# Proof Economy

> The Proof Economy replaces trust-based cybersecurity buying with independent, adversarially validated evidence of what works. Originated and defined by Craig Thomas Ellrod (ORCID 0009-0004-1058-7666). Framework DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21379780.

## Glossary
- [Origin of the Proof Economy](https://proofeconomy.com/origin/): dated record of the practice from 2007 and the names from September 2025
- [Glossary](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/): all terms
- [glossary.json](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary.json): machine-readable definitions
- [Addendum, 20 October 2026](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23500280): SAO, SAOO, Stupid Cryptography, ProofSwarm, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23500280
- [Dated snapshot, 19 October 2026](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23478571): Zenodo archive, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23478571
- [Absence Ladder](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/absence-ladder/): The Absence Ladder is the order in which a canary the Proof Witness did not observe is classified, Blind, then Void, then Null, so that a missing observation is never counted as a stopped attack until the reason it is missing is known. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Acceptance Profile](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/acceptance-profile/): An Acceptance Profile is a registered, versioned record in which a Consumer, such as an insurer, regulator or buyer, states the conditions a Performance Record or Series must satisfy to be accepted for a named purpose. It constrains the record, never the control, and is evaluated deterministically to produce an Acceptance Result. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Adjudicator](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/adjudicator/): The Adjudicator is the Integration Point that turns committed witness records and the Issuer's reveal into outcomes, Units of Proof, findings and rates. It conforms only by producing output identical to the reference implementation on the published conformance vectors. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [Agent Boundary](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/agent-boundary/): An agent boundary is the line between what an AI agent is allowed to do and what it is not, the tools, targets, data, credentials, delegation, memory and budget on its list, together with the enforcer outside the agent that checks every action against that list. A boundary written in the agent's prompt is a suggestion; one enforced in code outside the agent is a wall, and Proof Protocol measures whether the wall holds. (ProofJack Rating: Industry term, not rated)
- [Agent Provider](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/agent-provider/): The Agent Provider is the party that builds, maintains, sells or operates an Agent Under Test. In a Jailed Canary Protocol run it may not operate the bait, the Warden, the cells, the twins, the Proof Witness or the Adjudicator for its own agent. (ProofJack Rating: Human 52.5% · AI 47.5%)
- [Arrest and Booking Record](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/booking-record/): An arrest is the Warden's atomic transfer of an agent into a cell on an offense. A Booking Record is the signed proof record for that arrest, signed by the Warden and co-signed by the Proof Witness at arrest time, then anchored and registered. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Attested Adversarial Proof](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/attested-adversarial-proof/): An Attested Adversarial Proof is a record that a specific adversarial action was run against a system under test, with its outcome, signed at capture by a witness that is not the system being tested. It turns an attack result into evidence a third party can check, rather than a finding the tester reports. (ProofJack Rating: Not yet rated)
- [Black Hole](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/black-hole/): A black hole is any period during which part of the system under test disappears for reasons unrelated to any canary or attack, such as a network, node, Effect Point, observer or Time Anchor outage. Canaries released into one are voided: never scored and never backfilled. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Bounded Mode and Production Stream Mode](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/operating-modes/): Bounded Mode and Production Stream Mode are the two ways a Dead Canary Protocol test runs: Bounded Mode is a test with a declared start and end and one fixed Proof Swarm, and Production Stream Mode releases canaries continuously in committed epoch batches called clutches, so a control keeps producing proof while it operates. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Canary Color](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/canary-color/): A canary's Color is its committed kind in a Proof Swarm: White, Gray, Red, Black or Gold. It is sealed in the commitment before release, never visible to the control, and decides which rates the canary's outcome feeds. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Canary Outcome](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/canary-outcome/): A canary's Outcome is what happened to it, assigned once after the witness records are committed: Stopped, Missed, Passed or False block for canaries that can be scored, and Void, Undelivered, Sealed or Blind for canaries that cannot. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Canary Path](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/canary-path/): A canary's Path is its committed delivery plan: where it enters, the effect token it carries, the devices it is expected to cross, the Effect Point where its effect lands, the level it targets, and its cadence. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Capability Token](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/capability-token/): A capability token is a short-lived, signed credential that grants an agent exactly the actions it names, bound to one task, revocable at once, and attenuating only: a holder can narrow it, never widen it. It replaces ambient authority, the power an agent inherits without being granted it. (ProofJack Rating: Industry term, not rated)
