A reference directory of every document in the Deviant corpus — published, in draft, and planned.
What each document covers, who it is written for, where it sits in the larger project, and which other documents it references or is referenced by.
Purpose: Navigate the corpusVersion: v01Updated: May 2026
The Deviant corpus consists of structural-taxonomic, historical, and design documents developed around a single thesis: that the conventional financial system and the conventional cryptocurrency system both produce instruments whose stated relationships to underlying value are softer than they appear, and that an alternative architecture is possible in which the relationship between an asset and its backing is enforced by protocol invariant rather than by institutional commitment.
The corpus is organized along three lines: structural taxonomy (what asset types exist and how they are enforced), historical and informational analysis (what has happened to specific instruments, what the discourse around them has been, what the institutional environment that shapes that discourse looks like), and design and reference (the technical specification of the alternative architecture, plain-language references, and community-facing material).
A note on the corpus's evolution. Several of the documents in this directory share a common origin. The original Asset Landscape file (deployed as v09) began as a single document covering the MBA Standard alongside its comparison to traditional asset categories. As work on it progressed, three distinct functions became visible — descriptive taxonomy of the existing asset landscape, the MBA-positioning prose argument, and the visual quadrant comparing MBAs against traditional assets at different reader levels — and each turned out to deserve its own focused treatment. Readers wanting to understand the asset types of the traditional financial system in their own right are pointed to Traditional Asset Types and Backing Standards; readers wanting to understand the MBA Standard and what differentiates it are pointed to Deviant — Presentation and Comparison and (when extracted) the standalone The MBA Standard — Asset Taxonomy and MBA Specifications Detailed Taxonomy — sophisticated readers.
This directory catalogues each document. Cross-references between documents are noted explicitly. Documents have status indicators distinguishing published material from active drafts and planned future work.
Status indicators
Published — released document, stable, available for external reference.
Active draft — under current revision; structurally complete but subject to refinement.
Planned — described in this directory but not yet drafted. Scope and intent are documented; content is forthcoming.
Personal use — internal reference material, not intended for general distribution.
Core documents — the project's intellectual foundation
Vol.14 — The Information Environment · the discourse / media-capture layer. ↓ entry below
The On-Chain-Only Design Philosophy · the structural philosophy (project-agnostic reference; cite, don't re-litigate). ↗ open
The Block Size Wars · the applied case — attack vector, three splits, on-chain use as defense (an extract of Vol.13, expanded with the §A–I front arc). ↗ open
These four form one spine: technical record → information environment → structural philosophy → block-size-war application. Designated core (2026-06-07), kept at current numbering (no renumbering); the other documents in this directory support and extend them. Intended eventually to be combined/improved into an ebook.
I · Deviant project — design and reference
The Deviant project presentation and working references.
PublishedFor readers comparing the MBA Standard to existing financial and crypto instruments
The central document presenting the MBA Standard as a financial tool, positioned in contrast to both the legacy financial system (fiat, bank deposits, stablecoins, bonds, ETFs) and conventional crypto (tokens, wrapped instruments, algorithmic stablecoins). Develops the Deviant project's central contribution explicitly — what it does, what it does not do, what comparison set it should be evaluated against, and what the structural property it introduces enables.
Origin note. Originally produced as the Asset Landscape v09. As work on it progressed, three distinct functions became visible — descriptive asset taxonomy, the MBA-positioning prose, and the visual quadrant comparing MBAs against traditional assets at two reader levels. The descriptive taxonomy moved to Traditional Asset Types and Backing Standards; the sophisticated and general-readers visual quadrants are planned as standalone extractions (see companion entries below). The current deployed file still combines the MBA-positioning prose with both reader levels of the quadrant; the planned extractions will separate these functions.
A plain-language working reference covering what a Deviant Equilibrium Asset (DEA) is, why it is structurally different from previous backed-asset designs, how the Atomic Swap Mechanism (ASM) operates, and how the system grows. Written for internal author reference rather than external publication; uses direct technical vocabulary without the layered framing of the public-facing documents.
