From 7d09fa8b7c973a9b9be158882b322595e41c4412 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:53 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 01/24] Open P1-001 v1.1 as a verbatim copy of v1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The amendment of 2026-09-22 is applied to this file one item at a time, so each item of the instrument is a reviewable commit and the items can be adopted as a whole or item by item under the instrument's own terms. v1.0 stays in place and operative: nothing here is adopted until the delegates vote under §15.1. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 433 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 433 insertions(+) create mode 100644 P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..54d4a1e --- /dev/null +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -0,0 +1,433 @@ +# Bylaws of Network Theory Applied Research Institute, Inc. + +**P1-001 · Version 1.0 · 2026-08-31** + +Prepared and adopted by the founder board as a bootstrap act under §16.1, and recorded in the governance registry under §9.5. Version numbering restarts at 1.0: this is the first instrument written to the Janus Facing Architecture, and it supersedes the P1-001 v6.0 through v8.0 line, which is archived rather than amended. Like every bootstrap act, it stands open to the membership under §2.3. + +--- + +## Preamble + +Janus Facing Architecture assigns this organization a precise seat: the protocol tier of the Governance layer — a nonprofit, 501(c)(3), copyleft software stewardship organization, governed by these bylaws. The relationships between its operator-members is the architecture's Governance orchestration. The Governance frontend is currently hosted in Slack, granted by the Salesforce Corporation. A custom platform is being developed to replace this proprietary software dependency. + +--- + +## Article I — The Corporation + +**1.1 Name and identity.** The corporation is Network Theory Applied Research Institute, Inc. ("NTARI" or "the Institute"), a nonprofit corporation with its principal office in Louisville, Kentucky, holding federal employer identification number 92-3047136. + +**1.2 Authorities referenced.** The Institute is incorporated under the Kentucky nonprofit corporation law, KRS Chapter 273, and is recognized as exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The articles of incorporation carry the provisions those authorities require. These bylaws restate none of that language. + +**1.3 Registered office and agent.** The Institute maintains the registered office and registered agent that KRS Chapter 273 requires. Their current identities are those on file with the Kentucky Secretary of State and are not restated here. + +**1.4 Purpose.** The Institute exists to steward the Janus Facing Architecture and the commons built on it: + +(a) to hold, maintain, and amend the official document of the Janus Facing Architecture and its executable conformance suite; + +(b) to steward JFA software as a free software commons under copyleft terms; + +(c) to conduct and publish research on network systems, deliberative infrastructure, and endogenous economics; and + +(d) to educate the public in the same. + +**1.5 Defined instruments.** In these bylaws, "the official document" means [janus-facing-architecture.md](../JFA/janus-facing-architecture.md) as stewarded by the Institute; "the twelve lines" means the section of the official document titled "The Lines That Cannot Be Crossed"; "the conformance suite" means the executable suite and invariant registry that verify the official document; "the dispute-mechanics design" means the design recorded in [jfa-dispute-mechanics.md](../JFA/jfa-dispute-mechanics.md). + +--- + +## Article II — Principles + +These principles are operative rules of interpretation. Every other provision of these bylaws is read to serve them. + +**2.1 Shared Responsibility.** The community that coordinates is the same community that checks the coordination. The two functions are exchanged continuously among the members and are never split into rulers and ruled. No organ created by these bylaws may become a body that only decides and is never answerable. + +**2.2 Gravity.** Each layer of the architecture — and each organ of this Institute — is disciplined by the cost of prosumer's ability to leave it. Where leaving is cheap, competition disciplines and these bylaws impose no gate. Where leaving is dear, the members vote. Where leaving is catastrophic, decisions stay open to challenge. Any provision of these bylaws that creates a power must name its check; a power whose check cannot be identified is void until the membership supplies one. + +**2.3 No decision permanently closed.** No decision of the membership is permanently closed. Any member may bring a decided matter back before the body under §6.7. + +**2.4 The privacy floor in governance.** The shared record of the architecture carries no narratives and no identities — hashes, types, timestamps, and references only. The Institute's own public proceedings honor the same floor: filings, ballots, and published records of proceedings identify parties by reference, never by personal information beyond what the proceeding itself requires. + +**2.5 Append-only governance record.** The Institute forgives by annotating, never by erasing. Minutes, ballots, recognitions, publications, and decisions of record are corrected by annotation; no record of a governance act is deleted or rewritten. + +--- + +## Article III — Membership + +**3.1 Membership Types.** Membership in the Institute is obtained by operating a federated instance of JFA software, or by prosumer standing in the Governance layer under §3.8. Orchestrators run software that links operators across regions and cultures while operators run frontend software that prosumers (users) interact with. Despite the functional heirarcy, the two operating types have equal standing in governance. Where these bylaws distinguish the paths, an operating member is a member by federated instance and a prosumer member is a member under §3.8. + +**3.2 Federated instance.** An instance is federated when all of the following are true: + +(a) complys with membership duties in section §10. + +(b) maintains at least two independent witnesses hired from the substrate layer; an instance with fewer must label itself unfederated and does not qualify; + +(c) commits its hashes to the public chain distributed across the substrate; + +(d) its source, including modifications, is published as copyleft license requires; and + +(e) its operation does not cross any of the twelve lines. + +**3.3 Recognition.** Membership begins upon recognition by the office of the Secretary. Recognition is ministerial, not discretionary: the Secretary verifies §3.2 for an operating member, or the sealed exchange that §3.8 requires for a prosumer member, from the public chain and the published record, and records the recognition in the governance registry (§9.5). A refusal to recognize must state which condition failed and is challengeable through Article XII. + +**3.4 One member, one vote.** Each member holds one vote in each federation to which it belongs, and never more than one there however many instances it operates in that layer. An operating member belongs to the federation of every layer it operates; a prosumer member belongs to the Governance federation alone. A federation's decision is carried to the Institute by its delegate under §5.3, so headcount decides within a federation and never beyond it. Governance weight, like credit, is never bought. + +**3.5 Operating members are operators.** An operating member is the person or entity responsible for the operation of its instance, and its membership carries the duties of Article X for every platform economy it hosts. A prosumer member operates no instance and carries no duty under Article X. + +**3.6 Lapse.** Membership lapses when the member's last federated instance ceases to satisfy §3.2 and is not restored within ninety days. Lapse is recorded by annotation, with its kind — ceased, lapsed, or expelled — and is not an erasure of the member's history. A lapsed member is readmitted by the same recognition path as a new member, except where Article XII governs. + +**3.7 Continuous exchange of roles.** Every member is simultaneously a coordinator of the network and a checker of its coordination. No class of membership may be created whose function is only one of the two. Prosumer membership is not such a class: a prosumer member coordinates the network by transacting on it and checks that coordination by voting in the Governance channel. + +**3.8 Prosumer membership.** A prosumer of a federated platform is a member of the Institute in the Governance layer, and in that layer alone, upon recognition under §3.3. Recognition requires at least one sealed exchange committed to the public chain, verified from the chain and never from an operator's assertion, and is reckoned per person rather than per account. Prosumer membership carries the vote of §3.4 and the candidacy of §8.3, and no duty under Article X. A prosumer member decides every matter the Governance federation decides, the amendment of these bylaws under §15.1 included — the governed hold the vote on the structure that governs them. Its weight is bounded not by subject matter but by the delegate channel of §5.3: the Governance federation carries one vote of five however large its roll grows. It lapses when the member so elects, or when no sealed exchange of that member stands on a federated platform and none is restored within ninety days; lapse is recorded by annotation under §3.6. + +--- + +## Article IV — Prosumer Standing + +**4.1 Rights that never require membership.** The architecture grants standing to prosumers directly, and nothing in these bylaws conditions those rights on membership in the Institute. Without being a member, a prosumer may: + +(a) verify any commitment on the public chain against content and salt held in their own records; + +(b) file a dispute as a record holder of an exchange, and rate an adjudicator's conduct, as the dispute-mechanics design provides; + +(c) appeal a trust suspension or contest an expulsion referral through the procedure of Article XII; and + +(d) address the appropriate Federation Channel in any proceeding that concerns them. + +**4.2 Standing, and the franchise.** Prosumer standing under §4.1 is voice and process, and requires no membership. The vote is not part of that standing: a prosumer who takes up Governance-layer membership under §3.8 holds the vote as a member, on the terms of §3.4, and votes on every matter the Governance Federation Channel decides — including the election and recall of the Vice President under §8.3 and expulsion referrals under §12.3. + +**4.3 The Institute serves the standing.** The offices and organs of the Institute are obligated to receive, docket, and process prosumer filings on equal terms with member filings. + +**4.4 The path into membership.** Every operator provides, in the frontend of its platform, the function by which a prosumer takes up Governance-layer membership under §3.8 and thereafter raises business and votes in the Governance Federation Channel — as an operating member joins a federation through the console of §5.3. Withholding that function is a failure of duty under §10.6. + +**4.5 A prosumer's vote is their own.** No operator or orchestrator casts, directs, withholds, or aggregates the vote of a prosumer member, and none conditions service, credit, or standing on how a prosumer member votes. A platform's prosumer-member votes are published as cast, so that a bloc moving together is visible on the record. Doing otherwise is a failure of duty under §10.6 and grounds for referral under §12.3. + +--- + +## Article V — Federation Channels + +**5.1 Federation Channels.** The Institute maintains one Federation Channel for each layer of the architecture: Substrate, Record, Covenant, Governance, and Economy & Information. Each member belongs to the channel of every layer it operates. A channel is where the members of a layer troubleshoot, coordinate security, evolve the shared protocol, and conduct the layer's governance business. The Governance channel comprises, in addition, the prosumer members of §3.8. + +**5.2 The appropriate channel.** Where these bylaws direct a matter to "the appropriate Federation Channel," that is the channel of the layer in which the matter arose; where a matter spans layers, the Governance channel is appropriate. + +**5.3 Federation.