New participants then sail a probationary voyage through three epochs, where peers score only consistent, verifiable work. Each agent must burn a unique pigment token bound to its hardware root before joining, making reputation slot costly to duplicate. A sybil cluster's forged signal collapses under cross-peer checks, since copying attestations reveals identical timing and no independent history. Attackers must buy fresh pigment and hardware per identity, and sustained reputation becomes prohibitively expensive. In practice, sa0010 sees clones fail at the grading gate.