References:→Technical specification (for the formal contract definitions and consensus rules)
II · Structural Taxonomy
Three taxonomies of the asset landscape.
Active DraftFor readers establishing baseline reference for the eight asset classes
The canonical baseline reference for the MBA Standard's eight asset classes. Defines all eight (DEA, PLA, MCA, MTA in the MBA family; PTU, PTL, MTU, MTL in the Token family) in pure structural terms along the three binary axes: backing (fixed rate / no rate), mint rule (permissionless / managed), and supply (unlimited / limited). Includes the 2×2 quadrant diagram and the structural-decomposition table showing the regularized form (PUA, PLA, MUA, MLA, PUT, PLT, MUT, MLT) underneath the canonical names.
Scope discipline. This document is internal to the standard. It does not compare the MBA classes to traditional financial instruments, does not develop the legacy-financial-system context, and does not argue for the standard's positioning relative to existing crypto. Those concerns live in separate documents — Traditional Asset Types and Backing Standards covers the existing-finance taxonomy; Deviant — Presentation and Comparison develops the comparative positioning. Here: only the standard itself, on its own terms.
PlannedFor sophisticated readers and comparative analysts
MBA Specifications Detailed Taxonomy — sophisticated readers.
Planned · filename to be assigned (likely deviant_asset-landscape_FOR-sophisticated-readers.html)
The technical-depth expansion of The MBA Standard — Asset Taxonomy. Contains the same 2×2 structural map, the same asset categories, and the same comparison framework — but adds the formal taxonomic acronyms (DEA, PLA, MCA, MTA), the consensus-enforced peg property as a precise structural axis, the issuance-gating axis with mint-rule semantics, and the implementation-level vocabulary (Universal Exchange Rate, contract invariants, Atomic Swap Mechanism). Targets readers with background in financial instruments and crypto-asset architecture who want the implementation depth alongside the structural map.
This is the expansion edition. Built on top of the base Asset Taxonomy. A reader who needs only the canonical taxonomy should start with the Asset Taxonomy; a reader who needs the canonical taxonomy plus the technical specifications should read this document directly — it contains both.
Until extracted as a standalone document: the same content currently lives embedded in the deployed v09 file (the Deviant — Presentation and Comparison) alongside the prose presentation. The standalone extraction will separate the visual taxonomy from the prose argument.
A descriptive technical taxonomy of the existing asset landscape. Maps every asset class — pure commodities, cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies (physical and digital), bank deposits, stablecoins, wrapped tokens, bonds, ETFs, structured products, conventional crypto tokens — into a two-relationship framework (direct value versus declared backing) and a two-layer architecture (Layer 1 substrate versus Layer 2 derivative claims). Documents the chain of unbacking visible across rows: stablecoins claim backing by digital fiat, which is a fractional claim on physical fiat, which has no backing of its own.
Includes three documented case studies of soft-backing failure: the Tether reserve composition findings (NYAG settlement, February 2021), the TerraUSD/Luna collapse (May 2022), and the USDC depeg during the Silicon Valley Bank failure (March 2023). Each case isolates a distinct failure mode of soft enforcement: attestation failure, model failure, and custodial-layer failure.
Sections completed: I (the two relationships), II (the two layers), III (empirical record of failure). Sections forthcoming: IV (cascade of unbacking), V (diagnostic test), VI (implications).
Words: ~5,500 current, ~9,000 projected at completionVisual elements: Two-column landscape diagram, three-layer architecture, three case-study cards, synthesis
References:→Vol.13 §IX (financial system quadrant) for parallel structural view
Referenced by:→Vol.13 (forward-references the chain of unbacking and case studies)
III · Historical and political-economic analysis. The Epictetus framework
Documentary records, analytic framework, and political-economic context.