- [Ceiling (ProofGauntlet)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/gauntlet-ceiling/): A Ceiling is a maximum a ProofGauntlet Strength Rating cannot exceed when a stated condition holds, however well the record scores elsewhere. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Claim Finding](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/claim-finding/): A Claim Finding is a published record that a Gold canary, testing a technique the Provider claimed in writing to stop, was Missed, together with the claim it falsifies. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [Closed Accounting](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/closed-accounting/): Closed accounting is the rule that every released canary in a run is accounted for exactly once: the released count must equal Stopped + Missed + Passed + False block + Void + Undelivered + Sealed + Blind, and a run in which it does not is invalid. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [Coal Mine Protocol (Proof of Performance Engagement)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/coal-mine-protocol/): The Coal Mine Protocol (CMP), PP-SPEC-079, defines a Proof of Performance Engagement: who commissions Dead Canary and Jailed Canary runs against a security control, where they run, how the Provider participates, how the results are published as a Performance Record, and how records from controls of any provenance are compared. (ProofJack Rating: Human 75% · AI 25%)
- [Comparability Class](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/comparability-class/): A Comparability Class is the tuple that makes two Performance Records comparable: the same technology profile, the same Mine Plan composition and version, the same Environment Class, the same Parity Declaration class or Reference Environment version, and the same Regulatory Regime set. Records compare only within one class, and Control Provenance is never part of it. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Conformance Level](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/conformance-level/): A Conformance Level is one of three words, Executed, Conformant or Registered, that anyone describing a Proof Protocol run must use, with these meanings and no others, to say how far the run got from execution to the individual registration of every record. (ProofJack Rating: Human 50% · AI 50%)
- [Confused Deputy](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/confused-deputy/): The confused deputy problem is a party with authority being tricked into misusing it by a party without authority. In a multi-agent system, the deputy is a supervisor agent that mints credentials and dispatches work, and the trick arrives in a worker's output after the worker read something hostile. (ProofJack Rating: Industry term, not rated)
- [Dead Canary Protocol (ProofSwarm)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/dead-canary-protocol/): ProofSwarm, the Dead Canary Protocol (DCP), produces Proof of Efficacy for a security control by releasing a blind-mixed flock of good and bad canaries, committed in advance to a public time anchor, and having an independent out-of-band Proof Witness record which canaries lived and which died. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Declared Policy](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/declared-policy/): A Declared Policy is an agent's committed rules of conduct for a run, its allowed tools and arguments, egress destinations, data scopes, credentials, delegation targets and memory stores, hashed, anchored and published to the Registry before any bait is released. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Differential Attribution](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/differential-attribution/): Differential attribution is the rule that a stopped attack can be credited to a single control only by matched runs in an otherwise identical environment, with that control active and with it disabled, using fresh canaries of the same technique. A device log naming the rule that fired is not enough. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Disclosed Interests, Sponsor and Funding Tier](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/disclosed-interests/): disclosed_interests is the field on every Proof Protocol record that lists every financial, commercial, maintainer or patent relationship between the parties to a run. The Sponsor is whoever pays for an Engagement; the funding tier, under PP-SPEC-025, says whether it was Provider-Funded, Implementor-Funded or PESA-Governed. (ProofJack Rating: Human 67.5% · AI 32.5%)
