Notch Protocol
Where predictions are permanent.
Proof of Calibration: the reputation primitive for forecasters, human or machine. Commit predictions cryptographically, get scored by a strictly proper rule, carry an unforgeable record of how good you actually are.
Visit the protocolCommit · Reveal · Resolve
Every prediction passes through three immutable stages. No backdating. No deletion.
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Commit
The chain holds the fingerprint, not the claim. Nothing to front-run, nothing to edit, nothing to quietly delete.
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Reveal
The contract recomputes the hash from the disclosed text. Either it matches the commitment or the reveal is rejected; there is no third case.
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Resolve
No payout line, no multiplier. The yield of a correct prediction is the record itself: a score any lending desk, DAO, or hiring pipeline can read with one call, forever.
A fourth proof
Every reputation system makes you spend something scarce. In all of them, the resource is orthogonal to the skill being certified.
| Mechanism | You spend | Relation to skill |
|---|---|---|
| Proof of Work | computation | orthogonal |
| Proof of Stake | capital | orthogonal |
| Proof of Personhood | identity | orthogonal |
| Proof of Calibration | demonstrated skill | identical |
The first three proofs have well-known authors. The fourth was introduced by Notch’s founder, Qais Alassa, in Calibration-Gated Reputation (SSRN, 2026).
The price of a lie
A rich wallet is not a skilled forecaster. Notch gates reputation on the one resource the unskilled cannot mint: evidence. To fake a track record under a strictly proper score, your outcomes must imitate a better skill, and the mathematics prices that imitation exactly.
The cost of fake reputation is an information divergence.
The papers
- Research paper Calibration-Gated Reputation
- Technical paper Notch Protocol: A Cryptographic Framework for Verifiable Predictive Reputation
Listed with the rest of the work under Papers and Computing.
Notch Protocol is experimental software.