Protocol Lifecycle: Promise, verification, settlement

Lifecycle as an operational contract

The lifecycle model is a contract between counterparties, the chain state machine, and operational infrastructure. It is not a visual metaphor and should not depend on interpretation.

Each phase defines who can act, what preconditions must hold, and what data must be recorded. This is what allows support, analytics, and settlement reconciliation to remain consistent.

Phase 1: Promise definition

The promise phase captures terms before value-critical transitions are available. Counterparties set amount, role orientation, capacity constraints, and deposit posture.

• Bind authority to expected actors from the start.
• Persist economically relevant terms in immutable context.
• Reject invalid or under-collateralized setup conditions.

Phase 2: Commitment activation

Activation moves the lifecycle from intention to enforceable commitment. Economic pressure is loaded and transition rights become constrained by protocol state.

This phase is where the system prevents low-cost strategic entry into later dispute-prone paths.

• Reserve or lock required value paths.
• Account for capacity slots deterministically.
• Emit auditable activation artifacts for indexers.

Phase 3: Fulfillment observation

Off-chain fulfillment occurs outside strict chain visibility, but lifecycle progress still needs explicit observation points. The protocol constrains what decisions are available after fulfillment is expected.

The design goal is to avoid undefined intermediate states where policy and implementation can diverge.

Phase 4: Decision pathways

After observation, counterparties enter decision paths that are finite and rule-bound. Confirm and proposal routes represent bounded alternatives, not open-ended negotiation channels.

• Every path is signer-gated and state-validated.
• Proposal acceptance must satisfy configured constraints.
• Rejected or invalid transitions fail deterministically.

Phase 5: Settlement finalization

Settlement can execute only from protocol-valid terminal pathways. Once chain finality is reached, the resulting economics become the canonical record for accounting and history views.

This removes dependency on support-side interpretation of what should have happened.

• Compute terminal outputs from deterministic inputs.
• Persist close reason and economics metadata.
• Expose uniform settlement result surfaces to clients.

Phase 6: Close and archival behavior

Business-state closure and physical PDA closure are related but distinct events. Lifecycle design must account for both to prevent confusion in operational dashboards.

Close eligibility, close actor rights, and rent recovery rules should be explicit and indexable.