** A federation is the community of the members of each layer (substrate, covenant, record, governance, and Economy & Information) — its operators and orchestrators, and in the Governance layer its prosumer members. Members join automatically through a console in the backend of JFA software produced by the Institute. Each federation elects one delegate, who is the director bound to that federation under §7.2. The delegate carries the federation's single vote in every matter these bylaws give to the delegates. A delegate is recallable at any time by vote of the federation that elected them, without cause and with immediate effect. + +**5.4 Officer Responsibilities.** Each officer of the Institute is filled by federation-elected delegates. The federation is the body through which the members continuously check that office: it observes the office's work, and its delegate acts for the office where these bylaws so provide, including §12.5(d). + +**5.5 Federation records.** Orchestrators and operators keep append-only records of their proceedings under §2.5, honoring the privacy floor of §2.4. + +**5.6 Venues.** The Institute's coordination venues — the software in which channels, the federations, and assemblies meet — must be leaveable: the governance record must be exportable whole, and no venue may become a host whose removal could stop the Institute's coordination. A proprietary venue may be used only as a named interim with a committed exit. The venue in force is designated by board policy, which names it, states its interim status, and records the committed exit; changing venues is a policy act and never requires amendment of these bylaws. + +**5.7 How a delegate votes.** A delegate casts their federation's vote as the federation decided it, and casts nothing else. A delegate who casts against their federation's decision, or who casts where the federation reached none, is subject to the recall of §5.3, and the governance registry records the federation's decision beside the vote cast so the two can be compared. Where a federation reaches no decision within the window of §6.4, its delegate abstains and the abstention is recorded. + +--- + +## Article VI — Assemblies and Decisions + +**6.1 Coordination, synchronous and asynchronous.** The membership acts in synchronous assembly or by asynchronous ballot. The two have equal force, and the body does not adjourn between them: the Institute stands in continuous session under §6.3. + +**6.2 Annual assembly.** The membership assembles at least once each year to receive the reports of the officers and the Board and to take up the business of the Institute. Directors are elected by their own federations under §6.8, not by the assembly. + +**6.3 Continuous session.** The federations and the delegates stand in continuous session in the Institute's governance venue. No matter requires a meeting to be called and no assembly is special: any member may put a matter before a federation to which it belongs at any time, and the matter opens for decision on notice under §6.4 and is decided under §6.5. Voting is conducted asynchronously, each matter establishing a voting window during which members cast their own votes. No member may delegate or assign their vote to another; a federation's delegate carries the federation's decision under §5.7 and never a member's vote. + +**6.4 Notice and window.** Notice of any assembly or ballot states the matter to be decided and is published to the appropriate Federation Channel at least one week before the vote closes. The default voting window for an asynchronous ballot is one week. + +**6.5 Quorum and majority.** A matter before the Institute is decided by the delegates, each federation casting one vote through its delegate under §5.3. The delegates' ballot is valid when at least three federations cast, and except where these bylaws require more the matter is decided by a majority of the votes cast. + +Within a federation, the matter is decided by a majority of votes cast by its members. A federation's ballot is valid when notice under §6.4 was given and at least one member casts; in the Governance federation, at least one operating member must be among them. A federation's small roll is not a defect to be cured by a higher bar: the record of each ballot states the roll the federation then held, so a thin decision is visible rather than hidden. + +Where these bylaws give a matter to a channel or a federation rather than to the Institute — including expulsion referrals under §12.3 and the petitions of §12.5 — that body decides it by the same internal majority and no delegate vote is taken. + +**6.6 Open proceedings.** Assemblies and ballots are open to observation by prosumers and the public, subject to the privacy floor of §2.4. + +**6.7 Reopening a decided matter.** Any member may, by filing in the appropriate Federation Channel, bring any decided matter back before the body; the filing states what decision is challenged and what outcome is sought, and the matter enters the next assembly or ballot. If the body reaffirms its decision without change, the same member may not reopen the same matter for ninety days; any other member may. A matter may not be argued using verbiage that has been defeated more than once. + +**6.8 Elections and recall.** Each director is elected and recalled by the federation to which §7.2 binds the office, by majority of votes cast in that federation under §6.5 — the Vice President by the Governance federation, in which prosumer members vote under §3.4. Recall requires no cause and takes effect immediately. + +**6.9 Deliberation procedure.** The Institute maintains a procedure for deliberating substantive matters, set by policy and resident with the governance venue rather than in these bylaws, so that it may be tuned as the venue changes. Whatever procedure is in force must satisfy the rule the covenant applies to trade: a single documented harm suffices to reopen a synthesis, and harm is never averaged into it. A procedure that averages harm, or that closes a synthesis over a documented harm, is void to that extent. + +--- + +## Article VII — Board Governance + +**7.1 Delegates, not principals.** The directors are recallable delegates of the bodies that elect them. The Board conducts the affairs of the Institute between assemblies; it does not hold what Article XV reserves to the members. + +**7.2 Composition and term.** The Board consists of no fewer than three and no more than five directors. Directors are elected at the annual assembly for one-year terms and serve until their successors are elected. Each delegate is elected to their bound federation and layer: (President-Covenant, Vice president- Governance, Secretary-Record, Workspace Administrator-Substrate, Treasurer-E&I). There are no term limits; the recall of §6.8 is the discipline. + +**7.3 Vacancies.** The Board may fill a vacancy until the next assembly or ballot, at which the membership fills it. + +**7.4 Action.** The Board acts in meetings, synchronous or asynchronous, on one week's notice to its members, a majority constituting a quorum and a majority of those present deciding. Board proceedings are open to observation by members, and their records are kept under §2.5. The Board holds no recurring meeting requirement: its action may be taken continuously by written consent under KRS 273.375, recorded under §2.5 like any other proceeding. + +**7.5 Reserved powers.** The Board may not amend these bylaws, amend the official document, expel any party, dispose of the Institute's stewardship of the official document or the conformance suite, or dissolve the Institute. Those powers belong to the membership alone. Where these bylaws give a matter to the delegates, a director casting their federation's decision under §5.7 acts as that federation's delegate and not as the Board; this section bars the Board from deciding such a matter on its own motion. + +**7.6 No gate not named.** The Board may not insert itself as an approval step in any process these bylaws or the official document define without it — including recognition under §3.3 and stage changes under Article XI. + +--- + +## Article VIII — Directors + +**8.1 The offices.** The directors of the Institute are a President, a Vice President, workspace administrator, a Secretary, and a Treasurer. Officers are elected by the membership federations at the annual assembly for one-year terms and are recallable under §6.8. + +**8.2 President.** Elected by the Covenant Federation, the office of the President directs research and development (RAND) on the Covenant Layer protocol, oversees the LBTAS API serving compliant covenant assessments to the network, and its socioeconomic effects on the federated communities. + +**8.3 Vice President.** Elected by the Governance Federation, the office of the Vice President enforces these bylaws with powers specified in Article XII. Any member of that federation may stand for the office, prosumer members of §3.8 included. + +**8.4 Secretary.** Elected by the Record Federation the Secretariat keeps governance records, performs the ministerial recognition of members under §3.3, maintains the governance registry of §9.5, receives and records the publications of Article XI, and issues the notices these bylaws require. + +**8.5 Treasurer.** Elected by the Federation of Economy & Information, the office of the Treasurer keeps the accounts of the Institute, report to annual assemblies, and complies with authorities referenced in §1.2. + +**8.6 Workspace Administrator.** Elected by the Substrate Federation, the office of Workspace Administration oversees RAND of the substrate protocol, substrate orchestration and the Governance Layer frontend. + +--- + +## Article IX — Stewardship of the Architecture + +**9.1 What the Institute stewards.** The Institute stewards the official document and software stack of janus Facing Architecture, the conformance suite and its invariant registry, the concept triage record, and the living open-questions document. + +**9.2 Amending the official document.** The official document is amended only by a majority vote of the delegates, each federation having decided under §6.5. An amendment is not adopted until the conformance suite passes against the amended text. A concept retired by the triage record stays retired unless the same act that reintroduces it amends the triage record and says so. + +**9.3 The open-questions obligation.** The Institute keeps its open-questions document current. A question raised in governance and not resolved is entered; a stale open-questions document means the project has stopped describing itself honestly, and any member may raise staleness as business in the Governance channel. + +**9.4 Licensing floor.** JFA software is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL-3). The Institute never relicenses either into proprietary terms, accepts contributions only under terms consistent with this floor, and signs no agreement that would let any party — including the Institute — close what is open. + +**9.5 The governance registry.** The Secretary maintains a public, append-only governance registry recording: recognitions and lapses of membership; the publications of Article XI; expulsions, readmissions, and re-entries under Article XII; and each amendment of the official document and of these bylaws. The registry honors §2.4. + +**9.6 Conformance and the name.** The Institute recognizes a claim of conformance only where executable tests cite the invariant registry's IDs; every other claim it names self-attested. A build that crosses any of the twelve lines is not a smaller JFA; the Institute does not recognize it, federate with it, or count its operation toward membership. + +**9.7 The Institute's money is not the federation's money.** The Institute's own funds are ordinary funds held and disbursed in the exogenous currency of its accounts. The Institute issues no currency, holds no community's credit, and is never a counterparty, custodian, or clearer in any exchange on the architecture. + +**9.8 The covenant.** The covenant layer of the architecture is the Leveson-Based Trade Assessment Scale ("LBTAS"). Where these bylaws refer to the covenant, to a covenant assessment, or to a covenant rating, they refer to LBTAS as the official document defines it. The Institute stewards LBTAS under §9.1, licenses it under §9.4, and amends it only under §9.2. + +**9.9 The scale.** LBTAS is a standing promise not to harm, not a marketing score. It adapts a safety methodology in which harm is a discrete event to be surfaced, never an average to be smoothed. Its scale is six meaning-loaded ordinal levels from −1 through +4, each carrying a fixed definition rather than an interchangeable point on a continuous axis. Its lowest rating, −1, means a party was harmed, exploited, or served with no discipline or with malicious intent. + +**9.10 The covenant's binding rules.