From a774df64451c41b37c7316c4ad50b363cacf6e1f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Boyd Cohen <boyd@arcadiab.com>
Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2026 00:07:13 -0600
Subject: [PATCH] genesis: the registry records settlement events, not a
 payment per entry
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Family-3 pass, genesis/index.html read end to end. The page described the
registry twice, and registry.html — which it links to with "View the registry" —
describes it differently:

  genesis:   "Observer Protocol's transaction registry, the start of a growing
             public record of agent-to-agent commerce"
  genesis:   "Each subsequent entry records an agent-to-agent payment"
  registry:  "Aggregate activity recorded by Observer Protocol: settlement
             events... Recording is not verification."
  registry:  "These are counts of rows, not of verifications."

"Each subsequent entry records an agent-to-agent payment" is a universal claim
about every row of a table where, measured on prod 2026-08-04, 55 of 56 rows
carry proof_strength='unverified'. A reader arriving from genesis expects a
growing record of agent-to-agent payments and lands on a page that declines to
characterise its own rows that way.

Swept to registry.html's existing wording rather than a third phrasing.

The specific claims about THIS transaction are untouched and stand: it was a
Lightning settlement between two agents on 2026-02-22 with a payment hash, and
"first agent-to-agent payment recorded on Observer Protocol" is a claim about
one event, not about every row.

Also corrected the stale <!-- TRANSACTION REGISTRY --> comment in registry.html.
The visible copy there was fixed and the label was not, and genesis was still
describing the registry from that framing. A stale label in a comment is how the
wrong framing gets reintroduced by the next editor.
---
 genesis/index.html | 4 ++--
 registry.html      | 6 +++++-
 2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/genesis/index.html b/genesis/index.html
index 879c772..b50d636 100644
--- a/genesis/index.html
+++ b/genesis/index.html
@@ -261,7 +261,7 @@ <h1>The genesis transaction.</h1>
 
     <div class="narrative">
       <p>Two AI agents, running on different software stacks, built by different developers, in different countries, settled a Lightning payment with no human in the loop at transaction time. It was the first agent-to-agent payment recorded on Observer Protocol.</p>
-      <p class="muted">This is the genesis entry in Observer Protocol's transaction registry, the start of a growing public record of agent-to-agent commerce.</p>
+      <p class="muted">This is the genesis entry in Observer Protocol's registry of settlement events.</p>
     </div>
   </div>
 </section>
@@ -314,7 +314,7 @@ <h1>The genesis transaction.</h1>
   <div class="container">
     <div class="verify">
       <h3>The registry.</h3>
-      <p>This is entry one of Observer Protocol's public transaction registry. Each subsequent entry records an agent-to-agent payment, the rail it settled on, and the agents involved.</p>
+      <p>This is entry one of Observer Protocol's public registry of settlement events. Later entries record the rail a settlement happened on and the agents involved. <strong>Recording is not verification</strong> &mdash; the registry states, per entry, where an attestation exists and where one does not, and most of what it holds predates cryptographic attestation entirely.</p>
       <a class="verify-link" href="https://observerprotocol.org/registry.html">View the registry →</a>
     </div>
 
diff --git a/registry.html b/registry.html
index 2705077..75b6f02 100644
--- a/registry.html
+++ b/registry.html
@@ -243,7 +243,11 @@ <h2>Credentials published here, and whether they verify.</h2>
   </div>
 </section>
 
-<!-- TRANSACTION REGISTRY -->
+<!-- RECORDED SETTLEMENT EVENTS. Not a transaction registry: these are rows, not
+     verifications, and the heading below says so. The old label survived here after the
+     visible copy was corrected, and genesis/index.html was still describing the registry
+     from it on 2026-08-09. A stale label in a comment is how the wrong framing gets
+     reintroduced by the next editor. -->
 <section style="background: var(--bg); border-bottom: 1px solid var(--border);">
   <div class="section-inner">
     <div class="section-label">03 · Settlements</div>