Beta v5.1 · not an offering · not an ASIC replacement
Research and mathematics
The nest is not a mascot. Three published local rules decide what a legal brick is. Anyone can re-check a receipt in milliseconds. That is why mining can be work instead of a picture of insects.
This page is the public white paper: objects, formulas, citations, and what we do not claim.
The idea we borrowed
Stigmergy (Grassé, 1959). Insects coordinate by changing the ground, not by talking. A pellet on a pile is an instruction to the next insect. Our hex board works the same way: a brick, a dashed work order, and a scent glow are the messages.
Sematectonic (Wilson, 1975; Heylighen, 2016). Sometimes the work itself is the sign. SEMATECT is that word. The NFT plate is the work. The STCT stamp is the marker that says “build here.”
A visible commons (Ostrom, 1990). Bounded cells, named users, work you can inspect. Click a hex, see who built it.
Ants — follow a trail
Dorigo, Maniezzo & Colorni (1996); Dorigo & Stützle (2004). An ant at one pantry picks the next stop with
$$P_{ij} = \frac{\tau_{ij}^{\alpha}\,\eta_{ij}^{\beta}}{\sum \tau^{\alpha}\,\eta^{\beta}}$$
$\tau$ is scent on the path. $\eta = 1/d$ is how close the next stop is. After a full loop of length $L$, scent fades and better loops get a little more scent. Our miner must find a loop short enough compared with a simple tree through the same points. Adding the official distances takes milliseconds. Finding the loop is the work.
Bees — pack comb, bring nectar home
Seeley, Honeybee Democracy (2010); von Frisch on the waggle dance; Hales (2001) on the honeycomb conjecture — hexagons share walls. On our board a bee takes the empty cell with the most already-built neighbors. The searcher itself brings home as much nectar as the crop allows. That is a different legal object than an ant tour. A copied ant receipt fails for a bee.
Termites — drop dirt on dirt
Bonabeau, Theraulaz, Deneubourg; Camazine et al., Self-Organization in Biological Systems. Pickup and drop on local density $q$:
$$P_{\mathrm{pick}} = \left(\frac{k_1}{k_1+q}\right)^2 \qquad P_{\mathrm{drop}} = \left(\frac{q}{k_2+q}\right)^2$$
Pick from thin spots, drop on thick spots. A mound grows with no blueprint. Sage plates follow that drop rule, not a green ant tour.
The extra lock
After the trail is good enough, a thin SHA-256 lock still has to click. A program that finds a pretty path cannot skip the shift. Each miner also gets a personal map, so a neighbor’s path is illegal on yours.
Why this can be worth the time
| We claim | We do not claim |
|---|---|
| Search is real; the check is public | This pays like Bitcoin |
| Three published rules, not three skins | Nature beats ASICs |
| A plate is a signed brick you can point at | Citations make a market |
Math makes the work auditable. Stamps still only matter if someone posts a work order. There is no mainnet STCT until the contract address is published at www.sematect.org.
Core papers
- Grassé, P.-P. (1959). Nest reconstruction and stigmergy.
- Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology — sematectonic stigmergy.
- Heylighen, F. (2016). Stigmergy as a universal coordination mechanism.
- Dorigo, Maniezzo & Colorni (1996); Dorigo & Stützle (2004). Ant colony optimization.
- Seeley, T. D. (2010). Honeybee Democracy. von Frisch (1967). Dance language.
- Hales, T. C. (2001). The honeycomb conjecture.
- Bonabeau, Dorigo & Theraulaz (1999). Swarm Intelligence. Camazine et al. (2001).
- Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons.