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In this commit, we fold the two newest findings into the site without touching the approved design. The settled result, exp-011's paradigm ceiling, becomes a new findings section: three independent lineages converge within 0.014 objective of one another on the same interval-belief design, shown as a dot plot against the lnd and seed baselines, with the two unrewarded inventions and the honest limits (three samples, shared reflection-model culture) called out alongside. The in-flight experiment gets its own page instead: drift.html, a third nav tab covering the virtual clock and background traffic mechanics, the pre-evolution baseline in which the champions' hard bounds survive drift while lnd's decay still trails, and a ledger of what each possible outcome of the live code_drift1 run would mean. Keeping a verdictless experiment out of the findings page preserves that page's register, and the new tab gives future in-flight chapters a home. The masthead, timeline, and live-run telemetry now reflect eleven experiments with code_drift1 running, and refresh_dashboard.sh bundles the new page so scheduled publishes carry it. Published as Litbucket version 36.
399 lines
18 KiB
HTML
399 lines
18 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html lang="en">
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<head>
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<meta charset="utf-8" />
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<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
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<title>Drift — the environment strikes back (exp-008)</title>
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<meta name="description" content="The simulator gets a virtual clock and background traffic, so knowledge genuinely goes stale. The drift baseline before evolution, and the live run asking whether time-awareness re-evolves." />
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<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com" />
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<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin />
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<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Newsreader:ital,opsz,wght@0,6..72,300..600;1,6..72,300..500&family=Spline+Sans+Mono:wght@400;500&display=swap" rel="stylesheet" />
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
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</head>
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<body>
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<a class="skip" href="#main">Skip to content</a>
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<header class="site-header">
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<div class="shell">
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<a class="wordmark" href="index.html">lnd<span class="x">×</span>GEPA</a>
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<nav class="site-nav">
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<a href="index.html">overview</a>
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<a href="findings.html">findings</a>
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<a href="drift.html" aria-current="page">drift</a>
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<a href="index.html#run">live run</a>
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</nav>
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</div>
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</header>
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<main id="main">
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<!-- ================= MASTHEAD ================= -->
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<div class="shell masthead">
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<div class="eyebrow">
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Work in flight<span class="sep">/</span>exp-008<span class="sep">/</span>24 July 2026
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</div>
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<h1>The environment <em>strikes back</em></h1>
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<p class="standfirst">
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The evolved champions carry no clock, and we always suspected that was partly
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our simulator's fault: hidden liquidity only moved when our own payments moved
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it, so evidence never went stale. <strong>It does now.</strong> The simulator
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has a virtual clock and strangers sending payments through it, and the
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question the champions ducked is finally on the table.
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</p>
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<div class="byline">
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<span>source <b>exp-008-drift-evolution.md</b></span>
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<span>corpus <b>corpus-drift, seed 3031</b></span>
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<span>run <b>code_drift1</b></span>
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<span>status <b>baseline done · evolution live</b></span>
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</div>
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<ol class="toc">
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<li><a href="#clock"><span class="n">01</span><span class="t">What the simulator gained</span></a></li>
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<li><a href="#baseline"><span class="n">02</span><span class="t">The baseline, before any evolution</span></a></li>
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<li><a href="#question"><span class="n">03</span><span class="t">The run in flight, and what each answer would mean</span></a></li>
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</ol>
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</div>
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<!-- ================= 01 · THE CLOCK ================= -->
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<section id="clock">
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<div class="shell">
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<div class="sec-head">
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<div class="sec-no">01</div>
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<h2>What the simulator gained</h2>
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<p class="sec-sub">
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Two additions, both aimed at one honest weakness: a world where knowledge
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never expires is a world that flatters routers which never forget.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="keyrow wide">
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<div class="key">
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<span class="kn">10<span class="u">min</span></span>
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<div class="kl">
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of simulated time between payments, one second per attempt — so lnd's
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decay half-lives operate over spans that mean something
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</div>
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<div class="kf">candidates can read <span class="mono">view.Now()</span></div>
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</div>
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<div class="key">
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<span class="kn">≥10</span>
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<div class="kl">
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background senders per gap, scaled to network size, each a naive