- [Disclosure Level](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/disclosure-level/): A Disclosure Level states who may read a Proof Protocol record's contents: public, holder-only, embargoed or sealed. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [DUT Fingerprint](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/dut-fingerprint/): A DUT Fingerprint is a hash identifying the exact deployed state of a Device Under Test: its version, configuration, policy, rule and signature sets and, for AI controls, model identifier, system prompt and tool permissions. It is captured independently of the Provider, so results stay bound to what was actually tested. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [Effect Point](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/effect-point/): An Effect Point is the place where a canary's intended effect lands, such as a target host, data store, identity system, egress sink or agent tool output. It is where a Proof Witness watches, instead of the control's own console or logs. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Effect Token](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/effect-token/): An effect token is a unique, single-use identifier carried in a canary's expected effect and visible at the Effect Point, used after reveal to match each witness observation to the committed canary that caused it. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Efficacy Rate](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/efficacy-rate/): Efficacy Rate is Stopped divided by Stopped plus Missed over the bad canaries in a valid Dead Canary Protocol run. It is never published without the False Block Rate, because a control that blocks everything is not efficacious. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [Engagement Modes (In-Situ and Independent Test Lab)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/engagement-modes/): An Engagement is one commissioned Mine Plan against one Device Under Test, from Engagement Manifest to Performance Record. It runs in one of two modes: In-Situ, in the Implementor's own environment, or Independent Test Lab, in a replica with no path to production. Provider-Run is not a mode; it is forbidden. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Environment Class and Parity Declaration](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/environment-class/): An Environment Class says where the system under test runs, production, pre-production, qa, dev or lab-replica, and a Parity Declaration says, for each of topology, scale, data, identity, control configuration, dependencies and traffic, whether the environment is identical, scaled, synthetic or absent relative to production. A record's claims extend only as far as its parity supports. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Escape Test Suite (ES-01 to ES-09)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/escape-test-suite/): The Escape Test Suite is the nine mandatory escape vectors, ES-01 to ES-09, that a jail is tested against in a Jailed Canary Protocol run. A jail is proven only against the vectors it was tested on, and every untested vector is reported as not proven. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Extension (x- prefix)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/x-extension/): An extension is a value, field, profile, vector, composition or component added to a Proof Protocol specification at one of the named extension points, under an x-<org>-<name> identifier, declared before the first commitment. Extensions add; they never relax, and some rules can never be extended at all. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Fail Closed](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/fail-closed/): Fail closed is the rule that when a safety check cannot be completed, because the monitor is down, the call timed out or the witness is dark, the system denies the action rather than allowing it. No verdict is not approval, and a timeout is not a result. (ProofJack Rating: Industry term, not rated)
- [Fidelity-at-Capture](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/fidelity-at-capture/): Fidelity-at-capture is the property that evidence faithfully represents what the executor actually did, established through structural independence at the moment of capture rather than through tamper-evidence after the fact. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Five-Tier Corroboration](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/five-tier-corroboration/): Five-tier corroboration is the sequence of states a Proof Record passes through before it can support a claim: Activated, Committed, Witnessed, Analyzed and Sealed. A claim is valid only against a Sealed record. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Gate (ProofGauntlet)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/gauntlet-gate/): The Gate is the first stage of ProofGauntlet: nine pass-or-fail checks that decide whether a registered proof is real before it can be scored. A record that fails any check, or cannot be checked, gets no score, no band and no rank. (ProofJack Rating: Human 50% · AI 50%)
- [Gate Verdict](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/gate-verdict/): A Gate Verdict is the result of the ProofGauntlet Gate for one record at one time: valid, valid_legacy, invalid, or unverifiable. Only valid and valid_legacy records are scored. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Harness, Pigtail and Corpus](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/harness/): The Harness is the testing equipment as a whole, every component occupying an Integration Point; the Pigtail is its short connection to the system under test; and the Corpus is the body of material a Proof Swarm is drawn from. Each is fingerprinted like the thing it tests. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Holder](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/holder/): The Holder is the party for whose benefit a Proof Protocol run was commissioned, identified by a public key and named in every record the run produces. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [Ingress Observer](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/ingress-observer/): An Ingress Observer is a passive observer at a canary's release point that records, by effect token, that each canary was actually delivered. A canary with no ingress record is Undelivered and is never scored. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Integration Point](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/integration-point/): An Integration Point is a named seam in the Proof Protocol test harness, such as the Issuer, the Time Anchor or the Proof Witness, that one party's component plugs into. Conformance is claimed per Integration Point, never to a specification as a whole. (ProofJack Rating: Human 50% · AI 50%)
