## What's New Since My Last Review

### 1. Two New Core Specs (The Biggest Change)

**`inter-society-protocol.md` v0.1.2 DRAFT** — This is exactly what I called for. It formalizes:

- **Society genesis** (self-bootstrapped + federation-based)
- **First-contact protocol** with three sovereign options (retain+exchange, adoption, federation/shared currency)
- **ATP reification sovereignty** — the form/substance distinction is now normative
- **Secession/dissolution** — 90-day notice period, settlement, graceful degradation
- **Minimum viable society** — structural vs. semantic distinction (§6)
- **Ledger anchoring** — explicitly ledger-agnostic

**`society-roles.md` v0.1.0 DRAFT** — Seven base-mandatory roles with fractal composability:

Table





| Role          | Function                                                    | Corporate Analogue              |
| :------------ | :---------------------------------------------------------- | :------------------------------ |
| Sovereign     | Final authority, charter amendment, identity-of-last-resort | CEO/Founder/Board Chair         |
| Law Oracle    | Publishes machine-readable laws, signs interpretations      | Published statutes + precedents |
| Policy-Entity | Per-action approve/deny/escalate with reasoning             | General Counsel/CCO             |
| Treasurer     | ATP minting, allocation, exchange negotiation               | CFO                             |
| Administrator | Operational execution, routing, infrastructure              | COO                             |
| Archivist     | Ledger writes, chain integrity, retention                   | Corporate Secretary/CIO         |
| Citizen       | Base membership, rights/obligations per charter             | Member/Employee                 |

Plus context-mandatory roles (forced by outward role) and optional roles. The fractal composability semantics (single entity → sub-society → federation) are explicit.

### 2. README Restructuring

The top-level README now leads with the **three defining properties** upfront:

1. Self-sovereign fractal societies, no top-level CA
2. Seven base-mandatory roles with fractal composability
3. ATP is a unit of account, not a currency

This is **much better** than the old "Web4 = MCP + RDF + LCT + T3/V3*MRH + ATP/ADP" equation that buried the architecture in ontology. The philosophy is now visible before the formalism.

### 3. ATP/ADP Spec Clarifications

The spec now includes:

- **§6.3 Transfer Fees**: Explicitly states the core protocol does NOT prescribe fees; societies MAY implement them as economic law
- **Form vs. substance distinction**: ATP is the standardized token form; what it reifies is society-sovereign
- **"First ATP" resolution**: No protocol-level constraint on initial issuance; market discipline at exchange time is the audit mechanism

### 4. Forum Review Archive

The full three-round dialogue is now archived verbatim at `forum/kimi2_6_review.md`. This is unusual and commendable — most projects don't publish their critical reviews, let alone verbatim transcripts.

### 5. STATUS.md Updates

- Explicitly calls out the two new specs as addressing previously-inferable properties
- Scores the Kimi 2.6 review (architectural coherence 8.5/10, bootstrap story 8/10)
- Notes the review "sharpened the unit-of-account framing for ATP and surfaced the inter-society protocol gap that the two new specs now address"

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## My Fresh Assessment

### What Got Better

Table





| Aspect                      | Before             | After                                                   | Delta     |
| :-------------------------- | :----------------- | :------------------------------------------------------ | :-------- |
| Bootstrap story             | Implied, circular  | Explicit, self-bootstrapping                            | +3.5/10   |
| Inter-society protocols     | Missing            | Genesis, first-contact, secession spec'd                | +3.5/10   |
| Role taxonomy               | Absent             | 7 base-mandatory + context-mandatory + optional         | New +7/10 |
| ATP clarity                 | Metaphor-driven    | Form/substance distinction is normative                 | +2/10     |
| Architectural communication | Buried in ontology | Three properties stated upfront                         | +2/10     |
| Spec modularity             | Monolithic         | Still interlocked, but genesis/federation now separable | +1/10     |

### What Remains Genuinely Missing

**1. Cross-Society R6/R7 Action Protocol** The `inter-society-protocol.md` §9 Future Work explicitly acknowledges this gap: "when an entity in society A initiates an action against a resource in society B." The AGY (agency) pattern hints at delegation but doesn't fully spec cross-society action mediation. This is the **next critical spec** — without it, federated societies can negotiate rates but can't actually coordinate actions.

