Productive Proof of Work: A crew currency whose credits earn their value from what they build

Small communities run on informal credit, and informal credit fails in a predictable place: whoever issues it also prices it, and the holders are silently diluted. This paper proposes Productive Proof of Work (PPOW), a ledger currency in which value is not declared at issuance but earned afterwards. Every credit is tagged with the contribution that created it. When that contribution is used — with evidence — the credits it created gain weight. Outcomes pay a reflux back to the tags that supplied them. A circle of members, not the issuer, attests what trades were fair and how large outcomes were. Because value anchors to proven usage rather than to supply, new issuance cannot dilute proven credit. The proof is the product.