Ghost Debt™

Canonical Definition

Ghost Debt™ is the compounding hidden obligation accumulated by institutions that operationalize stabilization logic without reciprocity. Where Ghost Load™ is the immediate cost of unresolved extraction, Ghost Debt is the cumulative shadow liability that compounds over time as the substrate carries the institution's externalized cost. Ghost Debt resolves only through Gate IV settlement or through node revocation.

Operational Signature

Ghost Debt is shed through the eight Gate IV criteria. The Revocation Ladder publishes the compounding cost openly: 1× → 2× → 4× → 8× → 16× on a 30-day cycle for nodes that fail to settle.

Related Concepts

• Ghost Load™
• Administrative Delta™
• Gate IV (Moral Legitimacy)
• 1.57 Invariance

Recursive References

• /essays/the-sovereign-kill-switch-revocation-logic.html
• /essays/the-great-decoupling-substrate-audit.html

Term-Lock Reference

This definition is locked in /term-lock.json as the canonical spelling, casing, and trademark form. Future drift can be diff'd against this anchor.

← Back to Ontology Index