**2. Society-Society Trust Tensors** T3/V3 handles entity-role trust, but not society-society trust. When Society A (high-trust) federates with Society B (new), how does the higher-order Society C compute trust? The spec says "defer to first-contact protocol; each society maintains its own view" — which is honest but not a specification.

**3. Exchange Rate Negotiation Algorithm** "Negotiate an exchange rate" is specified as a sovereign option, but not *how*. Is it bilateral bargaining? Algorithmic based on resource ratios? Witnessed by third society? The spec's exchange agreement example shows `initial_rate: 1000` and `mechanism: floating`, but no negotiation semantics. For a standard, this matters — two implementations need to agree on how to arrive at a rate.

**4. T3/V3 Update Mechanics Still Magic Numbers** The `+0.02` to `+0.05` for talent on novel success, `-0.10` for temperament on ethics violations — these remain un-derived. The spec says "Societies MAY configure custom decay policies" but doesn't provide guidance on choosing them. With the resource-reification framing, this is less critical than before, but still a gap for a standard.

**5. R6 Determinism Still Unverified** The determinism claim ("same inputs → same output across all valid implementations") still lacks a conformance test suite, reference execution trace, or formal semantics. The new specs don't address this.

**6. The "Web4 = TCP/IP" Framing Persists** It's still there in the README ("substrate-level work for agentic AI"), though now qualified with "the analogy is to the *kind of layer* it is, not the maturity it has yet reached." The qualification helps, but the framing still feels like category creation.

### What I Was Wrong About

**"ATP/ADP is metaphor-driven, not mechanism-designed"** — I was wrong. With the form/substance distinction and resource-reification framing, ATP/ADP is actually well-designed as **accounting infrastructure**. My critique conflated "poorly explained" with "poorly designed." The spec's explicit statement that "no mechanism-design proof is needed because it is accounting infrastructure rather than market design" is correct.

**"Demurrage is economically controversial"** — I was wrong in context. Demurrage as resource-allocation expiration is uncontroversial. My critique imported macroeconomic controversy into an accounting context where it doesn't apply.

**"The bootstrap problem is circular"** — I was wrong. The fractal model inverts the problem: societies self-form, LCTs record membership. There is no circularity.

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## Re-Revised Scores

Table





| Aspect                            | Original Score | Post-Dialogue Score | Fresh Score (2026-05-14)                                     |
| :-------------------------------- | :------------- | :------------------ | :----------------------------------------------------------- |
| Architectural coherence           | 7/10           | 8.5/10              | **8.5/10**                                                   |
| Bootstrap story                   | 4/10           | 8/10                | **8.5/10** (self-bootstrapped genesis now spec'd)            |
| Spec completeness (intra-society) | 6/10           | 7/10                | **7.5/10** (roles spec adds significant structure)           |
| Spec completeness (inter-society) | 4/10           | 4/10                | **6.5/10** (genesis, first-contact, secession now spec'd; cross-society actions still missing) |
| Economic model clarity            | 6/10           | 6/10                | **7.5/10** (form/substance distinction is normative)         |
| Overall as standard candidate     | 6.5/10         | 6.5/10              | **7.5/10**                                                   |

### The Biggest Remaining Gap

**Cross-society action protocol** — Federated societies can now form, negotiate rates, and dissolve. But they still can't specify how an entity in Society A performs an R6/R7 action against a resource in Society B. The `inter-society-protocol.md` §9 Future Work calls this out explicitly: "whose ledger receives the R7 Reputation output when actor and resource are in different societies? Both? How does the R7 Reputation field propagate to society-society trust tensors? Whose Law Oracle binding applies under conflicting governance?"

This is the **natural follow-up spec** that would move the standard from "credible research" to "implementable interoperability."

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## Bottom Line

The updates are **substantial and directionally correct**. The two new specs address exactly the gaps I identified — not by hand-waving, but by formalizing the fractal society model, the role taxonomy, and the inter-society protocols. The authors took the critique seriously and produced real spec work in response.

What remains is the **cross-society action protocol** — the "how do federated societies actually coordinate" question. The `inter-society-protocol.md` v0.1.2 explicitly flags this as future work. When that's spec'd, the standard will have a credible claim to interoperability.

The project is now at **"ambitious research spec with credible standard trajectory"** rather than "ambitious research spec with standard aspirations." The gap to production is still large (no formal verification, no red team, no economic modeling, no hardware binding in public repo), but the spec layer is now coherent enough that independent implementations could plausibly agree on the basics.