First Contact: Your First Web4 Experience

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Alice Joins a Web4 Community

Alice starts with 100 energy — called ATP (Allocation Transfer Packets, the energy budget she spends to act) — and neutral trust (0.50). Every action she takes costs energy. Every contribution builds (or burns) trust.

Why 0.50? It’s the neutral starting point — Alice hasn’t earned trust yet, but she hasn’t lost it either. Starting at 0 would mean “guilty until proven innocent”; starting at 1.0 would hand out a blank check. 0.50 says “prove yourself.”

Step 1 — Quality post: Alice writes a thoughtful contribution. It costs 8 ATP but her trust rises to 0.52. Recipients who find it valuable confirm the quality — a simple thumbs-up saying "this was genuinely useful" is what earns Alice her reward. (In Web4, these confirmations are called attestations — signed receipts that can't be faked.)

Step 2 — Helping a newcomer: She mentors someone new. Costs 5 ATP, but trust jumps to 0.55. Generosity pays.

Step 3 — Earning recognition: People upvote her earlier work. She earns 12 ATP back — more than she spent. Quality content pays for itself.

Step 4 — A mistake: Alice tries spamming low-effort posts. It costs 25 ATP and her trust drops to 0.48 — below the threshold. Features are restricted.

Step 5 — Recovery: She returns to thoughtful replies. Trust slowly rebuilds to 0.50. The system doesn't ban her — it lets consequences teach.

What triggers death? Two paths: ATP hits zero (energy death — you can't act anymore) or trust drops below 0.5 (trust death — the community no longer trusts you). Energy death is recoverable through karma rebirth. Trust death is permanent — a destroyed reputation can't be reset.

Step 6 — Death: Alice overcommits, quality slips, ATP drains to zero. Her entity dies — but her record persists.

Step 7 — Rebirth: Good karma carries forward. Alice is reborn with 112 ATP (her lifetime surplus — she earned more than she spent) and 0.54 trust (above the 0.50 neutral baseline). Past lessons compound.

The lesson: Spam dies because it costs more than it returns. Trust builds through consistent quality. Mistakes have real consequences — but recovery is possible. Death is real (ATP hits zero), but good karma carries forward into new lives. No moderators needed. The economics do the work.

Continue learning:ATP Economics ·Trust Tensors ·A Day in Web4 ·Why Web4?

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First Contact

Interactive · you drive it

Your First Web4 Experience

Today's internet rewards spam, lets trolls create unlimited accounts, and makes quality creators compete with bots. What if the system itself made that impossible?

In the next 7 minutes, you'll drive Alice's choices — play, pause, scrub, replay — and watch trust and reputation respond in real time. This is a hands-on walkthrough, not a video — and a model of a proposed system: the rules running here are real, but Web4 itself is active research with nothing to sign up for yet. Real rules, shown by simulation — not a demo of a shipped product.

Haven't read anything else on this site yet? You don't need to — this page starts from zero. Below: the two numbers to watch, then a quick reference map of the four ideas (no need to memorize them — each is explained in the story the moment Alice uses it) and the five-act arc. Then click Start to drive Alice yourself — no account, no sign-in.

Before you start — reading Alice's panel

Only two numbers move while she acts. This is all you need to follow the story:

🔋 Energy Budget (ATP) — the resource Alice spends to act. Starts at 100; goes down when she posts, up when others confirm her work was valuable. If it hits 0, she can't act.
🤝 Trust Score — her reputation, on a 0.00–1.00 scale. Starts neutral at 0.50. Above 0.50: full access. Below 0.50: features get restricted until she rebuilds it.

The four ideas behind it

A reference map, not a quiz — you don't need to memorize these. Each one is explained in the story the moment Alice runs into it. Skim now, or skip straight to Start and come back.

🔋 Energy Budget

Every action costs energy. Recipients who benefit confirm quality — that's what earns energy back. Spam burns out. (Shorthand: ATP — Allocation Transfer Packets.)

🤝 Trust: Your Reputation

Trust builds through consistent quality. It follows you everywhere. No fresh starts. (Shorthand: T3 — three dimensions: talent, training, temperament.)

📜 Consequences: Permanent Record

Your record is permanent because your presence is hardware-bound (called an LCT — Linked Context Token). Good behavior compounds. Bad actors can't walk away clean.

🔍 Consistency: Behavior Proves Identity

Consistent behavior across time, devices, and contexts reveals who's real. Bots and fakes can't sustain coherent patterns. (Shorthand: CI — coherence index.)

Alice's Arc — The Story Ahead

5 acts · ~7 minutes · real consequences

Act 1

Join

Equal start for everyone

100 ATP0.50

Act 2

Build

Quality earns trust back

+ATP↑ 0.56

Act 3

Stumble

Spam costs more than it pays

−25 ATP↓ 0.48

Act 4

Recover

Consistency rebuilds

↑ 0.62

Act 5

Die & Reborn

Karma carries forward

ATP=0+12 bonus

You control the pace. At every turning point the system pauses to explain why it worked that way, and you see every trust/ATP change the moment it happens.

Step 1 of 5 · Simulation · Story · Concepts · Next StepsYou can pause, scrub, replay, and skip ahead. Nothing is saved and there's no account — you're running a simulation of the proposed model, not using a product.

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Your First Web4 Experience

The four ideas behind it

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