COA and COI — Accountability and Impact

Impactium tracks two distinct chains through everything that happens on it. They are easy to confuse and important to keep separate.

• COA — the Chain of Accountability. Who is answerable for an action. It is derived from the Source and the Acting Entity — the Product that acted and the Entity that owns it.
• COI — the Chain of Impact. Who or what is impacted by an action. COI points at the affected party, and it is the chain along which residual value flows.

A useful way to hold them: COA answers "who did this?"; COI answers "who did this affect, and who made it possible?"

Why the distinction matters

The two chains do different jobs:

• Accountability (COA) is about responsibility. When a Product acts, the COA resolves through its owner so there is always an Entity answerable — no anonymous action, no orphaned blame.
• Impact (COI) is about consequence and credit. When impact is created, it rarely happens in isolation: someone referred you, someone taught you, someone built the thing you built on. COI is how that upstream contribution is recognized.

Referral is a Chain of Impact

Every wallet is spawned by an existing member (see Multi-Root). That act of spawning is itself the first impact on the new member — they are the impacted party — so it is recorded on the COI chain, not merely as an accountability link.

This is why referral lineage is load-bearing rather than cosmetic. The person who brought you in, and the person who brought them in, form your upstream Chain of Impact. When you later create verified impact, a portion flows back up that chain as residual — the $RESIDUAL-BONUS, which lives in the COI chain layer. Those who made your contribution possible share in it.

Residual: downline and genesis

Two residual flows run along the Chain of Impact, and both only trigger for notarized (verified) impact — never for self-logged entries:

• Downline residual. When you mint verified impact, a share flows up your referral ancestry to the members above you. Their earlier act of bringing you into the network keeps paying forward.
• Genesis residual. Everyone present in the founding record — the Entities compacted into the Genesis Capsule — shares in a portion of all residual impact created by every member who joins after genesis. The founders' contribution to getting the network started is recognized in perpetuity.

Both are gated by notarization for a reason: self-logged impact carries no leverage, so residual cannot be gamed by logging fictional impact to oneself. Only attested, sealed impact moves value up the COI chain.

Residual is floored, but impact is not

Alignment does not gate minting. A claim assessed as harmful mints a Capsule with negative impact, because the network captures all impact rather than only the flattering half (decisions §40) — refusing to record harm never prevented it.

What alignment gates is residual. Allocations are floored at zero, so aligned impact pushes residual upstream, neutral impact is recorded but pushes nothing, and negative impact is recorded in full on the Capsule while pushing nothing. An ancestor is never debited for a descendant's harm — the record of that harm belongs to whoever caused it. See The 0SCALE for how alignment is scored.

In short

	COA — Accountability	COI — Impact
Answers	Who did this?	Who was impacted / made it possible?
Derived from	Source + Acting Entity	The affected party + upstream lineage
Carries	Responsibility	Residual value ($RESIDUAL-BONUS)
Fingerprint slot	#Entity	the lineage referral spawning records