Proof of Contribution (POC): An Audit-Executable Execution-Weight Layer for Contribution-Generated Assets

Abstract

Many systems map governance and execution power directly to purchasable capital (stake, tokens, shares). This creates structurally unsafe paths to power: influence can be bought, short-window manipulation can become long-lived authority, and low-integrity applications can contaminate system-level decision making. This paper defines Proof of Contribution (POC) as a parent-layer execution-weight reference and constraint layer for contribution-generated assets (ABUE / CGA). POC converts finalized contribution-derived claims into execution weights under strict constraints: Source purity (external purchases do not mint influence), verifiable value caps (weights cannot exceed auditable backing), decay (power requires continued contribution), downward-only normalization (anti-compounding), local negative contributions (risk isolation), and delayed activation (audit windows). Crucially, POC is specified as an audit-executable closed loop: versioned policy bundles with timelocks, deterministic recomputation, public commitments (roots), challenge windows, and automatic consequences (freeze/down-weight/remove; Only-Down). We provide falsifiable hypotheses (H0–H4), trigger playbooks (TRW1–TRW3), Minimum Qualifying Implementation (MQI) boundaries, a parameter ledger, and a reproducible toy simulator framework (ReproPackW/MVDW) intended to validate invariants—not to claim economic optimality. A consensus instantiation is treated as a conditional subset and fully developed in a companion paper.