Prior

Origin

Proof is the body — operational, demonstrative, deployed. Prior is the mind — intellectual, the WHY written before the proof exists. They are adjacent siblings; neither is parent of the other. A serious capital-markets protocol needs both: a working machine to anchor predictions on-chain, and a published thesis that argues why the protocol exists at all and on what terms an outsider should believe its claims.

Problem

Most protocols ship code without a thesis, or a thesis without code. Both fail the same way — neither survives contact with a sceptical investor. A capital-markets protocol in particular needs an intellectual artifact that an LP can read on its own terms, before code, before tokens, before any commitment to participate. The artifact has to do three things at once: argue from first principles, name the structural priors the protocol is staking on, and back those priors with capital.

Approach

Triple meaning of 'prior' is loaded into the design. (1) Temporal — what comes before: a prediction is prior to its outcome. (2) Legal — prior claim: the oracle establishes a prior, provable by chain. (3) Bayesian — prior probability: the oracle commits a prior and is paid only when it turns out right. Prior is the GP fund site; Proof is its primary portfolio company. You invest in Proof through Prior only.

Methodology

Cormorant Garamond on parchment for the Prior surface — the deliberate visual register of a published argument, not a dashboard. Standard GP-fund economics for the vehicle layer; the specifics live in the data room. Prior ends with a single sentence: 'The seat is empty. The chain is waiting.'

Selected milestones

• Thesis published end-to-end at the Prior surface
• GP-fund vehicle defined; data-room access on request
• Adjacency to Proof established: Prior publishes the prediction, Proof anchors it

Open questions

• Whether Prior should support multiple portfolio companies or remain Proof-exclusive
• How Prior's published thesis updates as Proof's empirical record accumulates

Ask me about

• What the three meanings of 'prior' load into the design
• Why Prior is set in parchment-and-Cormorant, not protocol-default UI
• How a GP fund site differs structurally from a protocol site

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