Protocol Model
Five Separated Concerns
NIL decomposes what a payment network does into five concerns, and requires that no two be treated as inseparable:
| Concern | Question it answers |
|---|---|
| Intent | What economic outcome is desired? |
| Obligation | What commitment now exists to achieve it? |
| Execution | How is the recipient satisfied locally? |
| Capital movement | What, if anything, physically displaces between domains? |
| Finality | When does the commitment cease to exist? |
Traditional rails answer all five simultaneously, at the moment a payment instruction is submitted. NIL answers them at different times, by different parts of the network, often without capital movement occurring at all.
The Cycle
INTENT → Ω → ROUTE → EXECUTE → WITNESS → GRAPH → NET → REBALANCE → FINALITY
An intent is compiled into an obligation. The obligation is routed to a settlement domain and assigned to an execution endpoint. Execution is witnessed. The obligation joins the network's live obligation graph, where it may be cancelled against opposing obligations during netting. Whatever remains is queued for liquidity rebalancing. Finality is reached once the obligation no longer represents an unresolved commitment — locally, and eventually, globally.
Why Separate These at All
Coupling intent to capital movement forces every payment to pay the full cost of physical displacement, even when an opposing obligation elsewhere in the network would have cancelled it for free. Separating the concerns lets the network defer the expensive part — capital movement — until it has first exhausted the cheap part: netting.