Foundations of Causal Congestion Gravity: Universal Minimal Coupling, Dynamic Self-Contraction, and Thermodynamic Consistency with Einstein's Equations

We propose that gravity and local Lorentz invariance both emerge from information delays on a finite-bandwidth causal network—and that this hypothesis is falsifiable: detecting composition-dependent gravitational redshift at the 10−19 level (set by the Dynamic Self-Contraction error budget) would rule it out. In Causal Congestion Gravity (CCG), energy-momentum congests network bandwidth, encoding delays in a tensor τµν that, under stated coarse-graining assumptions, yields an emergent metric gµν. We show that when all matter couples universally to this emergent metric (Universal Minimal Coupling), local clocks and rulers dynamically self-contract to preserve measured light-speed c—yielding local relativity as a dynamical result within the adiabatic domain (Dynamic Self-Contraction). A thermodynamic closure then recovers Einstein's equation with G fixed by entropy density. The weak-field limit reproduces Newtonian gravity (Φ = −c2σ), standard light-bending (γ = 1), and tensor gravitational waves at speed c. Claims are restricted to the adiabatic domain; strong-field extensions follow in Paper II