Bonding curves as ALife organisms · visualization gallery

Visualization gallery for RQ2 of the cadCAD Foundation research proposal. Each figure maps an ALife / cybernetics concept onto a bonding-curve mechanic, grounded in the ALIFE 2025 papers in ../../Papers/.

Synthetic data throughout. Regenerate with python3 generate.py. Sister gallery covering all four tracks: ../index.html.

→ Deep dive: BC2-BC8 expansion — 21 supporting figures + mechanism, cadCAD wiring, plausible findings, paper anchors for each of the seven topics.

IAnatomy & vital signs

Establishes the metaphor with a single illustrative organism. These are the figures that go in the abstract, the public article intro, and the conference-talk first slide.

BC0Anatomy of a bonding curve

anatomy Annotated schematic of the canonical price-supply curve with each mechanism labeled as an organ: mint/burn = mouth, reserve invariant = skeleton, price boundary = skin, governance = nervous system, fork = reproduction.

grounding: proposal §2.1 (ALife-cryptoeconomics convergence)

BC1Vital-signs panel

vitals Hospital-monitor view of a single curve: price, reserve, supply, tx rate, holders, gov-quorum, composite health — across a shock event. Reads as "is this organism well?" at a glance.

grounding: organism-level homeostasis (proposal RQ2)

BC2Lifecycle with cause-of-death

vitals Eight organisms across five life-phases (deploy · growth · maturity · adapt · senescence) with mortality annotated by cause (bank run, peg break, gov shutdown, arb attack, deprecation).

grounding: proposal §2.1, lifeform framing

BC3Homeostasis response — recovery after shock

vitals Reserve / target ratio plotted post-shock for four curve archetypes (brittle, slow recovery, damped optimum, oscillator). Operationalizes "is this curve a viable organism?" as a measurable recovery-time signature.

grounding: organism homeostasis — original to this proposal

IIPopulation ecology — curves as a community

Moves from single organism to multi-curve dynamics. The proposal's most novel contribution lives here: treating an ecosystem of curves as an ALife population.

BC4Niche specialization radar

ecology Four curve archetypes (speculative · stable · gov DAO · ecosystem LP) on six trait axes. Shape-recognition makes niche differentiation immediate and intuitive.

grounding: ecological-niche framing — supports RQ2

BC5Partner-trading matrix

ecology Inter-curve trade-volume heatmap reveals trading cliques and bridge-curves. Same instrument the ALife community uses to study partner-choice cooperation in agent populations.

paper: Nishimoto 2025 — Partner Choice Cooperation

BC6Lotka-Volterra dyad — predator & prey curves

ecology Speculative curves (prey) vs arbitrageur curves (predator) coupled through cross-trading. Time series + phase portrait — the textbook ALife/eco visualization with a crypto interpretation.

grounding: classical ALife framing, original to this proposal

BC7Mimesis tree — curves copying successful mechanisms

ecology Directed graph of curves with copy-edges colored by the imitated mechanism (slope, reserve-ratio, vesting, combos). Node colour = descendant fitness. Visual claim: imitation tracks the fitness gradient in the curve population.

paper: Carr et al. 2025 — Cybernetic Mimesis

IIIEvolution & adaptation

Where the cadCAD evolutionary-search engine (RQ1) and the bonding-curve framing (RQ2) meet. These are the figures that justify the M2 milestone results in the technical report.

BC8MAP-Elites archive of curves

evolution Behaviour-space tiled by (price volatility × holder gini), colour = treasury-solvency fitness, cell text = elite reserve_ratio param. One figure shows discovery, diversity, and parameter-prescription.

paper: Anne et al. 2025 — Generational Adversarial MAP-Elites

BC9Cooperation-cost landscape

evolution Non-monotone payoff curve across coordination level — the "lock-in dip" between competitive and cooperative regimes shows up explicitly. Directly answers: does multi-curve coordination always pay?

paper: Cimpeanu et al. 2025 — Hidden Price of Cooperation

BC10Hypernetwork self-modification — curves evolve their own shape

evolution Six generations of one curve under a meta-policy that modifies its own slope/exponent each step. Mutation annotation per generation makes the self-improvement loop legible — the curve isn't just evolved; it evolves itself.

paper: Pedersen et al. 2025 — Hypernetworks That Evolve Themselves

IVMortality

The death side of the lifeform metaphor. Borrows clinical-research language (survival analysis) for crypto and produces the clearest "this is biology" framing.

BC11Mortality survival curves — Kaplan-Meier-style

mortality Stepwise survival probability over time, stratified by cause of death + censoring marks for surviving cohorts. Operationalizes the "death" half of the metaphor in a rigorous statistical instrument.

grounding: lifeform framing — original to this proposal

VBridge — curve as active-inference agent

The figure that closes the RQ2 loop: a single bonding curve fully reframed as a pymdp / Active Blockference agent. Anchors the proposal's theoretical claim in one image.

BC12Curve-as-active-inference-agent — RQ2 mapping figure

agent Composite: pymdp A/B/C/D generative-model matrices, the active-inference mapping (states / observations / actions / preferences spelled out), expected-free-energy decomposition into epistemic and pragmatic value, and the converging policy posterior.

paper: Smekal et al. 2023 — Active Blockference (proposal §2.3)

Pick list

For the ALIFE 2026 paper hero

BC0 anatomy + BC8 MAP-Elites + BC11 mortality. Three slots covering the metaphor, the empirical engine, and the lifeform claim.

For the public article / blog

BC0 anatomy + BC2 lifecycle + BC6 Lotka-Volterra. The accessible-then-vivid trio — anatomy frames it, lifecycle makes it concrete, predator-prey sells the eco-system claim to non-specialists.

For the cadCAD Foundation milestone report

BC3 homeostasis + BC8 MAP-Elites + BC12 curve-as-agent. Hard claims: stability is measurable, evolution discovered specific elites, active-inference bridge is concrete.