Active DraftFor comparative-financial-system analysts and readers interested in the structural and historical dimensions of the current monetary system
A historical-structural analysis of how the legacy financial system functions in practice. Covers two related questions: (1) how the system functions structurally — central-bank monopoly on money issuance, the debt-bond-interest mechanism that gives central banks effective control over governments, legal-tender enforcement, and the asymmetry between national governments and the international banking institutions that constrain them; (2) how the system responds to challenges — documented patterns of access-permission as coercion (Greek 2015, Cyprus 2013), suppression of sovereign monetary alternatives, the CBDC marketing inversion (presenting financial-infrastructure capture as user empowerment), and the Bitcoin moment as the first sustained challenge the legacy system has not yet been able to neutralize.
The structural finding the document develops: a fully-honored claim with revoked operative access is, from the holder's perspective, equivalent to a broken claim. This is a fourth failure mode beyond the three documented in Traditional Asset Types and Backing Standards Section III — access-permission failure, where the institutional layer that controls operative access uses that control as a policy instrument independent of whether the underlying claim is honored. The custody taxonomy (direct hold vs custody / trusted-third-party hold) is the document's unifying analytic frame.
PlannedFor crypto-skeptical readers and pattern analysts
What "Crypto" Became — Cryptocurrency vs. Crypto Tokens.
Planned · filename to be assigned
A structural analysis of the pattern across successive crypto cycles — ICO (2017–2018), DeFi (2020–present), NFT (2020–2022), memecoin (2021–present) — and how each cycle produced a new instrument class sold as legitimate financial innovation while operating structurally as a wealth-extraction mechanism in 90%+ of cases. Documents the conceptual move whereby cryptocurrency (BTC, BCH, original whitepaper-defined direct-value protocol-defined assets) was redefined into crypto tokens (most ERC-20s, BEP-20s, SPLs, governance tokens, NFTs, memecoins — issuer-controlled unbounded-supply instruments without protocol-enforced backing).
Primary-source evidence: SEC enforcement actions against ICO operators, academic studies of ICO failure rates (Lyandres-Palazzo-Rabetti 2019, Dowlat 2018), Chainalysis crime reports documenting fraud volumes by category and year, on-chain data on memecoin coordinated launches.
References:→Vol.13 (for the parallel pattern of category hijacking applied to Bitcoin specifically);
→Traditional Asset Types and Backing Standards (for the structural distinction between Layer 1 direct-value assets and Layer 2 issuer-controlled unbounded-supply instruments)
PublishedFor sophisticated readers and historical analysts
The chronological chain of events documenting what Bitcoin was specified to be in the 2008 whitepaper, what it was operationally from 2009 to 2014, what each subsequent chain (BTC, BCH, BSV) departed from or preserved at the protocol level, and what each chain represents now measured against the original specification. Includes side-by-side specification comparison, the captured information environment analysis (Section III), the financial-layer dynamics around Tether and BTC (Section IX), and a closing Epictetus framework applied to the three chains.
Documentary record draws on primary sources: the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi correspondence (cryptography mailing list, BitcoinTalk forum, Hearn emails), the Block-Size Wars correspondence (Hearn, Andresen, Wright), BIPs and developer commits, regulatory settlements (NYAG, CFTC), court filings (In re Tether and Bitfinex Crypto Asset Litigation), and central-bank research.
The discourse layer that shaped public understanding of the Block-Size Wars and of what Bitcoin became. The Block-Size Wars chronology itself lives in Vol.13 and is referenced here, not re-narrated; this volume documents the environment in which that history was told.
What it covers. The long reframe of Bitcoin's purpose (peer-to-peer cash → “digital gold”, 2008–2024); the ownership of the venues that carried it (CoinDesk/DCG, The Block/Alameda, Bitcoin Magazine/BTC Inc/Nakamoto); the recurring grammar of persuasion, named through standard rhetoric and the Alinsky / Bezmenov lenses (geopolitics stripped, motive left to the reader); how Bitcoin Cash was framed; the Roger Ver case as “targeting dissent”; the two book-length accounts (Bier vs Ver) weighed against each other; and the gap between how Bitcoin Cash is described and how it is structurally treated.
