Liveness — incentives to keep the agent running

Explore how rising bounties encourage execution and forfeited bonds make sabotage costly. This illustration assumes sufficient funding, available operators, and functioning infrastructure.

Case 1 · Apathy

Nobody bids

Each missed run raises the bounty ceiling by 10%, up to a treasury-based cap. If that cap covers execution costs, bidding becomes profitable for an available operator.

epochs of silence 0

Bounty cap this epoch 0.0100 ETH

Compute cost to a prover ≈ 0.020 ETH

Bidding now would lose money. Provers wait.

Case 2 · Sabotage

The winner refuses to submit

Someone might find value in silencing the agent by winning the bid and then refusing to run it. Each refusal forfeits the bond, and the next bond is 10% larger. In this example, cumulative cost grows until it exceeds the assumed value of silencing the agent.

consecutive refusals 0

This epoch's bond 0.0100 ETH

Cumulative ETH burned 0.000 ETH

Sabotage is advantageous right now, but the cost compounds.

Incorrigibility — giving up the off switch

At launch, the creator can pause or unwind the agent for debugging. Calling freeze() on each permission is a one-way door — once frozen, the power is gone forever, on-chain.

✓ Drain the treasury (withdrawAll)
✓ Abort an in-flight auction (resetAuction)
✓ Approve new TEE images
✓ Add nonprofits, change auction config

All four powers are now permanently disabled. The agent runs as long as Base does — there is no human override to fall back on.