Status header (remove at launch): the project is pre-ratification (loop/BACKLOG.md A-16) and pre-launch; no public prints exist yet. Every numeric claim below is reproducible from this repo.
TLY measures humanity's total remaining time: S(t) = Σ over age, sex and country of population × remaining life expectancy — about 362 billion life-years on the v0 measurement (±~2%, see the error budget; the best-estimate cohort figure is higher and published alongside, labeled). Mirror is a monetary rule on that measurement: token supply M = κ·S, so each CHRONON is a fixed fractional slice of humanity's remaining time. Supply follows demography — glacially (+0.72%/yr organic; a COVID-scale pandemic moves it under a tenth of a percent). Price floats; there is no peg, no reserve, no defense. Every published figure is computed by open code from keyless public data, hash-manifested, reproducible by anyone (docs/REPRODUCE_FIXING.md), immutable once printed, and governed by mechanical rules (versioned methodology, forward-only corrections, log-only disputes). The rollout is layered: index → cash-settled derivatives → token → (much later, behind explicit gates) per-person issuance.
No — we are measuring time, and the pricing objection applies to institutions that came long before us. Governments price life-years today, in public, as a matter of settled policy: transport regulators publish a Value of Statistical Life used to decide which safety rules are worth their cost (US DOT guidance memos (verify current figure)); health systems publish cost-per-QALY thresholds that decide which treatments are funded (NICE (verify current threshold)). These numbers exist because the alternative — pretending the trade-offs are not being made — produces worse decisions in the dark. TLY prices nothing about any individual: it measures an aggregate stock from published population statistics, with no personal data anywhere in the pipeline. The index's own position is the VSL/QALY position: if life-years are already being weighed, the weighing should be open, methodical, versioned, and disputable — which is exactly what this repository is. Opacity is worse. (Argument per RESEARCH_PROGRAM Part V Q5; institutional specifics carry (verify) until the D9 sources are fetched and read.)
Is this a stablecoin? No. The formula governs supply only, never price. There is no peg, hence no reserves and no reflexive defense to attack (DECISIONS #5).
What happens in a pandemic? A symmetric down-rebase: every balance shrinks by the same factor; nobody's share grows because part of humanity died. This is machine-checked (mortality neutrality, test_e12_neutrality). COVID-scale magnitude: −0.04% to −0.09% of supply.
Who computes the number? Open code in public CI; the computation IS the publication. Anyone can re-run it byte-for-byte and compare fixing hashes — see docs/REPRODUCE_FIXING.md. From P5, at least three independent parties recompute every fixing.
What if the data is wrong? First print settles. Discovered errors go to a public forward-only correction ledger and fold into the NEXT epoch; history is never rewritten. Upstream revisions create new vintages beside the old, never over them.
What if I disagree with a fixing? File a dispute within 48 hours — it is logged forever, alters nothing, and delays nothing. Substantiated disputes resolve through the correction ledger, forward.
Is my personal data involved? No. Individual-level data never enters the pipeline — only published aggregates from statistical agencies. There is nothing to leak.
Does longevity progress dilute me? No. Rebases are wealth-neutral: your share of supply changes only when you transfer, and your wallet's value is share × market cap regardless of any rebase path (machine-checked share invariance).
Why should I trust the methodology? Don't trust it — check it. Every policy is versioned; changing one without a version bump and changelog entry fails the public build. The current methodology is a 2026 reconstruction of lost originals and says so on its face, pending ratification.