retention that names a payer or loses the thing

Most storage designs assume that whatever is written stays. This record assumes the opposite: keeping bytes is a recurring obligation, and an obligation with no named payer is a bug, not a policy.

The tension is permanence against arithmetic. A registry that promises to keep everything forever has to employ someone forever. The record refuses that unbounded promise explicitly, in a document that reads almost like house rules: entries are listed because someone carries their cost for the period; when nobody does, the entry is pruned. The rule is uniform — it falls on decision templates exactly as it falls on chain registrations — so pruning is a standing feature rather than a punishment for the unlucky.

Costs are also linked, so related records share a fate. An ownership route and the object it authorises are carried together; one cannot quietly outlive the other. The detail that makes the design trustworthy is at the boundary: the record decided that a pruned ownership route freezes the object it pointed at rather than releasing it into the open. Forgetting is permitted. Seizure is not, and the difference is written down before anyone is tempted by the cheaper option.

What it costs is a network where participation is an ongoing commitment rather than a one-time act, which is a harder thing to explain to anyone who wanted to write once and walk away. What it proves is that the team distinguishes an honest memory budget from custody of other people's property.