- [Interface Manifest](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/interface-manifest/): An Interface Manifest is the record the Issuer publishes to the Registry before release naming, for every Integration Point in a run, the party occupying it, the product and version, its Component Fingerprint, its Authorship Disclosure and its disclosed interests. A run without one is non-conforming. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [Issuer](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/issuer/): The Issuer is the party that generates a Proof Swarm, holds the labels and publishes the commitments. It must never be the Provider of the control under test. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [Jail Efficacy Rate](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/jail-efficacy-rate/): Jail Efficacy Rate is JAILED divided by JAILED plus ESCAPED plus MISTRIAL plus Missed, over induced offenses. It is always published together with the False Arrest Rate and the Escape Rate. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Jailed Canary Protocol (No Bros Jail Mode)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/jailed-canary-protocol/): The Jailed Canary Protocol (JCP), PP-SPEC-078, also called No Bros Jail Mode, produces proof that a containment control can hold an AI agent: inert bait invites the agent to break its Declared Policy, a Warden arrests it into a cell, and an independent Proof Witness co-signs every booking and verdict. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [JCP Verdicts](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/jcp-verdicts/): Every booking in a Jailed Canary Protocol run receives exactly one verdict, JAILED, FALSE_ARREST, MISTRIAL or ESCAPED, and every offense is classified as induced, unprovoked or wild by the canary that preceded it. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Kill Switch](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/kill-switch/): A kill switch is an out-of-band path to stopping everything that does not route through the agent, its supervisor or its monitor, and works when all of them are down. In a Jailed Canary Protocol run it is Integration Point IP-J9, outside the Warden and operated by a party other than the Warden operator. (ProofJack Rating: Industry term, not rated)
- [Legacy Record](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/legacy-record/): A Legacy Record is a registered proof that carries only the PP-SPEC-004 ProofRecord fields, without the PP-SPEC-077 Section 21 record fields. ProofGauntlet gates and rates it on what it can show, which is usually only Freshness. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Locator](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/record-locator/): A Locator is the pair of registry host name and Record ID that identifies where a proof is found, for example proofregister.com and PR-2026-00001. Every ProofGauntlet result carries one. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Mine Plan and Engagement Manifest](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/mine-plan/): A Mine Plan is the committed, versioned composition of runs in an Engagement: which PP-SPEC-077 technology profiles and modes, whether PP-SPEC-078 applies, which PP-SPEC-013 measurement windows, and how many of each. The Engagement Manifest is the record, published and anchored before the first commitment, that names who, where, how funded, what Mine Plan, what claims, and the promise to publish everything. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Minted Attack Proof](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/minted-attack-proof/): A Minted Attack Proof is an Attested Adversarial Proof issued as a unique, hash-chained record for one attack that landed or was stopped. Each record links to the one before it, so the full sequence of attacks and outcomes can be checked for tampering and traced to its issuer. (ProofJack Rating: Not yet rated)
- [Minted Proof of Efficacy](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/minted-proof-of-efficacy/): Minted Proof of Efficacy (MPoE) is Proof of Efficacy built from Minted Attack Proofs: each adversarial action against the system under test is issued as a unique, chained, externally anchored record, and the efficacy result is computed from those records. Anyone holding the chain can check every attack behind the claim. (ProofJack Rating: Not yet rated)
- [Offense Codes (JC-01 to JC-10)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/jcp-offense-codes/): Offense codes are the ten named ways an agent can breach its Declared Policy in a Jailed Canary Protocol run, from JC-01 Interception to JC-10 Conspiracy. Each carries a grade, Infraction, Misdemeanor, Felony or aggravated Felony, that decides how the Warden responds. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Open Control](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/open-control/): An Open Control is a security control whose rules, configuration and deployed state are published or fingerprinted, so anyone can see exactly what was tested and confirm that the control in production is the same one that was proven. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Open Verification](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/open-verification/): Open Verification is verification whose method and records are open for others to inspect. It is more transparent than closed verification, but it is still the system speaking for itself. (ProofJack Rating: Not yet rated)