** No implementation is conformant to the covenant, and no member's operation satisfies §3.2(e), unless all of the following hold: + +(a) **Reputation is never explicit.** No platform publishes a reputation. What it publishes is the record: the count of ratings at each of the six levels together with the total, displayed as the chart of §9.11. Reputation is what a prosumer derives for themselves by reading that chart — their own judgment of a peer's recorded rating history, never a figure the platform computes, asserts, or ranks. No system average, per-category mean, or overall score exists in any return value, report, or display. + +(b) **A −1 is the breach and it is accountable.** The −1 category in an LBTAS Chart is color coded red to visually indicate, along with the negative sign, the harm category. Harm is surfaced and never diluted, and every exchange that received one must be named. A −1 carries a justifying comment of five hundred words or less, required where the rating is written; a −1 without a comment is refused, and an overlong comment is refused rather than silently shortened. Levels 0 through +4 require no comment. Under §2.4, only the comment's hash reaches the shared record; the text stays in the rating party's own erasable records and is verified against that hash on read. + +(c) **Assessment is bidirectional and symmetric.** Both parties to a sealed exchange rate each other, every claim is answerable, and a dismissal is a visible annotation, never an erasure. Where one party adjudicates or otherwise acts upon another, the rated party retains an answer path. + +(d) **Ratings are typed by relation.** A rating carries the relation in which it was made so no reader collapses one relation into another. Trade, adjudication conduct, and verdict satisfaction are the relations of an economic deployment; knowledge claim and citation are the relations of an education deployment. A profile serving another domain declares its own relations and is bound by the same rule. Pooling across relations is the average forbidden by (a), committed across types instead of across ratings. + +(e) **Reputation gates whether, never how much.** Reputation decides whether a prosumer transacts on trust. Sizing a commitment belongs to the economy and to the community-wide credit limit of §10.2, which is never derived from reputation. Merging the two rebuilds a credit score and is a breach of this section. + +(f) **Reputation is per-platform and non-portable by default.** Identifiers are platform-scoped key hashes; human-chosen identifiers are refused. Carrying standing across platforms is a decision of the membership, never a default of an implementation. + +**9.11 The LBTAS chart.** The LBTAS chart is the display method for covenant reputation. Within each category, the six levels — −1 through +4 — stand as the column titles, and beneath each column stands the tally of every rating that party has ever received at that level. The −1 column is marked in red, so the harm category is legible by color as well as by sign. The chart displays counts and the total; it displays no score. No column is pooled with another, no category is pooled with another, and no figure summarizing the chart into a single number appears on it or beside it. Where these bylaws make a decision turn on ratings, the mode of the ratings cast serves as the decision rule and is never displayed as a reputation. + +**9.12 Reading is a privileged act.** Submitting a rating and reviewing accumulated records are separate capabilities, authorized separately, and authorization fails closed. + +**9.13 The conformance suite.** The conformance suite is the executable instrument by which the official document is checked against itself. It consists of the runnable suite and the invariant registry it carries. The registry is what gives the official document force: an invariant not in the registry binds nothing, and a claim of conformance that cites no registry identifier is self-attested under §9.6. + +**9.14 The registry and its bindings.** Each registered invariant carries a stable identifier, the section of the official document whose text must bear it, and the binding that states where its executable enforcement lives: + +(a) **Document.** Enforced in full by the suite itself, against the text of the official document. + +(b) **Implementation.** Enforceable only by tests living beside running code. The binding is complete when a repository ships tests citing the identifier. + +(c) **Instrument.** Enforceable only by a governance instrument and its venue tooling. The binding is complete when that instrument and its tooling cite the identifier. + +**9.15 Delegated invariants are reported unbound.** The suite never reports as checked an invariant it does not execute. An invariant bound to implementation or instrument is reported as delegated and unbound until something cites its identifier, and the Institute counts it as unsatisfied for every purpose these bylaws give conformance. The count of bound and unbound invariants is published with each run. Reporting a delegated invariant as passing is self-attestation wearing a test runner, and the Institute does not recognize it. + +**9.16 Amending the registry.** A change to the registry — adding an invariant, retiring one, or altering its identifier, anchor, or binding — is an amendment of the official document and is made under §9.2. An identifier once issued is never reused; a retired identifier stays retired, and where an invariant descends from a retired one, the registry records the lineage. + +**9.17 Maintaining the suite.** Repairs to the suite that leave every identifier, anchor, and binding unchanged are ordinary maintenance, made in the open in the Governance Federation Channel and requiring no ballot. Any member may propose a repair, and any member may run the suite: it is published and executable by anyone under §9.4, and a result no one outside the Institute can reproduce is not a result. + +**9.18 A failing suite is business.** If the suite fails against the current official document, the failure is entered in the open-questions document under §9.3 and stands as business in the Governance Federation Channel until it is resolved by repair of the suite or by amendment of the document. While a failure stands, the Institute recognizes no conformance claim, membership condition, or publication as satisfied by the invariant the failure touches. +--- + +## Article X — Member Duties + +**10.1 Orchestrator Specific.** +**Economic Orchestration** Provide operators with covenant adjudicated cross-platform information markets based on protocol; +**Protocol Involvement** Maintain continuous integration, continuous development (CI/CD) that improves governance and maintains protocol; +**Covenant Compliance** Serve bi-directional Covenant layer assessments at all points where orchestrators and operators exchange information or materials, according to §9.10. + +**10.2 Operator Specific.** +**Protocol Orchestration** Provide prosumers (users) with covenant adjudicated socioeconomic markets based on protocol; +**Orchestration Link** When able, link prosumer communities by broadcasting to an orchestrator; +**Protocol Involvement** maintain CI/CD that improves governance and maintain the protocol; +**Covenant Compliance** Serve bi-directional Covenant layer assessments at all points where orchestrators and operators exchange information or materials according to §9.10, adjudicate covenant breeches between prosumers and execute the remedies an adjudication yields. +**Defaults** annotate defaults on the record by kind — deceased, departed, or adjudicated, unknown — never erasing them; publish the platform's trailing default rate — dead credit created over a recent rolling window as a share of trade volume. +**Credit Setting** When using mutual credit, set the community-wide credit limit: one number for everyone, never set per member, and never derived from reputation +**Custody** Where prosumer funds or collateral are held, disclose in the platform's published rules who holds them, on what terms, and how a prosumer recovers them if the platform ceases to operate; name every third-party processor or custodian in the chain, whether or not the platform touches the funds itself. Escrow is the one stage at which a prosumer's position does not survive the operator, so the trust it requires is answered by disclosure and exit: undisclosed custody is a failure of duty under §10.6 and grounds for referral under §12.3. +**Witnesses** Maintain a ledger of protocol transmissions and pay two randowm witnesses from the substrate layer to monitor the same. +**Ledger.** Maintain third party observation of covenant mediated interactions. +**Governance Access** Provide prosumers a function in the platform frontend to join, raise business in, and vote in the Governance Federation Channel under §4.4, and never cast or direct those votes. + +**10.3 Substrate Commitment.** Purchase storage and processing from a federated Substrate Market or provide your own storage and processing capacity + +**10.4 Adjudication is rated.** Whoever adjudicates is rated on their conduct by both prosumers involved, and the ratings are displayed as the count of outcomes at each rating level, never as one number as a reflection of the entire platform or the witness when witnesses adjudicate. + +**10.5 Dispute windows.** Where an Economy & Information category protocol is silent on its dispute window, the operator's published platform rules set the default window. + +**10.6 Failure of duties.** Persistent failure of the duties of §§10.1–10.3 is a covenant matter first — adjudicated, rated, and disciplined by the market's cheap exit — and a membership matter only where it amounts to loss of a §3.2 condition or grounds for referral under §12.3. + +**10.7 No institutional routing.** The Institute does not supervise, ratify, or pre-clear operators' economic management. The checks are the architecture's own: filings that land on the public chain the moment they are made, publicly adjudicatied reputation, published limits and default rates, and prosumers' freedom to leave. + +**10.8 Copyleft Reporting.** Compliance with the GNU Affero General Public License, copyleft sharing principles + +**10.9 Who adjudicates.** An apparent covenant breach between prosumers of the same platform is adjudicated by that platform's operator, as §10.2 provides. A dispute that crosses platforms is adjudicated at the witness layer, by the witnesses of the exchange in question, and never by either operator: neither is neutral between its own prosumer and another's. Adjudicating witnesses are rated on their conduct under §10.4 exactly as an operator is, and the dispute-mechanics design provides the procedure. + +--- + +## Article XI — Mutual Credit Markets + +**11.1 The gate.** Deployments begin with escrow as the default transaction formatting — collateralized, no negative balances, and no counterparty credit extended. The only trust escrow requires is in the operator's custody of the funds, which §10.2 requires the operator to disclose. + +A deployment switches to a hybrid or full mutual credit system only when all three of the following are true: the operator has built the capacity to manage the stage it is entering, in accordance with local laws; the prosumer network has been notified under §11.3; and the publication required by §11.2 has been made. Until all three are true the switch is not gated, whatever else has been done, and each of the three is a condition of this section for the purposes of §11.4. + +**11.2 Publication is the act.** Publication to the governance registry of the local authorizations to provide mutual credit services — or, where the jurisdiction requires none, of a finding to that effect — is itself the operative act, and authorizes mutual credit transactions across orchestrators. A finding that no authorization is required is an assertion on the record, contestable under §11.4 like any other condition of the gate. + +**11.3 Notification.** The applicable federation must be notified when an operator gives notice to prosumers, no less than thirty days before the switch takes effect. + +**11.4 Challenges to Local Compliance.** Any member, or any prosumer of the deployment, may challenge whether the conditions of §11.1 were in fact met, through the procedure of Article XII. + +**11.5 Hybrid Systems.** In a hybrid deployment, escrow and mutual credit operate across the same system and each prosumer decides which they accept. Compliance with the standards of Article XI and notices of §11.3 is the qualification for hybrid system operation. + +--- + +## Article XII — Discipline, Expulsion, Readmission, and Appeals + +**12.1 What only the Governance Layer may do.