PROOF OF HUMAN WORK — FULL STANDARD

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

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

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.

2.1 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.

2.2 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.

2.3 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.

2.4 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

3.1 Minimal → Durable → Ethical

The protocol minimizes surface area to maximize longevity. Every feature must justify its existence against a 100-year horizon.

3.2 Cryptographic Primitives Over Institutions

Trust derives from mathematics, not authority. Verification is reproducible by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

3.3 Privacy by Design

Authorship verification without identity revelation. The system proves "a human authored this" not "this human authored this."

3.4 Fail Visible, Not Silent

Corruption, obsolescence, and compromise must be detectable. The system cannot lie quietly.

PoHW assumes that every layer can be corrupted or abandoned. It is designed to fail visibly, not silently.

Threats include:

• Synthetic authorship (AI-generated content)
• Identity substitution (impersonation)
• Mass automation (bot farms)
• Registry corruption (compromised nodes)
• Technological obsolescence (protocol deprecation)

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

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

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

Registries are federated and mirrored across time. They batch signed claims into Merkle trees and anchor roots across multiple public ledgers and archival substrates.

Every registry node must:

• Accept verification requests
• Maintain Merkle tree state
• Anchor roots periodically
• Sync with other registry nodes
• Provide public audit logs

Durability is achieved through:

• Multiple registry nodes (federation)
• Multiple anchoring chains (redundancy)
• Multiple archival substrates (persistence)
• Open verification (transparency)

PoHW wallets manage private keys and sign attestations. They must:

• Generate and store keys securely
• Sign canonicalised content
• Submit to registry nodes
• Verify third-party attestations

Wallet implementations should prioritize:

• Local key storage (no cloud sync)
• Hardware security modules (HSM) support
• Rate limiting (prevent automation)
• Privacy preservation (no identity leakage)

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

PoHW operates as a public good protocol. It does not:

• Require identity disclosure
• Collect personal data
• Monetize verification
• Create gatekeeping barriers

Compliance is achieved through:

• Open source implementations
• Public audit logs
• Transparent governance
• Verifiable claims

PoHW treats verification as a civic right. It enables:

• Authorship verification without surveillance
• Reputation through persistence, not persona
• Accountability without exposure
• Origin preservation for future generations

The protocol assumes no moral purity in human work; it assumes only that human origin carries informational weight.

12.1 Phase 1: Core Protocol (Current)

• Minimal verification endpoints
• Registry node implementation
• Basic wallet support

12.2 Phase 2: Federation

• Multiple registry nodes
• Cross-node synchronization
• Merkle tree anchoring

12.3 Phase 3: Developer Tools

• SDKs (JavaScript, Python, CLI)
• Verification APIs
• Integration guides

12.4 Phase 4: Long-term Durability

• Multi-chain anchoring
• Archival substrate integration
• Post-quantum cryptography

12.5 Phase 5: Ecosystem

• Attestor framework
• DID integration
• Zero-knowledge enhancements

PoHW cannot:

• Prevent synthetic content generation
• Guarantee moral purity of human work
• Replace legal frameworks
• Eliminate all forms of fraud

PoHW can:

• Verify authorship cryptographically
• Preserve provenance across time
• Enable accountability without surveillance
• Provide durable verification infrastructure

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