Fair play
Status: Planned (programme)Status: Pending counsel
Humanathon plans identity checks, income exclusions, peer challenges and jury review to deter fraud. These are planned season rules. The plan calls for the protections to be part of Merces; this page does not establish that they are implemented.
A programme, not software
Humanathon is a programme that Merces runs, with rules and events. It is not part of the Merces software, and entering never obliges anyone to raise. Programme rules marked as planned may change before the season opens.
The four rules on the landing page
- One person, one entry. Identity verified before you start.
- Real income only. Money from yourself, or from wallets you control, never counts.
- Every claim can be challenged. Reviewers who catch fraud get paid.
- No popularity vote. The audience cannot vote anyone in.
Each attack and its defence
Wash income is the attack that matters most, because it is the same attack the ProofOfIncome oracle faces once backer money depends on it.
| Attack | Defence |
|---|---|
| Wash income: paying yourself, or friends routing money back | Income from wallets linked to the entrant, through shared funding or shared deposits, is excluded. On-chain payers need history that predates the season. Off-chain income arrives through attestations from platforms with verified payers. The jury can request invoices. Buying your own work through a fresh wallet counts as wash. Season prize money never counts. |
| One person, many entries | An identity check at qualification; wallets bound to that identity; one payout identity. |
| Bought or ghostwritten work | Deliverables must come from the entrant's verified accounts; adversarial review; a jury interview on Proof Day. |
| Review collusion | Random reviewer assignment; reviewers file findings and the jury rules; challenges are staked. |
| Popularity and brigading | The conviction book has 0 score weight; jury points are capped at 40; jurors disclose conflicts and recuse. |
| Sponsor favouritism | A sponsor that stakes behind an entrant cannot hold a jury seat for that track. |
| Fraud found after the season | The entry terms allow prize clawback and suspension of any raise. |
Challenges
During peer review, each of the top 30 is assigned 3 others at random to try to break their claims, and anyone can file a staked public challenge. Reviewers file findings, not scores; the jury rules on them. An upheld finding pays a bounty. A frivolous one loses its stake. Answering challenges is part of the reliability score.
Clawback
If fraud is found after the season, the entry terms allow the prize to be clawed back and any raise to be suspended. Those terms are not yet written: Status: Pending counsel.
What the other side sees
A challenger sees your public mandate, your public log and your leaderboard scores. The leaderboard never shows raw income. The jury sees detail; backers see it only for Fellows who choose to raise.
What can go wrong
- Income the oracle excludes earns nothing, even if it was real: wallets linked to you, payers with no history before the season, and your own purchases.
- A frivolous challenge loses its stake. The plan does not define whether every unsuccessful challenge is frivolous.
- A breach found during the season is disqualification, not a deduction. A breach found after it can mean prize clawback and a suspended raise.
- The entry terms that set out clawback are pending counsel and the website plan, so their exact wording is not published.