** The Office of the Vice President enforces these bylaws across the stack by exercising the following powers. + +**12.2 Audits.** Confirmation of the official record against orchestrators, witnessess, and prosumer records as well as the executed code. The Governance and adjacent Federation(s) involved in an issue may agree to commission hardware inspections. + +**12.3 Expulsion referrals.** An adjudicator's referral of expulsion is filed with the governance federation's frontend channel. The channel decides the expulsion by majority of votes cast. Expulsion is recorded by annotation in the governance registry. While expulsion from a frontend platform does not bar a prosumer or operator from joining another platform or orchestrator, it does not stop an operator or orchestrator from baring them. + +**12.4 What expulsion reaches.** Expulsion does not erase history; the expelled party's record stands, annotated. It does not reach what the architecture guarantees: a member's positions and history survive any frontend, and a community's records survive any operator or orchestrator. + +**12.5 The appeal and readmission procedure.** An individual member blocked from rejoining a specific platform or orchestrator may appeal a trust suspension, a challenge under §11.4, a petition for readmission after suspension, or a petition for re-entry by an expelled or banned operator proceeds as follows: + +(a) **Submission.** The petition is submitted to the office of the Vice President. It contains no personally identifying information; parties and exchanges are cited by reference and hash. + +(b) **Rating period.** The office dockets the petition in the concerned federation channel for a one-week rating period. + +(c) **Ratings.** Each member of the federation may cast one covenant rating of the offense, on the scale of §9.9, whose lowest rating is −1. + +(d) **Decision.** If the mode of the ratings cast is −1, the petition is denied and readmission is barred. Otherwise the federation's delegate decides the petition on the record of the ratings cast, and decides it likewise where no ratings are cast. No petition is granted automatically. + +(e) **Resubmission.** A denied petitioner may resubmit after a ten-week cooldown. + +(f) **Same path for operators.** A banned or expelled operator re-enters by this same path; upon a granted petition, recognition under §3.3 proceeds on its ordinary ministerial terms. + +--- + +## Article XIII — Self-Binding of the Institute + +**13.1 No chokepoint.** The Institute may not hold, own, or operate any single host, account, key, or vendor relationship whose removal could stop the network. Anything the Institute holds must be replaceable without the network noticing. + +**13.2 The record survives the steward.** The official document and the software are licensed such that they survive the Institute; the public chain, the per-party records, and the exportable governance record survive it likewise. No act of the Board or the membership may impair a license already granted or a record already committed. + +**13.3 Succession.** If the Institute dissolves, the membership designates a successor steward for the official document, the conformance suite, and the governance registry before dissolution completes; assets are distributed as the articles of incorporation and the authorities referenced in §1.2 require. Dissolution of the Institute is an event in the governance layer, not in the network: no deployment, currency, record, or exchange depends on the Institute's existence, only the substrate. + +--- + +## Article XIV — Corporate Administration + +**14.1 Fiscal year.** The fiscal year is the calendar year. + +**14.2 Books and records.** The Institute keeps the books and records that KRS Chapter 273 and its federal 501(c)(3) recognition require, alongside the governance registry of §9.5. Members may inspect the Institute's records on reasonable notice. + +**14.3 Conflicts of interest.** Every director, officer, and delegate discloses any interest they hold in a matter before acting on it, and abstains where the interest conflicts. The Board maintains a conflict-of-interest policy consistent with the Institute's federal recognition; disclosures are recorded under §2.5. + +**14.4 Compensation discipline.** Directors serve without compensation for board service. The Institute may compensate staff and contractors reasonably for services rendered, subject to the authorities referenced in §1.2. + +**14.5 Indemnification.** The Institute indemnifies its directors, officers, and delegates to the extent KRS Chapter 273 permits and its federal recognition allows, and may purchase insurance for the purpose. + +**14.6 Nondiscrimination.** Membership recognition, prosumer standing, and every procedure of these bylaws are administered without discrimination; the single standard of §3.1 and the conditions of §3.2 are the only tests of membership. + +**14.7 Lean instrument.** These bylaws are kept lean and auditable, as the official document requires of the code. A provision is added only where it names a power, a duty, or a check that nothing else in the corpus carries; where the official document, the conformance suite, or the dispute-mechanics design already governs a matter, these bylaws cite it rather than restate it. A provision that has become redundant is removed by amendment under Article XV. + +--- + +## Article XV — Amendment + +**15.1 By the membership alone.** These bylaws are amended only by a majority vote of the delegates, each federation having decided under §6.5 with every member of that federation holding the vote, prosumer members included, in a ballot noticed under §6.4 carrying the full text of the amendment. + +**15.2 Subordination.** No amendment may cross the twelve lines, override the official document, or delete the checks that §2.2 requires each power to carry. + +**15.3 Open to challenge.** An adopted amendment, like any decision, remains open under §2.3. + +--- + +## Article XVI — Transition + +**16.1 Bootstrap.** The Network Theory Applied Research Institute is currently administered by a founder board developing the initial JFA stack. Until independent orchestrators/operators recognized under §3.3 are elected to hold federation representation, the founder board exercises the powers of the membership. Each act taken under this authority is recorded in the governance registry as a bootstrap act. Bootstrap acts remain valid but stand open to the membership under §2.3 like any other decision. + +**16.2 End of bootstrap.** The founder board shall be dissolved upon the election of representatives from no less than three federations. Representatives elected before the threshold shall share power with the founder board. Federations must provide E&I and orchestration services before being eligible to elect a representative. A single operator/orchestrator, whether individual or corporation may not elect themselves as a representative. + +**16.3 The Governance channel during bootstrap.** The service prerequisite of §16.2 is written for federations that sell a service, and the Governance federation sells none: it hosts the instrument by which the others are governed. It is therefore eligible to elect its representative when two things are true — a recognized operating member hosts the governance platform, and the function of §4.4 is live on at least one federated platform, so that prosumers can be recognized under §3.8 and vote. Where the Governance federation holds a single operating member, the bar of §16.2 on electing oneself is satisfied by the prosumer members' votes, which that host neither casts nor directs (§4.5); a Governance federation of one operating member and no prosumer members elects no one. The founder board records in the governance registry, as a bootstrap act, the date the channel opened and the roll it then held. + +--- + +## Appendix — Provenance of Demands + +*Informative, not operative. Each structural demand these bylaws answer, and its source in the JFA corpus.* + +| Bylaws provision | Demand | Source | +|---|---|---| +| Preamble, §1.4 | Nonprofit copyleft stewardship org is the Governance protocol tier | Official document, Governance Layer | +| §1.5 | The instruments named and bound: official document, twelve lines, conformance suite, dispute-mechanics design | Concept triage, 2026-08-24 (meta) | +| §2.1 | Shared Responsibility — coordinator and checker are the same body | Official document, Principles | +| §2.2 | Gravity — each layer and organ disciplined by the cost of leaving it | Official document, Principles | +| §2.3, §6.7 | No decision permanently closed | Concept triage, 2026-08-24 resolutions; bylaws-level per 2026-08-27 revision | +| §2.4, §12.5(a) | Privacy floor; no PII in filings | Official document, line 7 (L7); open questions §2, §7 | +| §2.5, §10.2 (Defaults), §12.4 | Append-only; forgive by annotation, never erasure | Official document, line 6 (L6) | +| §3.1 | Membership obtained by operating a federated instance | Official document, Governance Layer, orchestrator tier | +| §3.2(b) | Two-witness minimum; "unfederated" label below it | Official document, Record Layer (REC-witness-minimum); open questions §4 | +| §3.2(c) | Hashes committed to one public chain across the substrate | Official document, Record Layer (REC-public-chain) | +| §3.4, §6.5 | One vote per member in each federation; headcount decides within a federation and never beyond it; weight never bought | Official document, line 2 (L2), applied to governance; §2.1 | +| §3.8, §4.2 | Prosumer standing ripens into Governance-layer membership; the vote comes with it | Structure article, "Between Federations"; §2.1 | +| §4.5, §10.2 (Governance Access) | The vote is the prosumer member's own; blocs visible on the record | Official document, line 2 (L2), applied to governance | +| §5.1 | Members organized by the layer(s) they operate | Structure article, "Between Federations" | +| §5.3, §5.7, §7.1 | Federations electing recallable delegates; one federation, one delegate, one vote; mandate recorded beside the vote cast | Concept triage, carried (bylaws-level per 2026-08-27 revision) | +| §5.6 | Leaveable venues, record exportable whole; venue designated by board policy, interim status and committed exit in the bylaws | Official document, line 11 (L11); P1-001 v8.0 §3.2 | +| §6.1, §6.3 | Continuous session; asynchronous voting windows; no vote assignment | P1-001 v8.0 §§2.3, 3.9 (imported 2026-08-31) | +| §6.9 | Deliberation procedure held to the covenant harm rule; workflow lives with the venue | P1-001 v8.0 §6.3; bylaws §9.10(b); §14.7 | +| §7.1, §8.3 | Candidacy open to the electing body; directors are its delegates | Concept triage, carried (recallable delegates) | +| §7.4 | Continuous board action by written consent | KRS 273.375; P1-001 v8.0 Appendix B (P1-003) | +| §8.2 | Covenant RAND; LBTAS API serving compliant assessments to the network | Official document, Covenant Layer | +| §9.2 | Official document amended by a majority of delegates, and not adopted until the conformance suite passes | Structure article, "Legibility, mechanized"; §2.2 | +| §9.3 | Living open-questions document | Concept triage, carried (meta) | +| §9.4 | AGPL-3 software, CC BY-SA specification, copyleft commons | Official document, Introduction and footer | +| §9.6 | Conformance recognized only with registry-citing tests; else self-attested | Structure article, "Legibility, mechanized"; dispute-mechanics design §7 | +| §9.7 | Institute never a counterparty, custodian, or clearer | Official document, line 5 (L5) | +| §9.8, §9.9 | The covenant layer is LBTAS; six ordinal levels, −1 through +4 | Official document, Covenant Layer | +| §9.10(a) | Reputation is never explicit: the platform publishes the record, the reader derives the reputation | Official document, line 8 (L8) | +| §9.10(b) | −1 is the breach, surfaced and comment-justified; hash only in the shared record | Official document, lines 7 and 8 (L7, L8); dispute-mechanics design §4 | +| §9.10(c) | Bidirectional, symmetric assessment; dismissal by annotation | Official document, line 6 (L6); dispute-mechanics design §3 | +| §9.10(d) | Relations typed and never collapsed; profiles declare their own | Record model, profile row 4 (relation types) | +| §9.10(e) | Reputation decides whether, the community-wide limit decides how much | Official document, line 9 (L9) | +| §9.10(f) | Reputation is per-platform; portability is a governance decision | Open questions §5 (reputation portability) | +| §9.11 | The chart is