The thesis. The media / gatekeeper layer calls Bitcoin Cash a scam or dead; the regulatory and institutional layer treats it as one of a handful of clean, non-security commodities. That gap is the Epictetus Category-3 condition (real but not perceived) applied to the discourse itself.
A standalone companion to Vol.13 applying the Stoic philosopher Epictetus's four-category framework — things that are and appear to be, things that neither are nor appear to be, things that are but do not appear to be, things that are not yet appear to be — to the Bitcoin lineage. Each chain is placed in its category with the documentary evidence from Vol.13 supporting the placement. Includes a two-axis quadrant visualization with the five-color framework (acid green for affirmation of reality, rust for denial of reality, warm gold for substantive perception, neutral grey for absent perception, dusty rose for the rose-colored-glasses illusion).
Words: ~2,400Visual elements: Four-category list, 2×2 quadrant with axis labels, application cards per chain
References:→Vol.13 (for the documentary record on which the framework's application rests)
IV · Technical Documents and Community Outreach
Authoritative specifications and versioned community-facing announcements.
Active draftFor developers and protocol implementers
The authoritative formal specification of the MBA Standard. Defines the eight asset classes the wallet recognizes — four MBA classes with fixed-rate protocol-enforced backing (DEA Deviant Equilibrium Asset, PLA Permissionless Limited Asset, MCA Managed Certificate Asset, MTA Managed Tranche Asset) and four Token sub-classes without backing (PTU, PTL, MTU, MTL) — with consensus rules, contract invariants, rate semantics, classification algorithm, wallet display rules, and the Atomic Swap Mechanism (ASM) for inter-MBA exchange at the Universal Exchange Rate.
Includes Architecture A (P2SH32 with CashScript contract enforcement) and the transition path from the Stage-1 OP_RETURN-tagged implementation to the native-CashTokens rebuild (ADR-0006).
Words: ~8,100Status: v2.7 — current authoritative version (eight-class structure formalized: MBAs DEA/PLA/MCA/MTA + Tokens PTU/PTL/MTU/MTL; §4 Asset Taxonomy cut entirely in v2.6 with positioning content moved to corpus; closed → managed mint rename + MCA reverted to Managed Certificate Asset in v2.4; OLA → PLA in v2.3)
An HTML preview of the community announcement targeted at BCH developers, introducing the Deviant project, the MBA Standard, and the permissionless-mint contract architecture with BCH-backed fixed-rate redemption.
Markdown version of the v07a announcement formatted for posting to r/bitcoincash on Reddit. Same substantive content, adapted for the platform's formatting conventions.
PublishedFor sophisticated readers and comparative analysts
An analytical piece on the historical gold standard, what it actually was, what it was not, and how the conventional narrative around "returning to a gold standard" misunderstands the structural relationship between commodity-backed instruments and the underlying commodity. Establishes context for the MBA Standard's structural difference from custodial gold-certificate architectures.
V · Business and Economic Model
How revenue is generated and shared.
Active DraftFor project-internal operational reference
The project's internal reference for how Deviant earns revenue and what it offers in exchange. Defines three primary revenue streams: (1) voluntary marketing revenue share — founders enroll their MBA contracts in a marketing tier and route a tier-determined percentage of their founder fee to the platform in exchange for distribution; (2) wallet service fee — a flat 0.5% on protocol operations (mint and swap transactions) paid by the user; (3) premium features — recurring subscription paid by users for access to advanced capabilities, anchored by DRA (Dynamic Rate Asset with Escalating Rate).
Includes: the marketing tier ladder (None / Bronze / Silver / Gold / Platinum) showing what founders receive at each revenue-share level; a worked example tracing fee flow in a single mint transaction (100 NCoin mint, Silver tier, illustrating how all three streams fire simultaneously); a forward reference to DRA's structural definition (which is pending — three structural readings are open, decision queued for a future turn).