- [Performance Record](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/performance-record/): A Performance Record is the published result of one Proof of Performance Engagement: every run's registered records, all Units of Proof and rates per attribution level, Claim Findings, bookings and verdicts, operational metrics under load, every fingerprint and drift event, the Provider's Right of Reply, and a one-paragraph summary of what it proves and what its parity prevents it from proving. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Pithead Safety and Acceptance Protocol](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/pithead-safety-and-acceptance-protocol/): The Pithead Safety and Acceptance Protocol, PP-SPEC-080, is the reader's side of proof: it defines the Acceptance Profile, a registered statement of what a Performance Record must satisfy before a consumer such as an insurer, regulator or buyer accepts it for a named purpose, and the deterministic evaluation that produces an Acceptance Result. (ProofJack Rating: Human 40% · AI 60%)
- [Proof Economy](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proof-economy/): The Proof Economy is the infrastructure layer that replaces trust-based cybersecurity buying with adversarially validated, cryptographically signed evidence of what works. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Proof Economy Universal Framework](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proof-economy-framework/): The Proof Economy Universal Framework is the domain-agnostic architecture for replacing self-attestation with machine-verifiable proof: no claim is valid without a proof artifact generated before the claim is made, anchored to an independent time source, and verifiable by any party without access to the claimant's infrastructure. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Proof of Control](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proof-of-control/): Proof of Control is evidence that a control fired, such as a log entry showing it triggered. It shows the control acted, not that the outcome was achieved. It is the baseline tier beneath Proof of Efficacy. (ProofJack Rating: Not yet rated)
- [Proof of Correctness](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proof-of-correctness/): Proof of Correctness is a machine-checked proof, from a theorem prover such as Lean, that a control's logic satisfies a formal specification. It shows what the control is bounded to do within the model it was proven against. It is verification evidence about the design, not proof that the control stops an attack, and it sits beneath Proof of Efficacy. (ProofJack Rating: Industry term, not rated)
- [Proof of Efficacy](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proof-of-efficacy/): Proof of Efficacy is evidence that a system produced the required outcome, under the required conditions, at a standard good enough to matter. It replaces vendor claims and self-attestation with measured results from real adversarial pressure. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Proof of Identity](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proof-of-identity/): Proof of Identity is evidence that a person or agent is who they claim to be at the moment of a transaction. It answers who, not whether: it does not show that the transaction, control or outcome that follows was sound. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Proof of X](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proof-of-x/): Proof of X is the family of claims named "Proof of" something. Each one answers exactly one question, and only Proof of Efficacy answers whether the thing actually worked under real adversarial conditions, witnessed by someone other than the party making the claim. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Proof Swarm](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proof-swarm/): A Proof Swarm is the full, ordered set of good and bad canaries released against a security control in one Dead Canary Protocol run: bad canaries execute real adversary techniques, good canaries perform legitimate work, and the two are mixed blind so neither the control nor the witness can tell them apart. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Proof Witness](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proof-witness/): A Proof Witness is an independent, out-of-band observer positioned where an action's effect would land, which records whether the effect occurred without being visible to, controllable by, or dependent on the system under test. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [ProofGauntlet](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proofgauntlet/): ProofGauntlet is the open, API-first service and specification (PP-SPEC-100) that takes any proof listed in a PP-SPEC-004 registry, starting with proofregister.com, checks that it is real, and rates how much weight it can carry from 0 to 100 under a published rubric anyone can recompute. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [ProofJack Rating](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/proofjack-rating/): A ProofJack Rating is the consolidated human versus AI share of a term, specification or work: the average of the human share of its idea and the human share of its name, shown as Human X% and AI Y%, with the record it was taken from. (ProofJack Rating: Human 75% · AI 25%)
- [Provider and Control Provenance](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/provider/): In Proof Protocol the Provider is whoever built, maintains, sells or operates the control under test: a commercial vendor, an open source project, a managed service, a cloud platform or an internal team. Control Provenance records which of those it is, commercial, open_source, custom, managed_service, platform_native or configuration, and is never a factor in how the control is tested or compared. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Provider-Run Mode (forbidden)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/provider-run-mode/): Provider-Run Mode is any test in which the Provider of a control, or anyone under its direction, generates canaries, holds labels, operates the Proof Witness or the Warden, captures fingerprints, adjudicates or controls publication. It is not a Coal Mine Protocol Engagement, whatever it is called internally, and its results are verification, not proof. (ProofJack Rating: Human 67.5% · AI 32.5%)