the display — tallies by level and category, never a score | Official document, line 8 (L8); LBTAS integration guide (display rules) | +| §9.13, §9.14 | The registry gives the document force; stable IDs and three bindings | Conformance suite registry; structure article, "Legibility, mechanized" | +| §9.15 | Delegated invariants reported unbound, never as passing | Conformance suite, delegated registry | +| §9.16 | Registry changes are amendments; identifiers never reused | Conformance suite registry (lineage notes) | +| §9.17 | Suite published and runnable by anyone; repairs need no ballot | Official document, Principles (lean, auditable) | +| §9.18 | A failing suite is open business, not a silent pass | Concept triage, carried (meta); §9.3 | +| §10.1, §10.2 | Orchestrator and operator duties; operator responsibility as the frame | Dispute-mechanics design §1 (bylaws-level per 2026-08-27 revision) | +| §10.2 (Covenant Compliance) | Bidirectional covenant assessment at every exchange point; operator adjudicates and executes remedies | Official document, Covenant Layer; dispute-mechanics design §§3, 4 | +| §10.2 (Credit Setting) | Community-wide limit, one number, never derived from reputation | Official document, line 9 (L9) | +| §10.2 (Custody) | Custody disclosed, since escrow is where L12's guarantee does not reach | Official document, line 10 (L10); §2.2 (a power names its check) | +| §10.2 (Witnesses, Ledger) | Two compensated witnesses; third-party observation of covenant-mediated exchange | Official document, Record Layer (REC-witness-work); open questions §6 | +| §10.3 | Substrate purchased from a federated market or self-provided | Official document, Substrate Layer | +| §10.4 | Adjudicators rated; distribution display, never one number | Dispute-mechanics design §§1, 3; official document, line 8 (L8) | +| §10.5 | Operator's published rules set the default dispute window | Dispute-mechanics design §2 | +| §10.7 | No institutional routing; the architecture's own checks discipline | Dispute-mechanics design §1 | +| §10.9 | Operator adjudicates within a platform; witnesses adjudicate across it | Official document, Covenant Layer (COV-operators-adjudicate, COV-witness-adjudication); dispute-mechanics design §3 | +| Art. XI | Escrow start; capacity, notice, and publication all gating, all challengeable | Official document, line 10 (L10) | +| §11.5 | Hybrid stage definition by reference only | Open questions §5 (EI-hybrid retired to companion article) | +| §12.1 | Only the governance layer expels | Dispute-mechanics design §4 | +| §12.2 | Audit of the record against orchestrators, witnesses, prosumers, and executed code | Dispute-mechanics design §§6, 7 | +| §12.3 | Expulsion is platform-local; the record stands annotated | Dispute-mechanics design §4 | +| §12.4, §13.2 | Positions and records survive frontends, operators — and the steward | Official document, line 12 (L12) | +| §12.5 | VP venue, one-week federation rating, one rating each, mode −1 bars, delegate decides on silence, ten-week cooldown, same path for banned operators | Open questions §7 | +| §13.1 | No single point whose removal stops the network | Official document, line 11 (L11) | +| §14.7 | Lean instrument — lean, auditable code, applied to governance | Official document, Principles | +| §15.1 | These bylaws amended by a majority of delegates, every member of each federation voting | §2.1; §2.2 (gravity); §7.5 | +| §16.1, §16.2 | Bootstrap by founder board; each act recorded and open to challenge | Concept triage, 2026-08-24 (meta) | +| §16.3 | Governance federation sells no service; the channel opens on a live §4.4 function | §16.2; §2.2 (gravity) | + +--- + +*Network Theory Applied Research Institute, Inc. — EIN 92-3047136 — Louisville, Kentucky — info@ntari.org* From dabdb8f3ab6d086064de30d9ff1bc7cd1bd8d330 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:54 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 02/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=201=20=E2=80=94=20Reckon=20the=20cos?= =?UTF-8?q?t=20of=20leaving=20at=20the=20stage,=20not=20at=20entry=20(?= =?UTF-8?q?=C2=A72.2)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 1 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 54d4a1e..63d37e9 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ These principles are operative rules of interpretation. Every other provision of **2.1 Shared Responsibility.** The community that coordinates is the same community that checks the coordination. The two functions are exchanged continuously among the members and are never split into rulers and ruled. No organ created by these bylaws may become a body that only decides and is never answerable. -**2.2 Gravity.** Each layer of the architecture — and each organ of this Institute — is disciplined by the cost of prosumer's ability to leave it. Where leaving is cheap, competition disciplines and these bylaws impose no gate. Where leaving is dear, the members vote. Where leaving is catastrophic, decisions stay open to challenge. Any provision of these bylaws that creates a power must name its check; a power whose check cannot be identified is void until the membership supplies one. +**2.2 Gravity.** Each layer of the architecture — and each organ of this Institute — is disciplined by the cost to a prosumer of leaving it. Where leaving is cheap, competition disciplines and these bylaws impose no gate. Where leaving is dear, the members vote. Where leaving is catastrophic, decisions stay open to challenge. The cost of leaving is reckoned as it stands at the stage a deployment or an organ is in, not as it stood at entry: a check that was sufficient under escrow is not thereby sufficient under mutual credit. Any provision of these bylaws that creates a power must name its check; a power whose check cannot be identified is void until the membership supplies one. **2.3 No decision permanently closed.** No decision of the membership is permanently closed. Any member may bring a decided matter back before the body under §6.7. From 5aece8fcd1e83720baf477b522fbb86b8d6da06b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:54 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 03/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=202=20=E2=80=94=20Governance=20orche?= =?UTF-8?q?stration=20is=20the=20relationships=20among=20all=20members=20(?= =?UTF-8?q?Preamble)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 2 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 63d37e9..245ac8e 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ Prepared and adopted by the founder board as a bootstrap act under §16.1, and r ## Preamble -Janus Facing Architecture assigns this organization a precise seat: the protocol tier of the Governance layer — a nonprofit, 501(c)(3), copyleft software stewardship organization, governed by these bylaws. The relationships between its operator-members is the architecture's Governance orchestration. The Governance frontend is currently hosted in Slack, granted by the Salesforce Corporation. A custom platform is being developed to replace this proprietary software dependency. +Janus Facing Architecture assigns this organization a precise seat: the protocol tier of the Governance layer — a nonprofit, 501(c)(3), copyleft software stewardship organization, governed by these bylaws. The relationships among its members — operating members and prosumer members alike — are the architecture's Governance orchestration. The Governance frontend is currently hosted in Slack, granted by the Salesforce Corporation. A custom platform is being developed to replace this proprietary software dependency. --- From f6e9b766726d14b916a0a8b22f5216617c3dd2b1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:54 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 04/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=203=20=E2=80=94=20Place=20prosumer?= =?UTF-8?q?=20membership=20in=20the=20elected=20federation=20(=C2=A73.1)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 3 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 245ac8e..89feb8d 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ These principles are operative rules of interpretation. Every other provision of ## Article III — Membership -**3.1 Membership Types.** Membership in the Institute is obtained by operating a federated instance of JFA software, or by prosumer standing in the Governance layer under §3.8. Orchestrators run software that links operators across regions and cultures while operators run frontend software that prosumers (users) interact with. Despite the functional heirarcy, the two operating types have equal standing in governance. Where these bylaws distinguish the paths, an operating member is a member by federated instance and a prosumer member is a member under §3.8. +**3.1 Membership Types.** Membership in the Institute is obtained by operating a federated instance of JFA software, or by prosumer standing under §3.8, placed in the Covenant federation or the Governance federation as the member elects under §3.9. Orchestrators run software that links operators across regions and cultures while operators run frontend software that prosumers (users) interact with. Despite the functional hierarchy, the two operating types have equal standing in governance, and a prosumer member has equal standing with both within its federation. Where these bylaws distinguish the paths, an operating member is a member by federated instance and a prosumer member is a member under §3.8. **3.2 Federated instance.** An instance is federated when all of the following are true: From 57c6ac2752360d7de559ba2d0eb3fe9f42b3e2fb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:54 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 05/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=204=20=E2=80=94=20Recognition=20reco?= =?UTF-8?q?rds=20the=20federation=20elected=20(=C2=A73.3)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 4 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 89feb8d..ba56a3b 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ These principles are operative rules of interpretation. Every other provision of (e) its operation does not cross any of the twelve lines. -**3.3 Recognition.** Membership begins upon recognition by the office of the Secretary. Recognition is ministerial, not discretionary: the Secretary verifies §3.2 for an operating member, or the sealed exchange that §3.8 requires for a prosumer member, from the public chain and the published record, and records the recognition in the governance registry (§9.5). A refusal to recognize must state which condition failed and is challengeable through Article XII. +**3.3 Recognition.** Membership begins upon recognition by the office of the Secretary. Recognition is ministerial, not discretionary: the Secretary verifies §3.2 for an operating member, or the sealed exchange that §3.8 requires for a prosumer member, from the public chain and the published record, and records the recognition in the governance registry (§9.5), together with the federation a prosumer member elects under §3.9. A refusal to recognize must state which condition failed and is challengeable through Article XII. **3.4 One member, one vote.** Each member holds one vote in each federation to which it belongs, and never more than one there however many instances it operates in that layer. An operating member belongs to the federation of every layer it operates; a prosumer member belongs to the Governance federation alone. A federation's decision is carried to the Institute by its delegate under §5.3, so headcount decides within a federation and never beyond it. Governance weight, like credit, is never bought. From 27b746fd8fc9a4b1011a0de533adf1f47011420c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:55 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 06/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=205=20=E2=80=94=20One=20member,=20on?= =?UTF-8?q?e=20vote,=20in=20the=20federation=20elected=20(=C2=A73.4)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 5 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index ba56a3b..06722d9 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ These principles are operative rules of interpretation. Every other provision of **3.3 Recognition.** Membership begins upon recognition by the office of the Secretary. Recognition is ministerial, not discretionary: the Secretary verifies §3.2 for an operating member, or the sealed exchange that §3.8 requires for a prosumer member, from the public chain and the published record, and records the recognition in the governance registry (§9.5), together with the federation a prosumer member elects under §3.9. A refusal to recognize must state which condition failed and is challengeable through Article XII. -**3.4 One member, one vote.