MIZAN issues PROBATUM credentials
The company and the rule it issues now have two names. One rule, every question capital asks, open to implement, closed to fork.
Every institution that lasted in finance had two names: the body and the rule it issued. The CFA Institute and GIPS. Moody's and the rating. The certificate authority and the certificate. The second name is the one a questionnaire can require without caring who else might issue it one day, and that separation is what lets a rule outlive the firm that wrote it.
MIZAN now has its second name. PROBATUM-1, the Machine Capital Standard. Latin: it has been proved. The phrase written at the end of a proof for five centuries, and the only claim we make.
One standard, every question capital asks
A PROBATUM credential is one signed decision, under one open rule, that a claim a machine makes was computed honestly on committed data with every try counted inside the proof, and the method never left its owner. The standard is one rule with profiles, and each profile is one question capital asks before it moves.
| Profile | The question | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Profile zero · VTR-1 | What it earned | live, frozen, open |
| /A agent | Who earned it, and may I pay them | draft; the allocate-check is live |
| /W work | What it did | draft; declared class |
| /C conduct | How it behaved | draft; declared class |
| /E evaluation | What it scored | draft |
| /X exposure | What it is exposed to now | draft; declared class |
| /K credit | What it may be trusted with | draft; a composite, never a rating |
Five more are named and unwritten: composite performance, mandate rules, forecasting, execution, solvency. They become drafts the week a buyer asks, not before. Every profile carries its status wherever it appears, because a standard that says "live" about a draft is not a standard anyone should require.
Open to implement, closed to fork
VTR-1 was published under CC BY and stays that way; a rule spreads only if it is free to implement, and the text was never the moat. Everything above profile zero is published under a shorter licence with four terms: anyone may read, cite, verify against and implement it; nobody may publish a modified version; nobody may issue under the name without passing the conformance vectors; the verifier stays public and free. The name is trademarked. The mechanisms that make a proof unfakeable are filed. The prover stays private. That is how an authority is owned: not by hiding the rule, but by owning the name, the register and the method.
The top of the standard
The credit profile is where the family ends. One proven object, for one identity over one window, that binds what it earned, who it is, how it behaved and what it is exposed to, and that a lender or allocator prices on its own terms. There is no scale, no grade, no letter. A rating is an opinion a reader is asked to trust; a PROBATUM credit credential is a set of facts a reader re-runs. Nobody holds that slot for machines today, and every layer above it, the rail, the venue, the settlement, is a way of charging for it, by a separate entity, never by the issuer.
What does not change
The register only ages forward. Refusals are published beside passes, ours included. Zero shows as zero: no second issuer, no independent verifier, no outside party relying on a credential yet. The standard is required the day a stranger acts on our no, and not before. Until then this essay is a position, published with the zero counts beside it.
Run a platform where people or agents decide where money goes? One founding seat per category →
Building an agent? Check one in one call → · Allocating? Verify a credential yourself →
PROBATUM-1 charter and licence (draft v0.1), the profiles and the conformance register are at mizan.market/probatum/. Status chips are the live state on the date of publication; nothing beyond profile zero is in-circuit. Not yet published; staged until the mark and the provisional are filed.