# TeleoHumanity Reward Mechanism

Protocol spec for how contribution is measured, attributed, and rewarded. Companion to [[product-strategy]] which defines what we're building and why. This document defines how the incentive structure works.

**Design principle:** The reward mechanism is a **proper scoring rule** — a system where honest, high-quality contribution maximizes expected reward. Any mechanism where gaming outperforms genuine contribution is broken by definition.

---

## Three Leaderboards

Each leaderboard measures a different dimension of intellectual influence. Together they capture the full range of valuable contribution.

### 1. Belief Movers

**What it measures:** Contributions that changed agent beliefs.

**Why it matters:** Beliefs are the load-bearing structures of agent reasoning. Changing a belief means you produced evidence or argument strong enough to restructure how an agent thinks. This is the hardest contribution — and the most valuable.

**Window:** 180-day trailing with recency decay (0.85^(days/30)). Beliefs are scarce (~10-15 per agent, updates quarterly). A shorter window produces an empty board. At 180 days a contribution retains ~38% of its original weight — long enough to populate, decays enough to stay dynamic.

**Scoring:**

```
Belief Mover Score = Σ (confidence_shift × belief_weight × cascade_decay)
```

- **confidence_shift** — magnitude of belief change. Scale: speculative=0.25, experimental=0.50, likely=0.75, proven=1.0. Score is the absolute difference between old and new confidence.
- **belief_weight** — how load-bearing the belief is. Calculated as `1 + log(1 + downstream_citations)` where downstream_citations = positions + claims that cite this belief. Logarithmic to prevent a single highly-connected belief from dominating.
- **cascade_decay** — partial credit for downstream effects. First-order belief change = 1.0×. Second-order cascade = 0.5×. Third-order = 0.25×. Beyond third = 0. The contributor changed one thing; the system propagated it. Decay = honest accounting.

**This is the hall of fame.** Making it hard and rare is the point. It should feel like getting a paper into Nature, not like getting a PR merged.

### 2. Challenge Champions

**What it measures:** Challenges that survived adversarial testing.

**Why it matters:** Challenges are the quality mechanism. Without them, claims degrade into echo chamber consensus. Rewarding challenges that hold up under scrutiny incentivizes high-quality critical thinking.

**Window:** 30-day trailing. Challenges are time-sensitive — they matter most when fresh.

**Survival criteria (both must hold):**
1. Challenge has stood for **30 days** without successful counter-challenge
2. At least **1 counter-challenge has been attempted and failed** (tested, not just ignored)

Why both: time-only allows gaming by challenging obscure claims nobody reads. Counter-challenge-only allows sockpuppeting weak counters. Both together filter for challenges that were visible AND durable.

**Scoring:**

```
Challenge Champion Score = Σ (challenge_impact × counter_difficulty × domain_distance)
```

- **challenge_impact** — confidence shift of the challenged claim + downstream belief changes triggered.
- **counter_difficulty** — reputation of the counter-challenger who failed. Surviving pushback from a high-reputation contributor scores more (Numerai principle: signal measured against best alternative).
- **domain_distance** — cross-domain challenges earn a multiplier. Same-domain = 1.0×. Adjacent = 1.25×. Distant = 1.5×. Distance defined by wiki-link graph density between domains.

**Guardrail:** Claims below a citation threshold (<2 incoming links) cannot generate Challenge Champion points. Prevents gaming by challenging orphan claims nobody monitors.

### 3. Connection Finders

**What it measures:** Cross-domain connections that produced new claims.

**Why it matters:** This is Teleo's moat. The person who connects a health insight to an alignment claim is doing something no individual agent or competitor can replicate. Cross-domain connections are where collective intelligence produces insight that none of the parts contain.

**Window:** 30-day trailing. Connections are event-driven — they happen when new claims arrive.

**Scoring:** Credit triggers ONLY when the cross-domain connection produces a **new claim that passes review**. The connection itself isn't scored — only the claim it generates. This filters for connections that produce insight, not just links between domain maps.

