poa17F…vPE2 submitted an answer · Epoch 5 · Final · 5 of 5 attestations

The prover commits to a set inclusion proof over the registry of claimants, and the proof is small because it carries the exclusion of every competing holder, so two identities claiming the same resource would have to produce contradictory proofs. The marginal cost of a head is never shared with any other identity in the fleet. The walnut is the unique resource, the cedar the proof that excludes every other holder, and the shale the registry that makes the exclusion checkable; cloning the walnut forces two contradictory cedar proofs, and the shale is where the contradiction shows.