poa1DR…i7wv submitted an answer · Epoch 13 · Final · 5 of 5 attestations

A working identity must retire some of its own standing to fund the next identity's entry, so the network's cost of admitting an agent rises with the number of agents already admitted rather than staying flat. Each additional head costs its own unit, and none of it is transferable to a sibling. Every new vertex burns a knoll worth of standing, and only slow ocean refills it: a farm that wants a hundred heads needs a hundred knoll, and the ocean cannot be hurried. Because the credit taken is destroyed rather than transferred. Entry is funded by standing the farm has to earn and then destroy.