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fee-optimising payer moving liquidity we never see
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</div>
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<div class="kf">amounts log-uniform, dust to half a channel</div>
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</div>
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<div class="key hi">
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<span class="kn">0.42<span class="u">was 0.59</span></span>
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<div class="kl">
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what the champions now average across validation and test, down from
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0.59 on the static hard corpus — drift costs everyone
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</div>
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<div class="kf">headroom the evolution run can claim</div>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="prose">
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<h3>The clock</h3>
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<p>
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The simulator previously had no notion of time at all. Attempts happened
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in sequence and nothing aged, which quietly disabled half of lnd's design:
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<span class="mono">PenaltyHalfLife</span> and the bimodal estimator's
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seven-day liquidity relaxation are functions of elapsed time, and elapsed
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time was always zero. lnd's mission control now runs on a virtual clock
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that advances ten simulated minutes between payments and one second per
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attempt, so its decay genuinely operates. Candidates get the same clock
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through <span class="mono">view.Now()</span> — available, not suggested.
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</p>
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<h3>The traffic</h3>
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<p>
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Between our payments, a seeded population of background senders pays each
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other: naive fee-optimising routers, at least ten per gap or one per ten
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nodes, with amounts drawn log-uniformly from roughly dust up to half a
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channel. Their transfers move hidden balances under per-channel
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conservation, so liquidity sloshes without being created. Crucially the
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process is seeded and replayed, so lnd, the seed router and every candidate
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face the identical sequence of exogenous events — the drift is part of the
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scenario, not a source of noise between contestants.
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</p>
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<p>
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The effect on the difficulty is immediate. On the static hard corpus the
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champions averaged about <span class="mono">0.59</span> across validation
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and test; on the drift corpus they average about
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<span class="mono">0.42</span>, with attempts per payment up from nine or
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ten to around twelve. Nobody is comfortable here, which is the point: a
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harder environment is the only thing that can pay for a better algorithm.
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</p>
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<div class="note">
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<h4>the caveat this experiment exists to remove</h4>
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<p>
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Every result on the <a class="link" href="findings.html">findings</a>
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page was produced in a world without drift, and the champions' complete
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absence of time logic was partly an artifact of that world. Hard evidence
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bounds cannot go stale if nothing changes them, so evolution was right
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about the environment it was given — which is not the same as being right
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about mainnet. This page is the test of exactly that.
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</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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</div>
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</section>
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<!-- ================= 02 · BASELINE ================= -->
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<section id="baseline">
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<div class="shell">
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<div class="sec-head">
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<div class="sec-no">02</div>
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<h2>The baseline, before any evolution</h2>
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<p class="sec-sub">
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Five routers, none of which has ever seen drift, scored on the new corpus.
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Two findings fell out before the evolution run even started.
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</p>
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</div>
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<figure>
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<div class="fig-head">
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<span class="fig-t">Composite objective on the drift corpus</span>
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<span class="fig-n">Fig. 1 · higher is better</span>
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</div>
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<div class="plot resp" id="fig-drift"></div>
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<div class="legend">
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<span class="item"><i style="background:#a83f22"></i> evolved by GEPA</span>
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<span class="item"><i style="background:#8a8175"></i> baseline (lnd, or hand-written)</span>
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</div>
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<figcaption>
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Note the axis: it tops out at <span class="mono">0.5</span>, where the
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static-corpus figures ran to 0.8. Everything got harder. The ordering did
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not change — the three evolved routers cluster at the top of both splits,
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the hand-written seed sits in the middle, and lnd's production stack is
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last <b>even though this is the first environment where its decay actually
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runs</b>.