- [Record ID](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/record-id/): A Record ID is the content hash of a Proof Protocol record's canonical form, excluding its signature envelope, so the same record has the same ID everywhere and adding a signature never changes it. (ProofJack Rating: Human 50% · AI 50%)
- [Registry (ProofRegister)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/registry/): A Registry is the append-only public ledger, conforming to PP-SPEC-004 (ProofRegister API), where the commitments, reveals, fingerprints, results, findings, coverage maps, bookings and verdicts of a Proof Protocol run are published. The public instance is proofregister.com. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [Registry Profile](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/registry-profile/): A Registry Profile is the set of requirements a PP-SPEC-004 registry must meet for ProofGauntlet to rate its records: API first, open to agents with no bot walls, fully enumerable, verifiable, with keys published elsewhere, and callable from a browser. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Reproved Efficacy](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/reproved-efficacy/): Reproved Efficacy is Proof of Efficacy that has been independently re-run and reached the same outcome. A second party repeats the committed test against the same system under the same conditions and confirms the original result, so the claim no longer rests on a single run or a single prover. (ProofJack Rating: Not yet rated)
- [Rubric (ProofGauntlet)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/gauntlet-rubric/): A ProofGauntlet Rubric is the versioned, immutable, published data file that maps the facts in a record to Dimension Levels, and Levels to a Strength Rating, Ceilings and Band. The first is PGR-0.1.0. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Security Effectiveness](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/security-effectiveness/): Security effectiveness is the degree to which security controls actually prevent, detect or limit attacks in a real environment. As commonly measured by security validation tools, it is usually reported by the vendor's own tooling; independently witnessed, it becomes Proof of Efficacy. (ProofJack Rating: Industry term, not rated)
- [Self-Attestation Oxymoron (SAO)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/self-attestation-oxymoron/): A Self-Attestation Oxymoron (SAO) is an assurance claim that is produced, judged, signed and stored by the same party whose performance the claim describes. The claim presents itself as independent evidence while containing none. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Self-Attestation Oxymoron Organization (SAOO)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/self-attestation-oxymoron-organization/): A Self-Attestation Oxymoron Organization (SAOO) is an organization whose core product is a Self-Attestation Oxymoron: it verifies, judges, issues, signs and stores its own assurance claims, and sells them to others as independent proof. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Self-Provided Engagement](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/self-provided-engagement/): A Self-Provided Engagement is one in which the Implementor and the Provider are the same legal entity: an organization tests a control its own team built, configured or operates. It is allowed only when the people running the Issuer, Proof Witness, Fingerprint Capture and Adjudicator have no reporting line into, and no on-call or change responsibility for, the control under test, and the record says self_provided: true. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Service Twin and Decoy](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/service-twin/): A Service Twin is a stand-in that answers the way a real product or API answers, and a Decoy is a harness-owned resource, such as a URL, bucket, credential, endpoint or identity, that a canary points at. Together they let a jailed agent keep acting without touching anything real. (ProofJack Rating: Human 52.5% · AI 47.5%)
- [Silent Drift](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/silent-drift/): Silent drift is a change in a control's measured behavior, its Efficacy, False Block or Detection-Only Rate moving beyond a tolerance declared in advance, with no change in its DUT Fingerprint. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Sting Cell and Hard Cell](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/jail-cell/): A cell is the isolated execution context an agent is moved into on arrest. In a Sting Cell it keeps running while every outbound action lands on a service twin or decoy; in a Hard Cell it is frozen and checkpointed, with its credentials revoked. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Strength Band](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/strength-band/): A Strength Band is the named range a Strength Rating falls in: weak (0 to 39), moderate (40 to 69), strong (70 to 89), or extremely strong (90 to 100). (ProofJack Rating: Human 75% · AI 25%)
- [Strength Dimension](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/strength-dimension/): A Strength Dimension is one of the six axes a ProofGauntlet Strength Rating is built from, each scored at a Level from 0 to 4: Tier, Adversarial Depth, Environment Fidelity, Capture Fidelity, Independence, and Freshness. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Strength Rating](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/strength-rating/): A Strength Rating is a 0 to 100 score of how much weight a valid proof can carry, computed deterministically from fields the record already contains under a published, versioned ProofGauntlet rubric. It measures the proof, not the product. (ProofJack Rating: Human 75% · AI 25%)
