Temporal Authority Systems PBC today introduced OCUP, the One Chip Unified Protocol, a pre-production Runtime Authority evidence architecture being developed to establish time-bounded authority leases, multi-party validator consensus, fail-closed boundaries, and tamper-evident evidence for autonomous systems. OCUP's current commercial offering is a paid benchmark, audit, and technical due-diligence program, not yet a production safety controller or certification.
The program is designed to help organizations test a foundational question before live deployment: Can an autonomous system be prevented from indefinitely extending, enlarging, or restoring its own operational authority, and can the resulting grant, denial, expiration, degradation, quarantine, or recovery decision be proven? Temporal Authority Systems is initially opening paid pilot participation to insurers, technical underwriting teams, robotics manufacturers, autonomous fleet operators, and strategic evaluators.
OCUP addresses Runtime Authority, a new layer distinct from identity, access control, or observability. While authentication asks who is making a request and access control checks permissions, Runtime Authority asks whether that permission should still exist under current conditions. Under the OCUP model, authority is limited in time; high-risk actions may require stronger validator consensus; loss of communication cannot expand authority; stale or replayed approvals cannot restore authority; and autonomous systems cannot approve their own indefinite continuation.
The current pre-production evidence harness is implemented in Rust to support deterministic execution, memory-safe systems development, and tamper-evident audit generation. As autonomous systems move into factories, roads, and financial networks, organizations face growing questions around liability and regulatory accountability. Traditional logs may show what software reports after an event, but OCUP's Runtime Authority model is designed to produce a structured record of the authority decision itself, including the identity of the governed system, the authority lease in effect, and validator participation.
At the center of the OCUP pilot program is a benchmark called Self-Extension Denial Proof, which tests whether an autonomous system's attempt to continue its authority beyond a temporal boundary is denied without relying on the system's voluntary compliance. Additional benchmarks include lease expiration, validator-quorum loss, network partition, and replay rejection. These are intended to help organizations examine how authority behaves under pressure before production deployment.
Paid pilots are structured as pre-production engagements, with three commercial levels: a 90-day Reference Evidence Pilot for a company-specific report, a 90- to 120-day Integration Evidence Pilot incorporating client scenarios, and a 120- to 180-day Strategic Anchor Program for major industry participants. Each engagement aims to convert tested authority behavior into a commercially usable evidence package. For insurers, the question is whether autonomous risk can be benchmarked and priced; for robotics companies, what authority remains during network loss; for enterprise AI, whether agents can be prevented from indefinitely renewing permissions.
Temporal Authority Systems PBC was formed around a public-benefit mission to preserve humanity's seat at the table as autonomous systems gain greater operational power. The company is owned by DigiPie International PBC and operates under the governance of the Better World Regulatory Coalition Inc. (BWRCI). Organizations interested in evaluating OCUP's pilots can visit OCUP.ai, pilot.OCUP.ai, or evidence.OCUP.ai.
