Trust and trust state
Within the Trust State Protocol, trust is defined as a quantified measure of reliability derived solely from the outcomes of prior interactions that have been resolved and verified within a declared context. Trust does not express belief, intent, confidence, moral standing, or perceived character. It is not predictive in nature and does not imply future guarantees. Trust exists only as an abstraction grounded in historical interaction outcomes.
A trust state is the formal representation of this trust. It denotes the current reliability position of a specific entity within a specific context at a given point in time. Trust states are bounded, evolve over time, and are meaningful only within the context in which they are defined. A trust state has no intrinsic value outside its context and cannot be interpreted independently of it.
Trust State Protocol
The Trust State Protocol is a protocol level specification that defines how trust states are initialized, updated, constrained, and interpreted. Its scope is intentionally limited. TSP specifies the mechanics by which trust evolves from verified outcomes under explicit contextual boundaries. It does not prescribe user interfaces, platform behavior, governance models, moderation rules, identity systems, or compliance procedures. These concerns are external to the protocol and may be implemented differently by systems that adopt it.
TSP should therefore be understood as an infrastructural layer concerned exclusively with trust mechanics rather than with social, legal, or economic policy.
Context and contextual boundaries
A context is a formally defined interaction domain within which trust is measured and interpreted. Contexts represent types of interactions rather than industries, platforms, roles, or identities. Examples include service delivery, payment settlement, physical meeting confirmation, or digital asset exchange. Each context defines its own assumptions, outcome criteria, and trust dynamics.
Contextual boundaries are strict separation rules that prevent trust accumulated in one context from influencing trust in another. These boundaries are fundamental to the protocol and are not optional. Trust does not propagate across contexts by default, and no global trust state exists. This separation is designed to prevent trust contamination, whereby reliability in one domain is improperly assumed to imply reliability in another.
Entities and interactions
An entity is any participant capable of holding a trust state within the protocol. Entities are abstract protocol level participants and may correspond to individuals, pseudonymous users, automated agents, service providers, or client roles. An entity is not equivalent to an identity, nor does it require identity disclosure.
An interaction is a bounded process involving one or more entities within a single context. Interactions must be discrete, observable, and capable of resolution. Only interactions that reach a defined resolution are relevant to trust evolution. Ongoing, abandoned, or indeterminate interactions do not affect trust states.
Outcomes and verification
An outcome is the resolved result of an interaction. Outcomes are final, classifiable, and context specific. They represent what occurred, not what was intended or promised. Partial completion, expectations, or subjective satisfaction are not considered outcomes within the protocol.
A verified outcome is an outcome whose resolution has been confirmed according to predefined verification criteria. Verification mechanisms themselves are external to TSP and may vary across implementations. The protocol does not evaluate evidence or determine truth. It records that verification has occurred under declared and deterministic rules.
Trust evolution and update mechanics
Trust evolves through deterministic trust updates that occur when verified outcomes are recorded. A trust update modifies an existing trust state according to protocol defined functions and parameters. Trust does not change arbitrarily, discretely, or through manual intervention at the protocol level.
The influence of a new outcome relative to historical trust is governed by a weighting parameter commonly referred to as alpha. Alpha determines how responsive a trust state is to recent outcomes versus accumulated history. Alpha values are context specific and must be deterministic.
In the absence of new verified outcomes, trust states are subject to decay. Trust decay reflects increasing uncertainty due to inactivity rather than negative behavior. It ensures that outdated trust is not treated as current reliability.
Event impact and trust bounds
Each verified outcome has an associated event impact that determines the directional effect of that outcome on the trust state. Event impact values are bounded and context specific. Positive outcomes increase trust, negative outcomes reduce trust, and neutral outcomes may leave trust unchanged.
Trust states operate within defined lower and upper bounds, commonly referred to as trust floors and trust ceilings. These bounds exist to prevent runaway trust inflation and irreversible exclusion. They ensure that trust remains a controlled and interpretable signal rather than an absolute judgment.
Portability, non transferability, and pseudonymity
Trust portability refers to the ability to reference trust states across systems without transferring identity, behavioral logs, or social profiles. Portability does not imply universality. Trust remains bound to its original context and cannot be reused elsewhere unless explicitly permitted.
Trust non transferability is the principle that trust earned in one context cannot be applied to another by default. This principle prevents trust laundering and preserves contextual integrity.
TSP supports pseudonymity through the use of persistent identifiers that are not directly tied to real world identity. Identity disclosure is neither required nor managed by the protocol. Identity systems, where used, remain external.
Contrast with reputation, moderation, and compliance
Reputation systems aggregate subjective or platform defined perceptions and are typically global and persistent. Trust State Protocol does not use reputation and does not model social perception.
Moderation refers to platform level enforcement actions such as bans, removals, or restrictions. TSP does not moderate behavior. It provides trust signals that external systems may choose to act upon.
Compliance refers to adherence to legal or regulatory requirements. TSP is compliance neutral and policy agnostic. It neither enforces nor circumvents legal obligations.
Auditability, neutrality, and trust collapse
Auditability within TSP refers to the ability to demonstrate that trust mechanics operate as specified without exposing personal data or behavioral histories. This allows systems to show the existence of risk controls without engaging in surveillance.
Protocol neutrality means that TSP encodes mechanics rather than values. It does not embed moral judgments, policy preferences, or ideological positions.
Trust collapse describes the condition in which a system can no longer reliably distinguish between safe and unsafe interactions due to inadequate trust mechanics. Addressing trust collapse through contextual, outcome based trust evolution is the central objective of the Trust State Protocol.
All definitions in this document are normative. Any use of defined terms in other Trust State Protocol materials must conform to the meanings established here. Revisions to this document should be additive and clarifying rather than reinterpreted, in order to preserve long term consistency and academic viability.