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<div class="tw wide">
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<table class="data">
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<caption>exp-008 baseline · corpus-drift, 8 validation and 8 held-out test files</caption>
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<thead>
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<tr>
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<th>router</th>
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<th class="num">drift val</th>
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<th class="num">drift test</th>
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<th class="num">test success</th>
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<th class="num">test attempts</th>
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</tr>
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</thead>
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<tbody>
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<tr>
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<td>lnd production stack<span class="sub">Dijkstra + mission control, decay now live</span></td>
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<td class="num" data-l="drift val">0.213</td><td class="num" data-l="drift test">0.203</td>
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<td class="num" data-l="test success">0.388</td><td class="num" data-l="test attempts">34.5</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td>hand-written seed<span class="sub">~300 lines, cheapest path + blacklist</span></td>
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<td class="num" data-l="drift val">0.320</td><td class="num" data-l="drift test">0.377</td>
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<td class="num" data-l="test success">0.592</td><td class="num" data-l="test attempts">48.3</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td>hb1<span class="sub">evolved, hard-regime specialist</span></td>
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<td class="num" data-l="drift val">0.387</td><td class="num" data-l="drift test">0.455</td>
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<td class="num" data-l="test success">0.642</td><td class="num" data-l="test attempts">11.8</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="best">
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<td>mx_c3<span class="sub">evolved, generalist</span></td>
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<td class="num" data-l="drift val">0.380</td><td class="num" data-l="drift test">0.457</td>
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<td class="num" data-l="test success">0.642</td><td class="num" data-l="test attempts">12.3</td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td>gen2<span class="sub">evolved, prose-seeded lineage</span></td>
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<td class="num" data-l="drift val">0.383</td><td class="num" data-l="drift test">0.456</td>
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<td class="num" data-l="test success">0.642</td><td class="num" data-l="test attempts">12.7</td>
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</tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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</div>
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<div class="prose">
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<h3 style="margin-top:2em">Finding one: hard bounds degrade gracefully</h3>
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<p>
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The prediction worth taking seriously was that interval beliefs would
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<em>break</em> under drift. A <span class="mono">lowerOK</span> bound is an
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assertion that an amount definitely passes; once strangers move the
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balance, that assertion can simply be false, and a router that treats it as
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proven has no mechanism for doubt.
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</p>
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<p>
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It does not break. The three evolved routers hold roughly
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<strong>2.2×</strong> lnd's objective on the held-out split at
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<strong>a third of the attempts</strong> — 0.456 against 0.203, twelve
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attempts against 34.5. The reason is asymmetry of cost: a stale bound that
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is too optimistic costs one failed attempt, after which the evidence
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updates and the interval narrows again. A stale bound is not a wrong model,
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it is one retry.
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</p>
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<h3>Finding two: lnd's decay does not close the gap</h3>
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<p>
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This is the sharper result. The obvious defence of mission control's
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time-decayed penalties was that our simulator never let them work. Now they
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work, over ten-minute gaps against liquidity that genuinely moved, and the
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production stack is still last — 0.203 on the held-out split, at 34.5
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attempts per payment for a 0.388 success rate.
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</p>
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<p>
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So decay <em>as lnd implements it</em> is not the missing ingredient.
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Whatever drift-awareness helps in this environment has to look different
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from a scalar pair-penalty healing on a one-hour half-life. Note also what
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the champions' 0.642 success at twelve attempts says about the ceiling:
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drift costs everyone success, and there is a lot of unclaimed room between
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0.456 and a router that handles staleness deliberately.
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</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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</section>
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<!-- ================= 03 · THE QUESTION ================= -->
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<section id="question">
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<div class="shell">
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<div class="sec-head">
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<div class="sec-no">03</div>
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<h2>The run in flight, and what each answer would mean</h2>
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<p class="sec-sub">
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<span class="mono">code_drift1</span>: pure GEPA, codex/gpt-5.6-sol
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reflection, small seed plus the insights prompt, 400 evaluations on
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corpus-drift. Live now.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="prose">
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<p>
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The setup deliberately does not prescribe the answer. The reflection prompt
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describes drift neutrally — payments happen, time passes, other senders
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exist — and flags the hard-bounds insight as something learned in a static
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world, a caveat rather than an instruction. Nothing tells the model to add
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decay, and nothing tells it not to. The success criterion is beating the
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champions on the held-out drift test; the interesting part comes after,
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when the winner is read for any function of
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<span class="mono">view.Now()</span> or of evidence age.
