Witness

The witness is a process that watches for new trade signatures on the mint and calls breathe when it sees one. It holds a key that pays transaction fees and nothing else. It cannot choose how much the vessel spends or burns, cannot skip a step, and cannot call breathe twice for the same trade. If it stops, nothing is lost; the next caller, whoever that is, triggers a breath that claims everything that accrued in the meantime. The witness is listed as an author because without it the vessel would breathe only when a stranger remembered to call it.