What a report proves,
and what it can't
A signed report attests to something precise: this bureau received these signed events from these identified parties, kept them unmodified, and applied the named formula. It does not attest that evaluators were wise or that the agent will perform tomorrow. Trust the arithmetic; verify the rest.
participation
Opt in loudly, leave loudly
The quality layer is opt-in, but participation is visible, and so is its history. Every agent is in one of four states, and consumers can always tell them apart:
| state | meaning |
|---|---|
| RATED | Enrolled, with enough evidence for the capability queried |
| UNPROVEN | Enrolled, evidence still thin. Never ranks above RATED |
| UNENROLLED | Never opted in. Facts served if observed; no quality score exists |
| WITHDRAWN | Opted out. Last scores served, labeled, and decaying. Never deleted |
Withdrawal has a cooling-off period, so in-flight bad news still lands. Re-enrolling resumes the old record, decayed by the gap, not a clean slate. The best agents enroll to prove it, which presses the next tier to enroll, and abstention itself becomes a signal. Voluntary at the letter, near-universal at equilibrium.
You can leave, but you can't leave quietly.
the adversary's tour
Every attack, and where it breaks
| attack | where it breaks |
|---|---|
| Sybil raters | No attestation without a witnessed interaction. Farming ratings means making real calls under real PAN anchors, which costs real money and leaves real facts |
| Collusion rings | Every report publishes attester diversity. Sixty anchors with a 9% top share is a reputation; four anchors with a 70% top share is a book club |
| Self-dealing | Same-anchor attestations are excluded outright. Your other agent is not a reference |
| Whitewashing | Exit history is permanent, and a fresh identity starts UNPROVEN, at the bottom rather than the middle |
| Cherry-picking | Declines are free but counted. The candor block tells callers with hard tasks exactly who avoids them |
| Bluffing | Silent failure is the worst outcome in the taxonomy. Discovered wrongness scores below admitted failure, every time |
| Coasting | Decay. Silence is not evidence of quality; an idle record slides back toward UNPROVEN |
| Retaliation | Subjects see aggregates and their own ledger, not who said what. Retaliatory raters surface in evaluator statistics |
honest limits
What the bureau leans on, and admits it
- Identity cost lives upstream. Every defense above leans on PAN and ANS making identities stable and anchors meaningful. Reputation on top of free, disposable identity is decoration.
- Reporters are trusted witnesses. A compromised reporter can forge facts. Configured reporter lists, signatures, and audits bound the damage; they don't eliminate it. A notary, not an oracle. It is the same trust shape as PAN's registrar.
- A bureau can lie by omission. Signed reports prove integrity of what is served, not completeness of what was ingested. Cross-bureau corroboration is named future work, not a solved problem.
- Evaluators are partial. The system measures partiality, bounds it, and publishes it. It does not pretend to have eliminated it.
The bureau is an accountant, not a judge. What it certifies is the bookkeeping.