v1.0 — Initial published methodology

What this is

Version 1.0 is the methodology the Machine Economy Index launched with, on 2026-07-15. Every later version refines it and is published with its own note. This page records what launched, and where each change since is explained.

What launched

14 metrics, each fetched from a primary source on a fixed cadence, in four components — Payment, Physical, Legal and Macro — each weighted equally, at 0.25, and combined with a geometric mean rather than an average.

The Legal component is the Legal Rail Readiness Score (LRRS): a GDP-weighted coverage model across five categories of legal instrument. It asks what proportion of the world economy operates under a legal framework that can accommodate an autonomous economic agent. At launch, 30 jurisdictions were in scope, representing about 89% of world GDP.

What changed since

• v1.1 — ERC-8004 concentration cap (2026-08-01): Per-address concentration cap on ERC-8004 registry activity, re-derived anchor, and nascent-floor launch-band exception.
• v1.2 — ERC-8004 dual-cap basis (2026-08-11): Dual-cap (address ∧ content-origin) on ERC-8004 registry activity, re-derived anchor, and chronic-farming disclosure.
• v1.3 — The LRRS version (2026-10-20): LRRS findings dated to their legal events, current operating evidence for sandboxes, laws counted from commencement, general sandboxes with AI participants, and every EU member surveyed — with the restated LRRS and MEI and every finding.

The record

The July report, The Machine Economy: A First Reading, was published under v1.0 on 2026-07-15, with the MEI at 32.6 as published.

When v1.1 was published, the series from launch was recomputed on its basis, so that it stays comparable through time. The scores computed under v1.0 are retained, permanently, in the v1.0 archive.