№ 02·0302 · Industry issues4 min read · Section 3 of 3

2.3 Why is it difficult to settle contributions?

Why referral, execution, service and collaboration contributions have long been unable to be proven, attributed and accounted for.

Updated
2.3 · Settlement issues

Many people have participated, but few have been systematically proven to actually get anything done.

Web3 does not lack contributions, but what it lacks is unified records of contributions, credible verification, clear attribution and sustainable settlement. When an industry rewards excitement rather than results, those who truly promote closed loops are most likely to be ignored.

Function of this pageExplain why contributions are difficult to settle in the long run
core judgmentThe contribution exists, but the proof system is missing
Reading highlightsFour Root Causes + Incentive Collapse + The Starting Point of PoB

There is no shortage of contributions, what is missing is provable contributions

When a project can obtain funding, it is often not driven by a single role; when a cooperation can be implemented, it is often not completed by a single node. Recommendations, research, documentation, growth execution, relationship advancement, risk management, service delivery—all impact outcomes.

The problem is: most of these influences stay at "everyone knows someone has done it" rather than entering into "the system can prove who actually promoted the result."

A real industry scenario: A project completed a $3M seed round. Introducer A initially introduced the project; Capitalist B did due diligence and led the investment; Service Provider C provided the legal structure; Market Maker D later provided liquidity commitments. How should the value of this deal be allocated among A, B, C, and D? In the current industry, the answer is: there is no standard answer - rely on relationships, rely on negotiation, and rely on voice.


Four fundamental reasons

1. Many contributions occur before the results

Before the business closed loop is truly established, a large number of key actions have already taken place: introduction, screening, organization, preparation of materials, promotion of dialogue, and resource coordination. These actions are very important to the result, but because they are not the "last signing moment", they are often ignored by the system.

Traditional finance uses Mandate Letter, Engagement Letter and Fee Schedule to lock in roles and allocations before the deal begins. Web3 has almost no such front-end structure—contribution happens in a gray area, and distribution happens as an afterthought.

2. Contribution leaves no structured evidence

A lot of critical collaboration in the industry still happens in private chats, phone calls, offline meetings, and ad-hoc documents. As a result, even if it occurs, many of the pushing behaviors in the process cannot be reconstructed.

No unified event numberEach collaboration has no unique identifier and cannot be tracked.
No unified evidence packageContracts, minutes, reports, and emails are scattered and incomplete.
No unified role statementThere is no systematic record of who was involved and what role they played.
There is no unified state machineThere is no standardized tracking of what stage an incident is at.

3. Volume substitution contribution

In an environment without clear recording and review mechanisms, contributions can easily be distorted by the following factors:

Who is louderPeople who are more expressive are more likely to be seen.
Who is closer to the centerPeople with more conspicuous positions are more likely to contribute by default.
Who stands in the last ringThe last person to sign may overwrite the value of previous multi-party collaboration.
Who can tell stories better?Narrative ability replaces evidentiary ability.

4. Lack of unified attribution rules

In most collaboration scenarios, there are no clear rules to judge:

Who is the dominant partyIs it the first person to introduce it, or the person who promotes it until the result is established?
Who are the collaborators?Which roles provide key support but do not dominate?
Does Agent count as a contributor?If an Agent does critical work, how is its value recorded?
What should not be countedHow should verbal help, repeated claims, and fruitless actions be eliminated?

Settlement failure will directly destroy the incentive structure

Really valuable people will be lostIf the real contribution to settlement cannot be proven in the long term, the first people to be disappointed will be those who really promote the establishment of the closed loop - they will turn to other systems with positive feedback.
The excitement will overwhelm the resultsWhen the system lacks the ability to prove results, the industry is most likely to be rewarded by high-frequency vocalization, crowd-building and exposure, rather than closed-loop and delivery.
Collaboration is becoming increasingly short-termWithout clear settlement expectations, everyone is more inclined to only take actions that can be seen in front of them, rather than investing in long-term collaboration and complex promotion.
The network cannot be deposited into long-term creditIf every result only stays at "it was done this time" without entering the structured ledger, the entire network will not be able to form a long-term reputation and position system.

Without proof of contribution, there will be no stable incentives; without stable incentives, there will be no high-quality network.

Why proof of contribution is the core of WCN

WCN does not start from "issuing rewards", but starts from "first defining what counts as results, what counts as evidence, and what counts as effective contributions".

What WCN wants to solve is not "how to provide more incentives", but "how to turn behaviors that truly create value into verifiable, attributable, and settleable objects."

Core conclusion

Contributions are difficult to calculate, not because there is no contribution, but because four things are missing:

Lack of unified event structureThere are no unique IDs, role declarations, and stage tracking for each collaboration.
Lack of credible evidence chainContracts, minutes, receipts, and on-chain records are not archived in a unified manner.
Lack of clear attribution rulesThere is no standard definition of Lead, Collaboration, Auxiliary, Agent contribution.
Lack of systematic settlement entranceAs a result, it cannot enter the long-term credit, PoB and value precipitation layers.

This is why WCN’s PoB (Proof of Business) is not an additional module, but the most critical institutional foundation of the entire network.