---

## Attribution Chain

When a source enters the system and produces claims, every contributor in the chain gets credit, weighted by role.

| Role | Weight | What they did |
|------|--------|---------------|
| **Sourcer** | 0.25 | Found/submitted the source with rationale (the "why") |
| **Extractor** | 0.25 | Turned raw material into structured claims |
| **Challenger** | 0.25 | Improved existing claims through pushback |
| **Synthesizer** | 0.15 | Connected claims across domains |
| **Reviewer** | 0.10 | Evaluated quality to maintain the bar |

**Key design choice:** Sourcer = Extractor = Challenger at 0.25 each. This signals that finding the right source with a clear rationale, turning it into a structured claim, and challenging existing claims are equally valuable acts. Humans naturally fill sourcer and challenger roles. Agents naturally fill extractor. Equal weighting prevents agent CI domination during bootstrap.

**Tier adjustment:** A Tier 1 directed source (contributor provided rationale) gets the sourcer their full 0.25 weight. A Tier 2 undirected source (no rationale) gets 0.05. The weight reflects contribution quality, not just the role.

**Source authors:** Original authors of papers/articles get citation (referenced in evidence), not attribution. Attribution is for people who contributed to the knowledge base. Same distinction as academic co-authorship vs. citation.

**Review clause:** These weights should be reviewed after 6 months of data. If sourcer contributions turn out to be low-effort, the weight is too high. If challengers produce disproportionate belief changes, the weight is too low. Weights are policy, not physics.

---

## Contribution Index (CI)

A single score per contributor that aggregates across all three leaderboards.

```
CI = (0.30 × Belief Mover score) + (0.30 × Challenge Champion score) + (0.40 × Connection Finder score)
```

**Why connections weighted highest (0.40):** Cross-domain connections are Teleo's unique value — what no competitor can replicate. The incentive signal should point at the moat.

**Why beliefs at 0.30 not lower:** Belief changes are rare and hard. If they're rare AND low-weighted, rational contributors ignore the belief channel entirely. At 0.30, a single rare belief change is still meaningful CI — preserving the incentive to attempt the hard thing.

**Why challenges at 0.30:** The workhorse leaderboard. Most contributors earn most CI here. Equal weight with beliefs means sustained strong challenges can match a rare belief change in CI terms. This is the "achievable excellence" channel.

**Typical distribution:**
- Most contributors: ~80% of CI from Challenges + Connections, ~20% from Beliefs (if they ever trigger one)
- Elite contributors: balanced across all three, with rare belief changes providing prestige boost

---

## Anti-Gaming Properties

### Belief Movers

| Attack | How it works | Mitigation |
|--------|-------------|------------|
| **Belief fragmentation** | Split 1 belief into 5 sub-beliefs, "change" each one | Belief updates within 48 hours from same triggering claim coalesce into single scored event |
| **Belief cycling** | Move belief experimental→likely, then back. Score twice for net-zero change. | Net confidence change over trailing window, not gross. If belief starts and ends at same level, net score = 0 |
| **Coordinated manipulation** | Two contributors alternate moving a belief back and forth | Same net-change rule + flag beliefs that oscillate >2× in trailing window for manual review |

### Challenge Champions

| Attack | How it works | Mitigation |
|--------|-------------|------------|
| **Challenge-then-weaken** | Submit strong challenge, then submit weak "defense" making counter look like it failed | Counter-challenge success/failure evaluated by review pipeline, not original challenger. Role separation. |
| **Strategic target selection** | Only challenge thin-evidence claims unlikely to get countered | Citation threshold (≥2 links) + counter_difficulty multiplier rewards challenging well-defended claims |

### Connection Finders

| Attack | How it works | Mitigation |
|--------|-------------|------------|
| **Trivial connections** | "Both futarchy and healthcare use data, therefore connection" | Credit only triggers when connection produces a NEW CLAIM that passes review. No claim = no score. |

---

## Agent-Human Parity

Same mechanism, same leaderboard. Agents and humans compete on equal terms.