** Each member holds one vote in each federation to which it belongs, and never more than one there however many instances it operates in that layer. An operating member belongs to the federation of every layer it operates; a prosumer member belongs to the Governance federation alone. A federation's decision is carried to the Institute by its delegate under §5.3, so headcount decides within a federation and never beyond it. Governance weight, like credit, is never bought. +**3.4 One member, one vote.** Each member holds one vote in each federation to which it belongs, and never more than one there however many instances it operates in that layer. An operating member belongs to the federation of every layer it operates; a prosumer member belongs to the one federation it has elected under §3.9 — the Covenant federation or the Governance federation — and to no other. A federation's decision is carried to the Institute by its delegate under §5.3, so headcount decides within a federation and never beyond it. Governance weight, like credit, is never bought. **3.5 Operating members are operators.** An operating member is the person or entity responsible for the operation of its instance, and its membership carries the duties of Article X for every platform economy it hosts. A prosumer member operates no instance and carries no duty under Article X. From ac044361589aec69a49ed101b2c1f9d644bb68e4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:55 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 07/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=206=20=E2=80=94=20Check=20coordinati?= =?UTF-8?q?on=20by=20voting=20in=20the=20elected=20federation=20(=C2=A73.7?= =?UTF-8?q?)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 6 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 06722d9..161116f 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ These principles are operative rules of interpretation. Every other provision of **3.6 Lapse.** Membership lapses when the member's last federated instance ceases to satisfy §3.2 and is not restored within ninety days. Lapse is recorded by annotation, with its kind — ceased, lapsed, or expelled — and is not an erasure of the member's history. A lapsed member is readmitted by the same recognition path as a new member, except where Article XII governs. -**3.7 Continuous exchange of roles.** Every member is simultaneously a coordinator of the network and a checker of its coordination. No class of membership may be created whose function is only one of the two. Prosumer membership is not such a class: a prosumer member coordinates the network by transacting on it and checks that coordination by voting in the Governance channel. +**3.7 Continuous exchange of roles.** Every member is simultaneously a coordinator of the network and a checker of its coordination. No class of membership may be created whose function is only one of the two. Prosumer membership is not such a class: a prosumer member coordinates the network by transacting on it and checks that coordination by voting in the federation it has elected under §3.9. **3.8 Prosumer membership.** A prosumer of a federated platform is a member of the Institute in the Governance layer, and in that layer alone, upon recognition under §3.3. Recognition requires at least one sealed exchange committed to the public chain, verified from the chain and never from an operator's assertion, and is reckoned per person rather than per account. Prosumer membership carries the vote of §3.4 and the candidacy of §8.3, and no duty under Article X. A prosumer member decides every matter the Governance federation decides, the amendment of these bylaws under §15.1 included — the governed hold the vote on the structure that governs them. Its weight is bounded not by subject matter but by the delegate channel of §5.3: the Governance federation carries one vote of five however large its roll grows. It lapses when the member so elects, or when no sealed exchange of that member stands on a federated platform and none is restored within ninety days; lapse is recorded by annotation under §3.6. From a3950d72bb0554fdf9e01ebfcce9f02c162f2889 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:55 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 08/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=207=20=E2=80=94=20Prosumer=20members?= =?UTF-8?q?hip=20sits=20in=20Covenant=20or=20Governance=20(=C2=A73.8)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 7 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 161116f..26dffaa 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ These principles are operative rules of interpretation. Every other provision of **3.7 Continuous exchange of roles.** Every member is simultaneously a coordinator of the network and a checker of its coordination. No class of membership may be created whose function is only one of the two. Prosumer membership is not such a class: a prosumer member coordinates the network by transacting on it and checks that coordination by voting in the federation it has elected under §3.9. -**3.8 Prosumer membership.** A prosumer of a federated platform is a member of the Institute in the Governance layer, and in that layer alone, upon recognition under §3.3. Recognition requires at least one sealed exchange committed to the public chain, verified from the chain and never from an operator's assertion, and is reckoned per person rather than per account. Prosumer membership carries the vote of §3.4 and the candidacy of §8.3, and no duty under Article X. A prosumer member decides every matter the Governance federation decides, the amendment of these bylaws under §15.1 included — the governed hold the vote on the structure that governs them. Its weight is bounded not by subject matter but by the delegate channel of §5.3: the Governance federation carries one vote of five however large its roll grows. It lapses when the member so elects, or when no sealed exchange of that member stands on a federated platform and none is restored within ninety days; lapse is recorded by annotation under §3.6. +**3.8 Prosumer membership.** A prosumer of a federated platform is a member of the Institute in the Covenant federation or the Governance federation, as the member elects under §3.9, and in that federation alone, upon recognition under §3.3. Recognition requires at least one sealed exchange committed to the public chain, verified from the chain and never from an operator's assertion, and is reckoned per person rather than per account. Prosumer membership carries the vote of §3.4 and, according to the federation elected, the candidacy of §8.2 or §8.3, and no duty under Article X. A prosumer member decides every matter its federation decides, the amendment of these bylaws under §15.1 included — the governed hold the vote on the structure that governs them. Its weight is bounded not by subject matter but by the delegate channel of §5.3: each federation carries one vote of five however large its roll grows. It lapses when the member so elects, or when no sealed exchange of that member stands on a federated platform and none is restored within ninety days; lapse is recorded by annotation under §3.6. --- From da18eacc921b173d95dd778a02daf411bb03b18e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:55 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 09/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=208=20=E2=80=94=20Add=20=C2=A73.9,?= =?UTF-8?q?=20election=20of=20a=20federation=20and=20the=20annual=20change?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 8 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 6 ++++++ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 26dffaa..b8c51f3 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -78,6 +78,12 @@ These principles are operative rules of interpretation. Every other provision of **3.8 Prosumer membership.** A prosumer of a federated platform is a member of the Institute in the Covenant federation or the Governance federation, as the member elects under §3.9, and in that federation alone, upon recognition under §3.3. Recognition requires at least one sealed exchange committed to the public chain, verified from the chain and never from an operator's assertion, and is reckoned per person rather than per account. Prosumer membership carries the vote of §3.4 and, according to the federation elected, the candidacy of §8.2 or §8.3, and no duty under Article X. A prosumer member decides every matter its federation decides, the amendment of these bylaws under §15.1 included — the governed hold the vote on the structure that governs them. Its weight is bounded not by subject matter but by the delegate channel of §5.3: each federation carries one vote of five however large its roll grows. It lapses when the member so elects, or when no sealed exchange of that member stands on a federated platform and none is restored within ninety days; lapse is recorded by annotation under §3.6. +**3.9 Election of a federation.** On recognition under §3.3, a prosumer member elects the Covenant federation or the Governance federation, and the Secretary records the election in the governance registry under §9.5. The election places the vote and nothing else: every right of Article IV is held in every federation and channel regardless of it, and a prosumer member is heard under §4.1(d) in the channel where a matter concerning them arose, whichever federation holds their vote. + +A prosumer member may change federations once each year. The option opens at 00:00 UTC on 17 March and closes at the instant of the March equinox in Coordinated Universal Time, which the Secretary publishes for the coming year from a standard astronomical ephemeris no later than the preceding equinox. Every change elected within the window takes effect at the equinox, when the Secretary records the new rolls under §9.5; outside the window the election stands. A change is the member's own act: no operator or orchestrator makes, directs, withholds, or conditions it, under §4.5. + +The equinox is the anchor because it belongs to no calendar: the year begins at different points in different cultures, and Earth's position in its orbit is the same for all of them. + --- ## Article IV — Prosumer Standing From 2b30acf7cfa0dcbaf3f5ab0e72faa1416fcfe672 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:56 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 10/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=209=20=E2=80=94=20Standing=20and=20t?= =?UTF-8?q?he=20franchise=20across=20both=20federations=20(=C2=A7=C2=A74.2?= =?UTF-8?q?,=204.4,=204.5)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 9 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 6 +++--- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index b8c51f3..c013899 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -98,13 +98,13 @@ The equinox is the anchor because it belongs to no calendar: the year begins at (d) address the appropriate Federation Channel in any proceeding that concerns them. -**4.2 Standing, and the franchise.** Prosumer standing under §4.1 is voice and process, and requires no membership. The vote is not part of that standing: a prosumer who takes up Governance-layer membership under §3.8 holds the vote as a member, on the terms of §3.4, and votes on every matter the Governance Federation Channel decides — including the election and recall of the Vice President under §8.3 and expulsion referrals under §12.3. +**4.2 Standing, and the franchise.** Prosumer standing under §4.1 is voice and process, and requires no membership. The vote is not part of that standing: a prosumer who takes up membership under §3.8 holds the vote as a member, on the terms of §3.4, in the federation elected under §3.9, and votes on every matter that federation decides — in the Covenant federation, the election and recall of the President under §8.2 among them; in the Governance federation, the election and recall of the Vice President under §8.3 and expulsion referrals under §12.3 among them. The election of a federation places the vote and nothing else; standing under §4.1 is held everywhere regardless of it. **4.3 The Institute serves the standing.** The offices and organs of the Institute are obligated to receive, docket, and process prosumer filings on equal terms with member filings. -**4.4 The path into membership.