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docs(theory): part II — error bounds, reproducibility, and the verification game - #379

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Part I stated the format and the ring as theorems. Part II does the two things it could not: it makes the reduction-order result quantitative, and it places the bond/challenge design against the verification-game literature — including eight published results that bound or contradict what a design of this shape can claim.

Positive results

Prop 1 GF-T truncates ⟹ roundoff constant v = 2u, one-sided — twice the round-to-nearest bound (Boldo et al. 2023 §2.5)
Thm 2 Summation error scales with tree height, not length: `
Cor 2.1 Therefore the canonical dot4 balanced tree has a strictly tighter bound than a left fold — 2v vs 3v at n=4; 6v vs 63v at n=64. Part I pinned the tree because a verifier folding differently would slash an honest executor; it turns out to also be the numerically better choice. That's a dividend, not the reason.
Thm 5 GF-T is bitwise reproducible by construction, at zero runtime cost. Gensyn's Verde needed RepOps at 67–374% overhead for the same property; ReproBLAS reports 7× FLOP overhead
Prop 6 Truncation is an asset here: Demmel–Nguyen's fast reproducible summation requires a directed rounding mode (their Lemma 3 fails under round-to-nearest-even's tie-break)
Thm 12 INDETERMINATE-on-split is security with identifiable abort — achievable under dishonest majority; in its sharpest form detectable broadcast for t < n (Fitzi et al., PODC 2002). Part I under-claimed this branch

§5 — the eight obstructions (the important section)

  1. Zhao–Chen–Zhou Thm 1: with binary reports and positive verification cost, no mechanism yields a pure-strategy honest equilibrium. The ring's reports are agree/disagree. So honest participation is an assumption here, not a derived equilibrium — and the specs should say so. Both published escapes (opML's attention challenge, peer prediction) are absent.
  2. Lee–Nguyen–Lee: challenger reward and deterrence come from the same pot. Single-winner ⟹ strictly negative honest utility; the ring's k-of-n is multi-winner, the feasible regime — but it owns their non-emptiness condition.
  3. Mouallem et al. Claim 1: max bribery resistance is λn² + cn. Above that, bribable at any bond.
  4. Budish (QJE 2025): bonds are the wrong denominator against exogenous profit (a short position, a cross-chain payoff).
  5. Budish–Lewis-Pye–Roughgarden: "bond ≥ X ⟹ deterrence" is false without a synchrony assumption.
  6. Knight–Leveson: k verifiers are not k independent samples.
  7. Rosenberg–Shavell: a challenge protocol is griefable exactly when challenging is cheap and responding is expensive — an asymmetry to engineer away, stronger than "burn the bond".

Two corrections the research forced on the draft

Both would have been wrong in print:

  • The signature exemption from 3f+1 is a synchronous-model result. Dwork–Lynch–Stockmeyer Table I: under partial synchrony authenticated Byzantine still needs 3t+1 — verbatim "authentication does not improve resiliency". Dropping "under synchrony" makes the claim false.
  • Quorum intersection 2q−n>f yields n>3f, not 2f+1, and presupposes signed results (Malkhi–Reiter dissemination quorums). Unsigned needs n>4f. Signing is what buys the drop from 4f to 3f.

Also states the correct bond-sizing citation — Polinsky–Shavell eq. (6), f* = h/p, with underdeterrence whenever wealth < h/pnot Becker, who gives the risk-neutral special case rather than deriving it. And documents verbatim that TrueBit (§4.3, §5.2) and Arbitrum (§3.5) declare value-at-risk bond sizing out of scope, which is the gap the ring's outstanding-scaled bond addresses.

Docs only; no spec, gen, or workflow changes.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

…a stale bias comment

Adds docs/GF_T_FORMAL_THEORY.md: the GF-T format and the compute ring
stated as theorems over the EXECUTABLE spec definitions, each discharged
by an in-spec assertion, an exhaustive sweep, or a proof given inline.
Every claim carries an epistemic label (PROVEN / MEASURED / MODELED /
FOLKLORE / OPEN), and section 6 lists the claims we deliberately refuse
to make.

The load-bearing results:

  Thm 1   2*bias = offset_max, so the ladder is exponent-symmetric about
          unity by construction.
  Thm 3   Multiplication needs at most one renormalization step: the
          product significand lies in [1,4).
  Thm 5   GF-T addition is commutative but NOT associative, with a 1-ULP
          counterexample confirmed on iverilog.
  Cor 5.1 Therefore reduction order is PART OF THE SPECIFICATION: a
          verifier folding a dot claim differently would slash an honest
          executor. Systems that leave reduction order to the
          implementation cannot support this dispute model at all.
  Thm 7   The zero sentinel is not injective -- (0,0) collides with the
          smallest normal. Recorded as a limitation, not hidden.
  Thm 9   Single-op disputes need no bisection: bit-exactness makes a
          fraud proof O(1), not O(log n).
  Thm 12  Freshness must precede every other guard AND must not advance
          the watermark on non-terminal outcomes, else one malformed
          high-epoch dispute is a replay-nonce DoS.
  Thm 19  The reputation cap must be computed in u64: in u32 a crafted
          gain wraps the sum to 0, so honest work would ZERO a maxed
          reputation.
  Thm 24  (family, op) is a lossy skill proxy -- GFT8 and GFT16 multiply
          share both, so a width-blind gate pays GF-T16 rates for 8-bit
          work.

Section 4 places the ternary claim honestly. It cites the radix-economy
theorem correctly (3 minimizes b/ln b over the integers; 2 and 4 tie
EXACTLY, so "closest to e" is coincidence-shaped reasoning), and it
quotes the 1950 ERA source disclaiming its own result in the next
sentence. It records that Setun's cost advantage is self-reported by
Brusentsov and never independently benchmarked, that Knuth's "prettiest
number system" is an aesthetic judgment, and that balanced ternary
predates both (Lalanne 1840, weights problem in Bachet 1624).

Section 5 argues the substantive contrast is with posits, not with radix
mysticism: tapering costs scale invariance of accuracy (de Dinechin et
al., CoNGA 2019), so error analyses stop transferring. GF-T is untapered
by choice -- stated as a trade, with what it gives up.

It also states plainly that the exponent base is 2, NOT phi. The
phi^a * phi^b = phi^(a+b) comment asserts exponent additivity, true for
any base; phi's real role is generating the ladder geometry
(Et = fib(k+1)+1, M = fib(k+1)^2). Claiming a phi-radix format would be
the easiest way to lose a reviewer, and it would be false.

Spec fix found by that audit: gft_bias's comment claimed GF-T32 -> 121,
a fossil of the pre-ratification Et5 geometry. The ratified value is 364
(Et6), which the assertion three lines below already pins. Comment-only;
gen output is byte-identical and icarus (10/10) and zig stay green.
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gHashTag merged commit 759f5e9 into main Aug 9, 2026
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gHashTag deleted the docs/gft-theory branch August 9, 2026 08:49
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