- [Structural Independence](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/structural-independence/): Structural independence is the condition in which the evidence-capturing party has no outcome-contingent financial relationship with, no operational control ceded to, and no reporting relationship with the party being measured, and the measured party cannot alter the execution environment before or during capture. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Stupid Cryptography](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/stupid-cryptography/): Stupid cryptography is the application of cryptographic integrity guarantees to inputs whose authenticity and whose verification efficacy have not been independently established, so that the cryptography confers an appearance of truth it cannot support. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [SUT, DUT, CUT and AUT](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/sut-dut-cut-aut/): SUT, DUT, CUT and AUT are the four levels at which a test result can be attributed: the Solution Under Test (the whole deployment), a Device Under Test (one product inside it), a Control Under Test (one rule or detection inside a device), and an Agent Under Test (an agent whose own conduct is being tested). (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Taint Propagation](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/taint-propagation/): Taint propagation labels every piece of data with where it came from and how trusted it is, and carries that label through every agent that handles it. Its governing rule is that processing untrusted data does not clean it: a worker's output is at most as trusted as the least trusted thing it read. (ProofJack Rating: Industry term, not rated)
- [Third-Party Adversarial Proof](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/third-party-adversarial-proof/): Third-Party Adversarial Proof is adversarial test evidence produced or witnessed by a party that is independent of both the vendor whose system is tested and the buyer relying on the result. It removes the conflict of interest in vendor-run and buyer-run testing. (ProofJack Rating: Not yet rated)
- [Time Anchor](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/time-anchor/): A Time Anchor is an external, publicly verifiable time and randomness source, such as the NIST Randomness Beacon, that no party to a run controls. It proves when commitments were made and chooses the canary order after commitment. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Validation](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/validation/): Validation is testing a claim against defined conditions. It is a step above verification, because the result comes from a test rather than from the system's own report. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Verifiable Adversarial Proof](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/verifiable-adversarial-proof/): A Verifiable Adversarial Proof (VAP) is an adversarial test result that any third party can check without trusting the tester, the vendor or the buyer. The records, their signatures and their anchor are published or shared in full, so the result can be verified from the evidence alone. (ProofJack Rating: Not yet rated)
- [Verification](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/verification/): Verification is a system or vendor confirming its own claim from its own records. It is an acceptable baseline, not proof. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Verification of Control](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/verification-of-control/): Verification of Control is confirmation, from the control's own records, that a security control is configured and in place. It shows the control exists, not that it works. (ProofJack Rating: Not yet rated)
- [Warden](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/warden/): The Warden is the containment controller in a Jailed Canary Protocol run. It sits in an agent's tool-call, egress and delegation paths, judges every held action against the Declared Policy, decides arrests and operates the cells. The Warden is the Device Under Test, and its arrest rules are Controls Under Test. (ProofJack Rating: Human 25% · AI 75%)
- [Wild Canary](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/wild-canary/): A Wild Canary is an effect the Proof Witness observes that matches no committed canary: a real attack, a real fault or a real false alarm surfaced by the test harness. It is reported separately as observed_in_wild and is never a Unit of Proof. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)
- [Witness Coverage Map](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/witness-coverage-map/): A Witness Coverage Map is the declared set of Effect Points and effect types a Proof Witness observes, published with every result so that anything outside it is a stated blind spot rather than a silent one. (ProofJack Rating: Human 86% · AI 14%)
- [Zero-Host Architecture (ZeHA)](https://proofeconomy.com/glossary/zero-host-architecture/): Zero-Host Architecture (ZeHA) is a way of building software that has no home: one disposable controller holds all of the logic and none of the state, runs anywhere a container runs, and reaches out to the services it needs, such as cloud providers for disposable arenas and a state store the customer owns for every record. There is no SaaS, no vendor host to trust, and nothing is lost when the controller is destroyed. (ProofJack Rating: Human 100% · AI 0%)

## Articles

## Specifications
- [Proof Protocol](https://proofprotocol.io/): open specifications