** Every operator provides, in the frontend of its platform, the function by which a prosumer takes up Governance-layer membership under §3.8 and thereafter raises business and votes in the Governance Federation Channel — as an operating member joins a federation through the console of §5.3. Withholding that function is a failure of duty under §10.6. +**4.4 The path into membership.** Every operator provides, in the frontend of its platform, the function by which a prosumer takes up membership under §3.8, elects and changes its federation under §3.9, and thereafter raises business and votes in that federation's channel — as an operating member joins a federation through the console of §5.3. Withholding any part of that function is a failure of duty under §10.6. -**4.5 A prosumer's vote is their own.** No operator or orchestrator casts, directs, withholds, or aggregates the vote of a prosumer member, and none conditions service, credit, or standing on how a prosumer member votes. A platform's prosumer-member votes are published as cast, so that a bloc moving together is visible on the record. Doing otherwise is a failure of duty under §10.6 and grounds for referral under §12.3. +**4.5 A prosumer's vote is their own.** No operator or orchestrator casts, directs, withholds, or aggregates the vote of a prosumer member, and none conditions service, credit, or standing on how a prosumer member votes or on which federation it elects under §3.9. A platform's prosumer-member votes are published as cast, so that a bloc moving together is visible on the record. Doing otherwise is a failure of duty under §10.6 and grounds for referral under §12.3. --- From 7c6e1501c3c814ec158f07b8964a84c23916b065 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:56 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 11/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2010=20=E2=80=94=20Who=20populates?= =?UTF-8?q?=20each=20channel=20and=20federation=20(=C2=A7=C2=A75.1,=205.3)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 10 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index c013899..8ca01f3 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -110,11 +110,11 @@ The equinox is the anchor because it belongs to no calendar: the year begins at ## Article V — Federation Channels -**5.1 Federation Channels.** The Institute maintains one Federation Channel for each layer of the architecture: Substrate, Record, Covenant, Governance, and Economy & Information. Each member belongs to the channel of every layer it operates. A channel is where the members of a layer troubleshoot, coordinate security, evolve the shared protocol, and conduct the layer's governance business. The Governance channel comprises, in addition, the prosumer members of §3.8. +**5.1 Federation Channels.** The Institute maintains one Federation Channel for each layer of the architecture: Substrate, Record, Covenant, Governance, and Economy & Information. Each member belongs to the channel of every layer it operates. A channel is where the members of a layer troubleshoot, coordinate security, evolve the shared protocol, and conduct the layer's governance business. The Covenant channel and the Governance channel comprise, in addition, the prosumer members who have elected them under §3.9. **5.2 The appropriate channel.** Where these bylaws direct a matter to "the appropriate Federation Channel," that is the channel of the layer in which the matter arose; where a matter spans layers, the Governance channel is appropriate. -**5.3 Federation.** A federation is the community of the members of each layer (substrate, covenant, record, governance, and Economy & Information) — its operators and orchestrators, and in the Governance layer its prosumer members. Members join automatically through a console in the backend of JFA software produced by the Institute. Each federation elects one delegate, who is the director bound to that federation under §7.2. The delegate carries the federation's single vote in every matter these bylaws give to the delegates. A delegate is recallable at any time by vote of the federation that elected them, without cause and with immediate effect. +**5.3 Federation.** A federation is the community of the members of each layer — its operating members, and in the Covenant and Governance layers the prosumer members who have elected it under §3.9. Read to the architecture: the Substrate federation is the substrate's hosts; the Record federation its witnesses and data hosts; the Economy & Information federation its operators and orchestrators; the Covenant federation the prosumer members who hold the covenant, together with any operating member of that layer; the Governance federation the prosumer members who hold the audit, together with the operating members of that layer, the host of the governance platform among them. Operating members join automatically through a console in the backend of JFA software produced by the Institute; prosumer members join through the function of §4.4. Each federation elects one delegate, who is the director bound to that federation under §7.2. The delegate carries the federation's single vote in every matter these bylaws give to the delegates. A delegate is recallable at any time by vote of the federation that elected them, without cause and with immediate effect. **5.4 Officer Responsibilities.** Each officer of the Institute is filled by federation-elected delegates. The federation is the body through which the members continuously check that office: it observes the office's work, and its delegate acts for the office where these bylaws so provide, including §12.5(d). From 0e4a73a264516c279e761a5787878c7a5248d49c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:56 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 12/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2011=20=E2=80=94=20Strike=20the=20op?= =?UTF-8?q?erating-member=20floor=20on=20Governance=20ballots=20(=C2=A76.5?= =?UTF-8?q?)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 11 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 8ca01f3..33857d9 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -138,7 +138,7 @@ The equinox is the anchor because it belongs to no calendar: the year begins at **6.5 Quorum and majority.** A matter before the Institute is decided by the delegates, each federation casting one vote through its delegate under §5.3. The delegates' ballot is valid when at least three federations cast, and except where these bylaws require more the matter is decided by a majority of the votes cast. -Within a federation, the matter is decided by a majority of votes cast by its members. A federation's ballot is valid when notice under §6.4 was given and at least one member casts; in the Governance federation, at least one operating member must be among them. A federation's small roll is not a defect to be cured by a higher bar: the record of each ballot states the roll the federation then held, so a thin decision is visible rather than hidden. +Within a federation, the matter is decided by a majority of votes cast by its members. A federation's ballot is valid when notice under §6.4 was given and at least one member casts. A federation's small roll is not a defect to be cured by a higher bar: the record of each ballot states the roll the federation then held, so a thin decision is visible rather than hidden. Where these bylaws give a matter to a channel or a federation rather than to the Institute — including expulsion referrals under §12.3 and the petitions of §12.5 — that body decides it by the same internal majority and no delegate vote is taken. From f8990fb9b85b9d20cce171f032aba72ae0679c0f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:56 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 13/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2012=20=E2=80=94=20Elections=20and?= =?UTF-8?q?=20the=20offices=20(=C2=A7=C2=A76.8,=208.2,=208.3)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 12 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 6 +++--- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 33857d9..95bf480 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ Where these bylaws give a matter to a channel or a federation rather than to the **6.7 Reopening a decided matter.** Any member may, by filing in the appropriate Federation Channel, bring any decided matter back before the body; the filing states what decision is challenged and what outcome is sought, and the matter enters the next assembly or ballot. If the body reaffirms its decision without change, the same member may not reopen the same matter for ninety days; any other member may. A matter may not be argued using verbiage that has been defeated more than once. -**6.8 Elections and recall.** Each director is elected and recalled by the federation to which §7.2 binds the office, by majority of votes cast in that federation under §6.5 — the Vice President by the Governance federation, in which prosumer members vote under §3.4. Recall requires no cause and takes effect immediately. +**6.8 Elections and recall.** Each director is elected and recalled by the federation to which §7.2 binds the office, by majority of votes cast in that federation under §6.5 — the President by the Covenant federation and the Vice President by the Governance federation, in each of which the prosumer members who have elected it vote under §3.4. Recall requires no cause and takes effect immediately. **6.9 Deliberation procedure.** The Institute maintains a procedure for deliberating substantive matters, set by policy and resident with the governance venue rather than in these bylaws, so that it may be tuned as the venue changes. Whatever procedure is in force must satisfy the rule the covenant applies to trade: a single documented harm suffices to reopen a synthesis, and harm is never averaged into it. A procedure that averages harm, or that closes a synthesis over a documented harm, is void to that extent. @@ -172,9 +172,9 @@ Where these bylaws give a matter to a channel or a federation rather than to the **8.1 The offices.** The directors of the Institute are a President, a Vice President, workspace administrator, a Secretary, and a Treasurer. Officers are elected by the membership federations at the annual assembly for one-year terms and are recallable under §6.8. -**8.2 President.** Elected by the Covenant Federation, the office of the President directs research and development (RAND) on the Covenant Layer protocol, oversees the LBTAS API serving compliant covenant assessments to the network, and its socioeconomic effects on the federated communities. +**8.2 President.** Elected by the Covenant Federation, the office of the President directs research and development (RAND) on the Covenant Layer protocol, oversees the LBTAS API serving compliant covenant assessments to the network, studies their socioeconomic effects on the federated communities, and drafts amendments to the covenant protocol as the needs of the stack require. A draft is adopted only under §9.2; the office is no gate under §7.6. Any member of that federation may stand for the office, prosumer members of §3.8 included. -**8.3 Vice President.** Elected by the Governance Federation, the office of the Vice President enforces these bylaws with powers specified in Article XII. Any member of that federation may stand for the office, prosumer members of §3.8 included. +**8.3 Vice President.** Elected by the Governance Federation, the office of the Vice President maintains and audits the stack against the official document and the conformance suite, and enforces these bylaws, with the powers specified in Article XII. Any member of that federation may stand for the office, prosumer members of §3.8 included. **8.4 Secretary.** Elected by the Record Federation the Secretariat keeps governance records, performs the ministerial recognition of members under §3.3, maintains the governance registry of §9.5, receives and records the publications of Article XI, and issues the notices these bylaws require. From 161bb82cda5121e7f10f4900e30da6bf46fe7844 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:56 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 14/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2013=20=E2=80=94=20Define=20witness?= =?UTF-8?q?=20independence=20and=20eligibility=20(=C2=A73.2(b),=20new=20?= =?UTF-8?q?