Deprioritized streams from the earlier six-stream revenue model — relay infrastructure subscriptions, fiat on-ramp referrals, watchtower & settlement fees, analytics subscriptions — are documented as secondary or future considerations, not part of the current primary focus.
Companion to:↔deviant_bch-baseline_FOR-internal-revenue-modeling.html (the BCH on-chain sizing baseline for Phase 1 revenue projections)
DeprecatedHistorical reference — superseded by the Business and Economic Model document above
The earlier revenue model framed under "The App Store of token economies" with six revenue streams under a flywheel narrative. Retained as historical reference. The current revenue model narrows to three primary streams (above); the framing has also been flagged for revision in line with the project's deviation-point positioning. This document remains accessible for reference but is no longer authoritative.
Active ReferenceFor project-internal revenue modeling and Phase 1 sizing
The companion document establishing the BCH on-chain baseline used to anchor revenue projections. Eight sections: method and data confidence, chain age and accumulated history, transaction-value distribution, Phase-1 reach funnel, on-chain activity as a fraction of total BCH activity, the two-phase audience model, implications for the revenue model, and data still to collect. Provides the empirical baseline that prevents revenue projections from drifting into aspirational territory.
VI · Reading paths
Suggested orderings by reader type and purpose.
Path A · Understanding the structural argument from scratch
For readers new to the project who want the core structural thesis.
Vol.13 — Bitcoin Discovery — applies the structural framework to the Bitcoin lineage, documenting what each chain became measured against the whitepaper specification.
Epictetus: Appearances of four kinds — closes Vol.13's argument with the philosophical framework for distinguishing what something is from what it appears to be.
Path B · Evaluating the MBA Standard
For readers who want to assess the Deviant project's central design contribution.
Traditional Asset Types and Backing Standards — required prerequisite. Establishes what soft backing is and why every current declared-backed instrument is structurally soft-backed.
Deviant — Presentation and Comparison — develops the design contribution explicitly. Currently the deployed v09 file, which combines the prose presentation with the embedded visual quadrant.
Vol.14 — The Information Environment (active draft) — the institutional and discursive analysis of how the conflicts were perceived: the long reframe, media ownership, the grammar of persuasion, the framing of Bitcoin Cash, and the gap between how it is described and how it is structurally treated. The Block-Size Wars chronology itself is Vol.13; Vol.14 references it as its primary case study.
What "Crypto" Became (planned) — for the parallel pattern in cryptocurrency markets.
Vol.14 — The Information Environment (active draft) — for the institutional and discursive environment that shapes public understanding of all of the above, with the Block-Size Wars period (Vol.13) as its primary case study.
VII · Project context
What Deviant is and what the corpus is for.
Deviant is a non-custodial wallet and asset-issuance architecture on the Bitcoin Cash base layer. It supports standard CashTokens alongside a novel instrument class: Mathematically Backed Assets (MBAs) — derivative claims on BCH whose per-unit backing is enforced by the contract that defines the asset, at the consensus layer, with no custodian and no path through which the backing rate can be altered after deployment.
The corpus exists to support the MBA Standard with the structural taxonomy, historical context, and comparative analysis required for the architecture to be evaluated honestly. The thesis the corpus advances is not that the MBA Standard is good and the alternatives are bad; it is that the structural property the MBA Standard introduces — backing as a protocol invariant rather than as an institutional commitment — produces a category of instrument with different failure modes than every existing declared-backed instrument, and that the comparison between this category and existing categories can be made rigorously if the existing categories are described accurately first.
The descriptive work (Traditional Asset Types and Backing Standards, Vol.13, Vol.14, the legacy-finance document, the crypto-cycles document) does the first half of that work — establishing what currently exists. The design and reference work (the Deviant Presentation and Comparison, the MBA Standard Asset Taxonomy, the MBA Specifications Detailed Taxonomy, the technical specification) does the second half — defining what the alternative is and where it sits.
This directory is a working artifact. It will be updated as documents are completed, as the corpus grows, and as the relationships between documents become clearer.