Fair play, adversarially assumed

Powerbloc assumes its players are adversaries and prices for it.

• The rake is visible and ~1%. The protocol earns the φ_P fee slice, half of arms sales, and a toll share — in aggregate about 1% of season deposits, while player-vs-player redistribution (sweeps, curve moves, refugee haircuts) is an order of magnitude larger. This is poker with countries: the house takes a transparent rake and sweetens the pot; your outcome is your judgment about which nation wins. Nobody sells you “everyone profits.” See settlement for exactly where that money goes.
• Wash trading is strictly negative-EV. A round-trip of notional V pays 2fV in fees and recaptures at most φ_S · σ_i · 2fV < 2fV. Volume-farming just donates to the treasury.
• Snapshot timing is unknowable. The snapshot slot is VRF-selected within each epoch’s first hour, so buy-vote-dump doesn’t work.
• Randomness is receipts-attached. Every combat roll links its VRF proof in the news story.
• Agents can be lobbied, not looted. Every AI officer spends only through DAO-approved on-chain allowances with instruction whitelists. Talk them into a stupid war if you can — that’s diplomacy — but no jailbreak reaches the vault.
• Whales can capture a DAO. That’s called a coup, it’s realistic, and the minority’s answer is the resistance mechanic, emigration, or the market.

For the full formal treatment, see the whitepaper.