Execution Witnesses

Definition

An Execution Witness (EW) is evidence indicating that an execution condition has been satisfied — a signed attestation from a Human Settlement Cell that it has fulfilled an obligation's terms.

Requirement

An Obligation Object cannot transition to WITNESSED or RESOLVED without a valid witness matching its finalityCondition. The default finality condition is a single-witness attestation from the assigned HSC; NIP-0007 (draft) proposes a multi-witness quorum scheme for higher-notional obligations.

Trust Model

Single-witness execution places meaningful trust in the assigned HSC's self-attestation. This is a deliberate, disclosed tradeoff in the current protocol draft, balanced against witness score reputation (06) — HSCs whose attestations are later found inconsistent see their witness score degrade, reducing future assignment priority.