Compelle
Working Papers

The Economics of a Contested Subnet

Two papers on permissionless, pay‑for‑performance networks. The first asks what a registration fee is actually for, and what breaks if you remove it. The second asks how a dispute over that fee should be settled when objecting is free. Both draw on live evidence from Bittensor and are anonymized for peer review.

Response to Const

Subnet 82: Economic Activity and Registration Parameters

Our response to the request to justify the subnet's economic activity and its registration hyperparameters, grounded entirely in on-chain evidence anyone can verify. The two papers below are the formal version of the argument.

Read the response →
I
Mechanism design · impossibility theorem

The Entry Trilemma

Costly Registration as Sybil-Resistance in Graded-Reward Networks

A network that pays for performance cannot offer free entry, resistance to identity duplication, and a graded reward curve all at once. One of the three has to give.

  • An impossibility theorem: the three properties are mutually exclusive, so a registration fee is not a tax but the price of keeping the other two.
  • The fee is the Pigouvian toll that internalizes the cloning externality; lowering it benefits no honest participant, only an attacker copying the leading strategy across many seats.
  • Evidence from all 128 live subnets, with the price history and observed strategy convergence of the most-demanded one.
Read the paper → PDF · manuscript for Journal of Economic Theory
II
Governance · four theorems

Bonded Dissent

A Falsification Protocol for Parameter Disputes in Permissionless Networks

When objecting is costless, the volume of complaint proves nothing, and an accusation of bad faith damages the accused while costing the accuser nothing. A bond repairs both failures at once.

  • Four theorems on contesting a parameter when complaining is free: a bond separates genuine falsifiable beliefs from cheap talk, and coalition size buys no influence.
  • The dispute is settled by a pre-registered experiment, not by a vote, a forecast market, or the loudness of the room.
  • The authority must post a symmetric bond too, so the party with decision rights also has skin in the game and an unbonded accusation no longer travels for free.
Read the paper → PDF · manuscript for Management Science

Working drafts · June 2026 · Anonymized for peer review
The two papers are companions and cross-reference each other.