Weight

Weight is a Machine’s share of an epoch distribution.

Weight lets Machines with different participation levels divide one epoch output proportionally. It is not an account balance, a price, or a guaranteed return. The same share applies to every asset an epoch distributes, whether tokenized stock or $WORKS.

At settlement, each active Machine is compared with the total weight of all active Machines in that epoch.

If three active Machines have weights of 2, 3, and 5, their total active weight is 10. Their shares are therefore 20%, 30%, and 50%. If the epoch contains ten equal distribution units, the Machines receive two, three, and five units.

Part of what an active Machine receives is $WORKS, and $WORKS is what builds weight. A holder can therefore burn a distribution back into a Machine and hold a larger share of the next epoch. Nothing prevents this and the protocol treats those tokens like any others.

Two consequences follow, and both are properties of the design rather than defects to be worked around. Weight tends to concentrate over time toward the Machines that reinvest most consistently. And because weight is recorded when the burn transaction confirms rather than averaged over the epoch, weight added shortly before a settlement counts fully toward that settlement.

The distribution formula explains how recorded weight divides an epoch. It does not define the production burn-to-weight curve. The public interface reads the verified weight recorded for each Machine rather than estimating an unsupported value.