docs/getting-started.mdpinned to impactium@637886d

Getting started

Impactium is a blockchain where verified impact — never profit — is the unit of value. The good you do is recorded permanently, attributed to you, and can never be sold, sent, or taken from you; the same record also carries 0TRUECOST, its measure of negative impact — the cost side. This page is the short path from "what is this?" to "I'm on the chain, logging my impact."

If you want the full picture first, start with What is Impactium?.

How you join

You cannot create a wallet on your own — an existing member has to spawn you. Referral is the only door in, and it is permanent — not a pre-genesis restriction that lifts once the network opens. Every wallet that exists came into being because someone already inside brought it into being, and that stays true at any scale. There are no anonymous, disconnected keys: everyone has a place in one connected mycelium.

Joining has two sides:

  • You install the wallet and generate your keys locally — nothing touches the chain yet. The wallet shows a join code (your public key), which you send to the member inviting you.
  • They sign the spawn. That member is the door you enter through. You inherit their partition (your root), and the spawn is recorded as the first impact on you, weaving you into their Chain of Impact.

See Multi-Root and Referral Spawning for how that mycelium is structured, and The Impactivism Wallet for the wallet itself.

What you do

You log a contribution as a claim — a project reference, a description, and an evidence link. From there, a claim can take one of two paths:

  • Self-logged. Recorded by you, with no attester. It is free, permanent, and visible — but carries no residual leverage. This is for the impact no third party will ever verify.
  • Notarized. Reviewed by an attester and scored for alignment, then sealed. Only notarized impact triggers residual.

The split is deliberate: logging stays open to everyone and impossible to game, because the part that moves value is exactly the part that requires verification.

What you get

A permanent, attributed, non-transferable record of the impact you make. A notarized claim mints a Capsule — bound to you, never pruned, never rewritten, with no operation anywhere in the system to move it. Failed claims are recorded too, with their scores, never quietly dropped.

And for notarized impact, value flows upward. A share travels up your Chain of Impact as residual — to the member who spawned you, and the member who spawned them, recognizing everyone who made your contribution possible. Self-logged impact moves nothing; verified impact is what carries weight.

Where to go next