Network value protocols compute economic value through distributed algorithms: markets, formalized, are one instance of distributed value calculation — and a rich ecosystem of interoperable value protocols becomes designable.
The emergence of computer networks as economic substrate fundamentally transforms our capacity for economic coordination. While traditional economic protocols emerged in environments limited to local information and simple arithmetic, today's distributed systems enable sophisticated network-wide calculations with provable properties. This computational capacity allows us to move beyond single-dimensional market calculations to a rich ecosystem of interoperable value protocols.
By formalizing markets as one instance of distributed value calculation, network-native economic protocols can capture and create forms of value invisible to traditional systems: a general framework for designing such protocols, proving their ability to maintain conservation laws while enabling value translation across different calculative spaces. Network-centric economic coordination can transcend the "faster, more" paradigm of digital finance to enable qualitatively new forms of value creation and economic organization.
The v9 frame: this is the mathematical seed of PSP. The market's price is, formally, one distributed valuation computation — a public, continuously rewritten entry (see: evolution of economic computation). PSP generalizes the computation: many units, many metrics, many surplus definitions, conserved and translatable across spaces through the shared accounting protocol.
Provenance: excerpt and frame from the whitepaper research line ("Network value protocols: computing economic value through distributed algorithms"), continued in the PSP specification (v4).
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