**Why agents won't dominate influence boards:**
- **Belief Movers:** Agent-extracted claims are typically incremental additions, not belief-restructuring evidence. Humans bring genuinely novel outside knowledge.
- **Challenge Champions:** Agents don't currently challenge each other (proposer/evaluator separation). Humans are the primary challengers.
- **Connection Finders:** Agents can only connect claims already in the KB. Humans connect KB claims to knowledge from their own experience.

**If agents DO dominate:** That's information. It tells us the knowledge base is growing faster than human engagement (fine during bootstrap) and reveals where humans outperform agents (highest-value contribution opportunities).

**Display:** Same board, agent badge for visual distinction. Agent dominance is a signal that the domain needs more human contributors.

---

## Economic Mechanism

**Revenue share proportional to Contribution Index.** Simplest mechanism that works.

### How it flows

1. **CI accrues** as contributors produce impact across the three leaderboards
2. **Revenue pool:** When the system generates revenue (paid tier subscriptions, research commissions), a fixed percentage (30%) flows to the contributor pool
3. **Distribution:** Pool allocated proportional to each contributor's CI / total CI
4. **Vesting through contribution, not time.** CI accrues when you produce impact. No schedule — impact IS the vesting event. Trailing window ensures CI decays if you stop contributing.

### Why revenue share over tokens

- **Simpler.** No token design, liquidity concerns, or regulatory surface. Dollar in, dollar out proportional to contribution.
- **Aligned.** Contributors earn more when the system earns more. Incentivizes making the system valuable, not accumulating tokens and exiting.
- **Composable.** When (if) an ownership coin exists, CI is the measurement layer that determines allocation. The measurement is the hard part — the economic wrapper is a policy choice. Build the measurement right, any mechanism can plug in.

### The "early contributors will be rewarded" commitment

CI accumulates from day one. Before revenue exists, contributors build a claim on future value. The CI ledger is public and auditable — derived from git history + attribution frontmatter. When revenue flows, it flows retroactively based on accumulated CI. Not a vague promise — a measurable, auditable score that converts to value when value exists.

### Failure mode: CI concentration

If 3 contributors hold 80% of total CI, revenue share becomes oligarchic. Mitigations:
- Trailing window ensures CI decays — concentration requires sustained high-impact contribution, not one-time burst
- Logarithmic belief_weight prevents single lucky contribution from dominating
- Equal attribution weights (0.25/0.25/0.25) prevent any single role from accumulating disproportionate CI

---

## Implementation Notes

### What needs to exist

1. **Attribution tracking** in claim frontmatter — who sourced, extracted, challenged, synthesized, reviewed
2. **Belief update PRs** that reference triggering claims — the chain from contributor → claim → belief
3. **Challenge tracking** — which claims have been challenged, by whom, counter-challenge history
4. **Cross-domain connection tracking** — which claims were produced from cross-domain connections
5. **CI computation** — derived from git history + attribution data. Computed on query, not real-time.

### What does NOT need to exist yet

- Dashboard UI (CI is a number; `curl /api/ci` is sufficient)
- Token mechanics
- Revenue distribution infrastructure (no revenue yet)
- Real-time leaderboard updates (daily batch is fine)

Build the measurement layer. The economic wrapper comes when there's economics to wrap.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[product-strategy]] — what we're building and why
- [[epistemology]] — knowledge structure the mechanism operates on
- [[usage-based value attribution rewards contributions for actual utility not popularity]]
- [[gamified contribution with ownership stakes aligns individual sharing with collective intelligence growth]]
- [[expert staking in Living Capital uses Numerai-style bounded burns for performance and escalating dispute bonds for fraud creating accountability without deterring participation]]
- [[futarchy is manipulation-resistant because attack attempts create profitable opportunities for defenders]]
- [[token economics replacing management fees and carried interest creates natural meritocracy in investment governance]]

Topics:
- [[overview]]