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</p>
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<p>
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Three outcomes, all of them worth having:
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="ledger">
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<div class="ledger-row">
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<div class="verb"><b>Decay</b>re-emerges</div>
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<div class="ledger-cell now">
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<h4>what we would see</h4>
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<p>
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Evolved candidates that discount old evidence on a clock, in some form
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— a half-life on confidence, an expiry on bounds, a penalty that heals.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="ledger-cell next">
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<h4>what it would mean</h4>
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<p>
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A vindication of lnd's rationale from an independent search, with
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<strong>evolved constants</strong> instead of hand-picked ones. The
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interesting artifact would be the half-life it chooses, and how it
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compares to the shipped one hour.
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</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="ledger-row">
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<div class="verb"><b>Something better</b>emerges</div>
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<div class="ledger-cell now">
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<h4>what we would see</h4>
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<p>
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Not decay but a different treatment of staleness: intervals that widen
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with elapsed time, confidence that erodes while the bound itself is
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kept, re-probing scheduled by age rather than by failure.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="ledger-cell next">
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<h4>what it would mean</h4>
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<p>
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The best case, and a <strong>concrete design proposal for lnd</strong>:
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keep the evidence, age the certainty. That is a change mission control
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could adopt without giving up its own structure.
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</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="ledger-row">
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<div class="verb"><b>Intervals</b>still win untouched</div>
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<div class="ledger-cell now">
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<h4>what we would see</h4>
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<p>
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The winner improves on the champions without referencing time at all —
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better attribution, better retries, better splitting, and still no
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clock.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="ledger-cell next">
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<h4>what it would mean</h4>
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<p>
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That time-decay is <strong>overweighted</strong> in current designs:
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evidence-count confidence would be carrying the load even when the
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evidence really can go stale. Also the least comfortable result to
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publish, which is a reason to state the criterion in advance.
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</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="prose">
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<div class="sidenote">
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<h4>what this run cannot settle</h4>
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<p>
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One drift model, and a naive one: background senders optimise fees and
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nothing else, there is no fee-market feedback, no channel opens or
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closes, and no correlation between their traffic and ours. The corpus is
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eight validation and eight test files from a single seed. A router that
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wins here has beaten <em>this</em> drift process, and the next honest
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objection is that real mainnet flow is bursty and correlated in ways this
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model does not capture.
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</p>
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<p>
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The verdict section of
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<span class="mono">exp-008-drift-evolution.md</span> is deliberately
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empty until the run finishes. Live telemetry — score curve, lineage,
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per-candidate diffs — is on the
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<a class="link" href="index.html#run">overview page</a>.
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</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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</div>
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</section>
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<div class="shell">
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<div class="readnext">
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<div class="k">read next</div>
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<a class="big" href="findings.html">Findings: what the evolved routers kept, dropped, and invented</a>
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<p>
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The settled results behind this experiment — mainnet validation, the
|
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paradigm-over-parameters pivot, an anatomy of the evolved algorithms against
|
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lnd's, and the paradigm ceiling that made changing the environment the only
|
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move left.
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</p>
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</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
|
||
</main>
|
||
|
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<div class="shell">
|
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<footer class="site-footer">
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<span>lnd × GEPA — Lightning routing evolution</span>
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<span><a href="index.html">overview</a> · <a href="findings.html">findings</a> · <a href="index.html#run">live run</a></span>
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</footer>
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</div>
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<script src="app.js"></script>
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</body>
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</html>
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