The Proof Contract: From Consensus to Receipts
Mathine: Verified-under-(R) Receipt Gate Machine
Link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18424056
Mathematics still closes proofs through expert consensus and time. But machine-speed work adds a new requirement: trust must travel across institutions, kernels, libraries, budgets, and toolchains. That is where many modern “truth disputes” actually come from—people disagreeing about regimes without realizing it.
This proposal introduces The Proof Contract: a simple shift that makes proof status explicitly relational. Instead of “proved / not proved,” a claim becomes Verified-under-(R), where R is a declared verification regime. The regime is not hand-waving; it is an explicit set of admissibility rules, environments, budgets, and checker expectations.
The operational payload is receipts. A Proof Contract requires replayable receipts that let an independent verifier re-check the decisive steps under the declared regime, without inheriting hidden context. When verification can’t be replayed, the system must emit explicit reason codes (what obligation failed, under which constraint), instead of defaulting to vague doubt or social disagreement.
A key contribution is cultural and practical: the contract makes YELLOW legitimate. YELLOW means “trusted and socially closed, but not yet portable.” It is not a failure state—it is a first-class outcome with a clear upgrade path: specify the missing regime commitments, produce the missing receipts, or tighten the checkers until the claim becomes portable.
In short: the Proof Contract reframes proof closure as something that can move. Consensus remains valuable, but portability becomes explicit—and the gap between the two becomes measurable, audit-friendly, and improvable.
Mathine — Evidence In, Trust Out 