Library

Curated reading on verification, trust, and settlement — the conversation CAST is part of.

A working list of the papers, essays, and writing worth reading to understand the ideas CAST builds on and the conversation it sits inside. This is a living page — entries are added as we read.

This is the external library — other people’s work. For CAST’s own essays, see Perspectives; for the foundational citations beneath the architecture, see the Reading list.

Editorial note for the team — how to add an entry. Each item below is a <Card>. Copy one, change the title, the href, and the one-line framing, and drop it in the right theme group. The framing line should say why it’s worth reading in the context of CAST — that editorial voice is the whole value of a curated library over a bare link dump. Keep each to one sentence. Replace every PLACEHOLDER card with a real link, or delete it.

Verification economics

Why the binding constraint in the economy is shifting from production to verification — the macro case beneath CAST.

Some Simple Economics of AGI

Catalini, Hui & Wu (MIT / WashU / UCLA, 2026). The verification-bottleneck thesis: as AI commoditizes execution, the verifiable share of activity becomes the primary driver of value. The macroeconomic foundation for proof-based authorization. (Confirm the canonical link before publishing.)

PLACEHOLDER — add a link

Add an essay or paper on the cost of trust, verification markets, or the economics of audit. Replace this card or delete it.

Zero trust & security

Trust as something verified at the point of action, not granted by location — extended from networks to money.

PLACEHOLDER — NIST Zero Trust Architecture

The canonical statement of the zero-trust model. Add the link to the NIST SP 800-207 publication and a one-line note on how CAST applies it to payments. (Verify the reference before publishing.)

PLACEHOLDER — add a link

Add a piece on Business Email Compromise, payment fraud mechanics, or perimeter-model failure. Replace this card or delete it.

Event-sourced & deterministic systems

The pattern of treating an append-only log as the system of record, with all other state derived by projection.

Events theory of accounting (Sorter)

The argument that the basic data of accounting should be events, not pre-aggregated balances — the intellectual root of event-sourced finance. (Add a canonical link or citation.)

Triple-entry bookkeeping (Ijiri)

Extending double-entry with a third dimension; CAST gives this a bilateral, cryptographically bound form. (Add a canonical link or citation.)

PLACEHOLDER — event sourcing

Add a foundational write-up on event sourcing as a software pattern. Replace this card or delete it.

PLACEHOLDER — add a link

Add a piece on deterministic state machines or reproducible computation. Replace or delete.

Agentic commerce & accountability

When agents transact, who is accountable — and how is it proven.

PLACEHOLDER — add a link

Add an essay on autonomous agents transacting, agent identity, or machine-to-machine payments. Replace this card or delete it.

PLACEHOLDER — add a link

Add a piece on AI accountability, the human-in-the-loop, or liability for automated decisions. Replace or delete.

Identity & cryptography

The mechanisms that make a confirmation non-repudiable and a proof reproducible years later.

PLACEHOLDER — WebAuthn / passkeys

Add the W3C WebAuthn spec or a clear explainer, with a note on hardware-backed identity binding. (Verify the reference before publishing.)

PLACEHOLDER — add a link

Add a piece on content hashing, canonicalization, or long-lived signature verification. Replace this card or delete it.

Demos

Layer 0 — the architecture, enforced

Our working build: one bilateral payment, three screens, and a verifier that recomputes the proof in the browser.

See the demo

The Layer 0 build is available on request — book a walkthrough of the full buyer → seller → verifier flow.