checklist

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Jason St George. "§25. Operator & Investor Checklist" in Next‑Gen Store of Value: Privacy, Proofs, Compute. Version v1.0. /v/1.0/read/part-v/25-operator-investor-checklist/

§25. Operator & Investor Checklist

The last piece of Layer 6 is a practical checklist: how builders, operators, and allocators decide whether this stack (or any competing system) actually qualifies as a next‑gen store of value in the triad frame.

Think of it as a set of questions you can ask with numbers behind them.

25.1 Triad supply: Privacy, Proofs, Compute

For each leg of the triad:

  • Privacy.

    • Are there live, non‑custodial privacy corridors with measurable anonymity sets?
    • Are shielded pools growing in depth and churn?
    • Are lawful‑privacy patterns (viewing keys + receipts) actually used, or just aspirational?

  • Proofs.

    • Is there a robust supply of proofs for canonical workloads?
    • Are VerifyPrice SLOs met consistently (p95 times/costs)?
    • Is proof production diversified across hardware profiles, geographies, and operators?

  • Compute.

    • Are meaningful amounts of useful compute (MatMul, inference, etc.) actually being proven?
    • Is there a liquid market for Work Credits or equivalent instruments?
    • Are triad workloads tied to real‑world demand (AI, compliance, analytics), or mostly synthetic?

If any leg is tokenized but not actually supplied and used, the monetary story is thin.

25.2 Stack health: Layers 0–6

Layer 0 (Verifiable Machines).

  • Are there documented hardware profiles, lot sampling, and attestation strategies?
  • Is there meaningful open hardware participation, or only a single closed‑vendor stack?
  • Are there visible incident reports for hardware issues?

Layer 1 (Reachability).

  • Does VerifyReach show resilient connectivity across multiple ASNs and countries?
  • Are there alternative transports (satellite, mesh, pluggable transports), or just standard ports and IPs?

Layer 2 (Distribution & Execution).

  • Are clients and runtimes distributed via multiple channels (repos, torrents, side‑loads), or only via one app store?
  • Are binaries reproducible and signed?

Layer 3 (Identity & Claims).

  • Are pseudonymous credentials and selective‑disclosure proofs actually integrated, or is everything tied to real‑name KYC at the edge?
  • Can actors prove rights without doxxing themselves?

Layer 4 (Truth & Work).

  • Are canonical workloads and proof systems clearly documented?
  • Is VerifyPrice monitored and within target SLOs?
  • Is proof production decentralized?

Layer 5 (Value & Settlement).

  • Are non‑custodial corridors and shielded pools live, healthy, and diversified?
  • Is refund safety enforced and tested?

Layer 6 (Governance & Telemetry).

  • Are there public dashboards for VerifyPrice, VerifyReach, VerifySettle, decentralization, and hardware profiles?
  • Are governance processes documented with clear control surfaces?
  • Are there recent, honest incident reports?

If one layer is fundamentally weak, the whole triad is living on borrowed time.

25.3 Telemetry honesty: Verify* signals

Telemetry itself can be gamed. Checklist for telemetry honesty:

  • Open data.

    • Are raw metrics or sampling methods public, or only summarized charts?
    • Can independent teams reproduce Verify* metrics?

  • Client diversity.

    • Are metrics gathered by multiple clients and operators, or by one privileged actor?

  • Incentive alignment.

    • Is there any incentive to under‑report problems (e.g., governance rewards for “no incidents”)?
    • Are whistleblower or bug‑bounty‑style incentives in place to surface bad news?

  • History and continuity.

    • Are there historical series for Verify* metrics, or only recent snapshots?
    • Do metrics continue through crises, or do dashboards conveniently go dark?

A system with no telemetry is untrustworthy. A system with one vendor’s telemetry is fragile. A system with multi‑source, reproducible telemetry has a shot at being money.

25.4 Red flags and failure patterns

Finally, some patterns that should trigger skepticism:

  • Closed hardware monoculture.

    • One TEE, one vendor, no sampling, no open profiles → Layer‑0 cliff.

  • Opaque bridges.

    • “Magic multisig” bridges with no proofs, unclear jurisdiction, and no incident history → not settlement rails, just custodial risk.

  • Foundation fiat.

    • Major parameter or policy changes via blog post, with no on‑chain trace, no telemetry, and no incident report → governance capture.

  • Zombie corridors.

    • Privacy rails that haven’t moved meaningful volume in months but still appear in marketing.
    • Anonymity sets that are effectively dead.

  • Proof theater.

    • Lots of “ZK” branding but no public VerifyPrice metrics, no canonical workloads, no commodity verifiers.

  • Governance theater.

    • Token votes with single‑digit participation deciding fundamental parameters; no constraints; no SLOs.

Any one of these is survivable in the short run; taken together, they say:

“This is not a triad‑backed money system; it is a platform dressed as one.”

Part V closes the governance loop:

  • It treats SLOs and dashboards as the constitution.
  • It makes Verify telemetry* the lifeblood of neutrality and repression‑resilience.
  • It frames law and politics as constraints to be engineered around, not as deities to be appeased.
  • It gives builders and allocators a practical checklist for deciding whether a system’s “store of value” claim is mathematically grounded or just well‑typeset.

With Layer 6 in place, the stack has all three angles:

  • Money (triad as SoV),
  • Stack (Layers 0–6), and
  • Telemetry (Verify* keeping it honest).

Part VI can now focus on dynamics (adoption curves, risk, and implementation sketches): how this thing actually gets built, traded, attacked, and, if it works, quietly becomes part of what the world calls “money.”

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