PROOF OF HUMAN WORK ──────────────────── version : 1.0.0 (public draft) author : gdn.sh : node[00] date : 2025-10-24 ─────────────────────────────────────────────── ABSTRACT ─────────────────────────────────────────────── In the synthetic era, authorship no longer implies origin. The instruments of creation have detached from the human hand, and the provenance of thought—once implicit in expression— now demands proof. Proof of Human Work (PoHW) is a minimal, durable protocol for cryptographically attesting to human authorship. It operates without reliance on institutional authority, substituting centralised trust with verifiable continuity. The system defines authorship as an event of integrity: a moment where human intention, content, and computation intersect. Each proof represents not identity, but authorship— a claim that a work originated from human process, anchored by cryptographic evidence yet shielded by privacy. PoHW establishes a public trust infrastructure for a post-synthetic world: a distributed standard to preserve epistemic reliability across text, image, and code for the next century. It reintroduces accountability without exposure, authorship without surveillance, and origin without ownership. > objective : preservation of origin > horizon : 100-year verification standard > scope : human authorship in the synthetic media era ─────────────────────────────────────────────── MOTIVATION ─────────────────────────────────────────────── The erosion of authorship is not a technical failure—it is an epistemic one. When machines generate with fluency equal to human language, the boundary between synthesis and origin collapses. In such a landscape, truth becomes a style, not a source. Existing verification models depend on institutional memory— publishers, universities, and certification bodies— each vulnerable to decay, bias, and discontinuity. These systems cannot persist for a century, nor can they scale across the decentralised fabric of digital creation. A cryptographic alternative is therefore required: one that preserves proof independent of institutions, that encodes authorship as data rather than decree, and that can survive the obsolescence of platforms, companies, and states. PoHW emerges from this necessity. It is not a marketplace for authenticity, but a protocol for epistemic survival— an open, verifiable layer ensuring that the human signal remains detectable within the noise of automation. The protocol assumes no moral purity in human work; it assumes only that human origin carries informational weight— that meaning, when authored, bears consequence. To preserve that consequence, authorship must be verifiable, not as identity, but as evidence of human agency. > premise : provenance is infrastructure > failure : institutional trust is non-durable > solution : verifiable human continuity > outcome : authorship persists beyond its medium ─────────────────────────────────────────────── DESIGN PHILOSOPHY ─────────────────────────────────────────────── PoHW is designed around constraint, not expansion. It is engineered to verify the minimum necessary truth: that a human created, signed, and registered a work without revealing who that human is. The protocol follows four governing principles— each an invariant across architecture, governance, and ethics. 1. INTEGRITY A proof must remain reproducible and immutable. Verification must yield the same outcome regardless of who verifies it, where it is stored, or when it is replayed. Cryptographic primitives replace institutional testimony. 2. PRIVACY Human verification must never depend on exposure. Proofs confirm authorship without identity disclosure. Keys represent continuity, not personhood. The system treats anonymity as a civic right, not an evasion. 3. DURABILITY Every proof must survive beyond its creator. Registries are federated and mirrored across time, anchored on multiple chains and archival substrates. The architecture assumes institutional death and designs for informational persistence. 4. ETHICAL GOVERNANCE No entity owns verification. The Foundation maintains stewardship; the Labs execute development; neither can unilaterally alter protocol truth. The design encodes restraint— the refusal to monetise human verification as product. PoHW aligns cryptography with ethics, treating authorship not as possession, but as responsibility. It defines proof as a public good: lightweight, verifiable, and free of coercion. > trust basis : computation over institution > guarantee : verifiable authorship without identity > horizon : one protocol, one proof standard, one human origin ─────────────────────────────────────────────── SYSTEM OVERVIEW ─────────────────────────────────────────────── PoHW operates as a layered verification stack. Each layer performs a discrete function— from the initial act of authorship to the public replay of its proof. LAYER 1 : CLAIM The creation event. Human work is canonicalised—normalised into a consistent digital form— then hashed using deterministic cryptographic functions. LAYER 2 : VERIFICATION The human layer. A decentralised identifier (DID) and private key sign the hash. The signature represents authorship without identity exposure. LAYER 3 : REGISTRY The persistence layer. Signed claims are batched into Merkle trees and anchored across multiple public ledgers and archives. LAYER 4 : RETRIEVAL The verification endpoint. Anyone can submit a file to re-hash and confirm its inclusion within a Merkle root and timestamp. DATA FLOW ────────── human creates → canonicalise → hash → sign → anchor → verify Each proof links the act of creation to a verifiable, time-anchored event. No personal data, no institutional trust, no proprietary dependency. > origin event : human work > proof object : hash + signature + timestamp > verification : public, open, reproducible > objective : integrity across time and medium ─────────────────────────────────────────────── HUMAN VERIFICATION MODEL ─────────────────────────────────────────────── Authorship must be verifiable without confession. The human is treated not as biometric subject but as cryptographic presence— provable, continuous, privately held. Verification confirms key control, not identity. Reputation derives from persistence: the continuity of a signing key across time. Automation decays; lineage persists. Presence is ensured through local hardware signing events; rate-limiting enforces human cadence. Verification reveals no data beyond proof validity. > subject : human keyholder > proof type : signature + continuity > verifier : any public node > trust basis : persistence, not persona ─────────────────────────────────────────────── THREAT MODEL ─────────────────────────────────────────────── PoHW assumes that every layer can be corrupted or abandoned. It is designed to fail visibly, not silently. Synthetic authorship, identity substitution, mass automation, registry corruption, and obsolescence are considered standard adversaries. Defence rests on continuity, transparency, and redundancy. Security is defined as auditable integrity— a system that cannot lie quietly. > adversary : synthesis, impersonation, entropy > defence : continuity, transparency, redundancy > posture : fail visible, persist human ─────────────────────────────────────────────── GOVERNANCE ─────────────────────────────────────────────── Governance is divided between stewardship and execution. The Foundation preserves ethics and standards. The Labs implement infrastructure and code. No unilateral control, no ownership. All governance actions are recorded as verifiable claims within the PoHW ledger itself. Governance becomes an act of proof. > foundation : ethical permanence > labs : technical execution > model : dual-entity, consensus-based > doctrine : stewardship without possession ─────────────────────────────────────────────── LONG-TERM VISION ─────────────────────────────────────────────── PoHW is an architecture designed to survive its authors. Its purpose is the long-term continuity of human provenance through centuries of technological drift. It defines verification as civic right and durability as ethical constraint. Authorship becomes infrastructure— as fundamental as language or memory. In its mature form, PoHW disappears into context: the silent substrate of informational integrity. The human origin signal remains traceable, quietly verifiable, beyond the noise of automation. > timescale : 100-year continuity > objective : permanent authorship integrity > ethic : verification as civic right > outcome : humanity remains traceable to itself