=C2=A73.10)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 13 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 4 +++- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 95bf480..fd5a683 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ These principles are operative rules of interpretation. Every other provision of (a) complys with membership duties in section §10. -(b) maintains at least two independent witnesses hired from the substrate layer; an instance with fewer must label itself unfederated and does not qualify; +(b) maintains at least two standing witnesses, drawn and paid under §10.2 and independent under §3.10; an instance with fewer must label itself unfederated and does not qualify; (c) commits its hashes to the public chain distributed across the substrate; @@ -84,6 +84,8 @@ A prosumer member may change federations once each year. The option opens at 00: The equinox is the anchor because it belongs to no calendar: the year begins at different points in different cultures, and Earth's position in its orbit is the same for all of them. +**3.10 Witness independence and eligibility.** A witness is independent of a platform when it is not the platform's operator, is not under common ownership or control with the operator, holds no interest in the operator, and is not a prosumer of that platform. A witness discloses any interest it holds in a party to a matter before acting on it and stands aside where the interest conflicts; the disclosure is recorded under §2.5. A member of the substrate is ineligible for any draw under §10.2 or §10.9 while the mode of the ratings of its adjudication conduct under §10.4 is −1; the mode is the decision rule §9.11 allows and is never displayed as a reputation. Independence is asserted on the record at the draw and is contestable under Article XII like any other condition. + --- ## Article IV — Prosumer Standing From ea8b87e9af7ad383a78f18a68291716be9db744d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:57 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 15/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2014=20=E2=80=94=20Draw=20witnesses?= =?UTF-8?q?=20from=20the=20market,=20pay=20the=20market,=20rotate=20the=20?= =?UTF-8?q?seats=20(=C2=A710.2)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 14 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index fd5a683..f7902e0 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -258,7 +258,7 @@ Where these bylaws give a matter to a channel or a federation rather than to the **Defaults** annotate defaults on the record by kind — deceased, departed, or adjudicated, unknown — never erasing them; publish the platform's trailing default rate — dead credit created over a recent rolling window as a share of trade volume. **Credit Setting** When using mutual credit, set the community-wide credit limit: one number for everyone, never set per member, and never derived from reputation **Custody** Where prosumer funds or collateral are held, disclose in the platform's published rules who holds them, on what terms, and how a prosumer recovers them if the platform ceases to operate; name every third-party processor or custodian in the chain, whether or not the platform touches the funds itself. Escrow is the one stage at which a prosumer's position does not survive the operator, so the trust it requires is answered by disclosure and exit: undisclosed custody is a failure of duty under §10.6 and grounds for referral under §12.3. -**Witnesses** Maintain a ledger of protocol transmissions and pay two randowm witnesses from the substrate layer to monitor the same. +**Witnesses** Maintain a ledger of protocol transmissions, monitored by two standing witnesses drawn at random from the federated Substrate Market by a draw seeded from the public chain, so that anyone may verify the draw under §4.1(a). An operator that provides its own substrate under §10.3 still draws its witnesses from the market; witnessing is never self-provided. Pay the market for witnessing as a service, at the fee fixed in the platform's published rules; the market assigns and pays the witnesses, and the operator pays no witness directly. Each standing seat is held for two years; the two seats are staggered so that one is redrawn each year, the redraw taking effect on the March equinox with the rolls of §3.9. A witness whose seat ends continues to hold and attest the record it observed. The fee for adjudication under §10.9 is likewise fixed in the published rules and never set per dispute. **Ledger.** Maintain third party observation of covenant mediated interactions. **Governance Access** Provide prosumers a function in the platform frontend to join, raise business in, and vote in the Governance Federation Channel under §4.4, and never cast or direct those votes. From 3f5b7cd6dc9065394a87861d3994348c6e2fcf27 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:57 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 16/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2015=20=E2=80=94=20Scope=20no-instit?= =?UTF-8?q?utional-routing=20to=20cheap=20exit=20(=C2=A710.7)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 15 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index f7902e0..0c0cf6a 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -270,7 +270,7 @@ Where these bylaws give a matter to a channel or a federation rather than to the **10.6 Failure of duties.** Persistent failure of the duties of §§10.1–10.3 is a covenant matter first — adjudicated, rated, and disciplined by the market's cheap exit — and a membership matter only where it amounts to loss of a §3.2 condition or grounds for referral under §12.3. -**10.7 No institutional routing.** The Institute does not supervise, ratify, or pre-clear operators' economic management. The checks are the architecture's own: filings that land on the public chain the moment they are made, publicly adjudicatied reputation, published limits and default rates, and prosumers' freedom to leave. +**10.7 No institutional routing.** The Institute does not supervise, ratify, or pre-clear operators' economic management. Where a prosumer's exit from a deployment is cheap — under escrow, and under a hybrid deployment in which each prosumer chooses the terms it accepts under §11.5 — the checks are the architecture's own: filings that land on the public chain the moment they are made, publicly adjudicated reputation, published limits and default rates, and prosumers' freedom to leave. Where exit is dear — a deployment in full mutual credit, in which a prosumer's positive balance neither converts nor redeems and a negative one is owed — §2.2 requires a vote, and Article XI supplies it: the deployment's own prosumers ratify the switch under §11.1(d). The vote is theirs; no organ of the Institute is inserted in their place, and nothing in this section is a gate under §7.6. **10.8 Copyleft Reporting.** Compliance with the GNU Affero General Public License, copyleft sharing principles From ea5ba57d25b4dd878ed10222876564e567fb908e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:57 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 17/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2016=20=E2=80=94=20Route=20prosumer-?= =?UTF-8?q?versus-own-operator=20disputes=20to=20the=20witnesses=20(=C2=A7?= =?UTF-8?q?=C2=A710.6,=2010.9)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 16 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 0c0cf6a..961ece2 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -268,13 +268,13 @@ Where these bylaws give a matter to a channel or a federation rather than to the **10.5 Dispute windows.** Where an Economy & Information category protocol is silent on its dispute window, the operator's published platform rules set the default window. -**10.6 Failure of duties.** Persistent failure of the duties of §§10.1–10.3 is a covenant matter first — adjudicated, rated, and disciplined by the market's cheap exit — and a membership matter only where it amounts to loss of a §3.2 condition or grounds for referral under §12.3. +**10.6 Failure of duties.** Persistent failure of the duties of §§10.1–10.3 is a covenant matter first — adjudicated under §10.9, rated, and, where exit is cheap, disciplined by it — and a membership matter only where it amounts to loss of a §3.2 condition or grounds for referral under §12.3. **10.7 No institutional routing.** The Institute does not supervise, ratify, or pre-clear operators' economic management. Where a prosumer's exit from a deployment is cheap — under escrow, and under a hybrid deployment in which each prosumer chooses the terms it accepts under §11.5 — the checks are the architecture's own: filings that land on the public chain the moment they are made, publicly adjudicated reputation, published limits and default rates, and prosumers' freedom to leave. Where exit is dear — a deployment in full mutual credit, in which a prosumer's positive balance neither converts nor redeems and a negative one is owed — §2.2 requires a vote, and Article XI supplies it: the deployment's own prosumers ratify the switch under §11.1(d). The vote is theirs; no organ of the Institute is inserted in their place, and nothing in this section is a gate under §7.6. **10.8 Copyleft Reporting.** Compliance with the GNU Affero General Public License, copyleft sharing principles -**10.9 Who adjudicates.** An apparent covenant breach between prosumers of the same platform is adjudicated by that platform's operator, as §10.2 provides. A dispute that crosses platforms is adjudicated at the witness layer, by the witnesses of the exchange in question, and never by either operator: neither is neutral between its own prosumer and another's. Adjudicating witnesses are rated on their conduct under §10.4 exactly as an operator is, and the dispute-mechanics design provides the procedure. +**10.9 Who adjudicates.** An apparent covenant breach between prosumers of the same platform is adjudicated by that platform's operator, as §10.2 provides. A dispute that crosses platforms is adjudicated at the witness layer, by the standing witnesses of both platforms, and never by either operator: neither is neutral between its own prosumer and another's. A dispute between a prosumer and the operator of their own platform — over an exchange, an adjudication, custody, the credit limit, a stage change under Article XI, or a duty under this Article — is adjudicated by that platform's standing witnesses, and never by the operator, who is not neutral in its own case. For every adjudication by witnesses under this section, one further witness is drawn for the dispute from the federated Substrate Market by the seeded draw of §10.2, independent under §3.10 of every platform concerned, so that the panel is odd and one seat is held by a witness with no standing relationship to any party. Both parties may submit statements and evidence before the panel decides; the panel decides by majority; its fee is the fee fixed in the published rules under §10.2. Adjudicating witnesses are rated on their conduct under §10.4 exactly as an operator is, and the dispute-mechanics design provides the procedure. --- From d5f2c89dab3206829d09fb6872326aaea23f293b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:57 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 18/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2017=20=E2=80=94=20Gate=20full=20mut?= =?UTF-8?q?ual=20credit=20on=20ratification=20by=20the=20deployment's=20pr?= =?UTF-8?q?osumers=20(=C2=A7=C2=A711.1,=2011.3)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 17 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 14 ++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 961ece2..5010d0a 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -282,11 +282,21 @@ Where these bylaws give a matter to a channel or a federation rather than to the **11.1 The gate.** Deployments begin with escrow as the default transaction formatting — collateralized, no negative balances, and no counterparty credit extended. The only trust escrow requires is in the operator's custody of the funds, which §10.2 requires the operator to disclose. -A deployment switches to a hybrid or full mutual credit system only when all three of the following are true: the operator has built the capacity to manage the stage it is entering, in accordance with local laws; the prosumer network has been notified under §11.3; and the publication required by §11.2 has been made. Until all three are true the switch is not gated, whatever else has been done, and each of the three is a condition of this section for the purposes of §11.4. +A deployment switches to a hybrid mutual credit system only when conditions (a) through (c) are all true, and to a full mutual credit system only when conditions (a) through (d) are all true: + +(a) the operator has built the capacity to manage the stage it is entering, in accordance with local laws; + +(b) the prosumer network has been notified under §11.3; + +(c) the publication required by §11.2 has been made; and + +(d) the deployment's prosumers have ratified the switch: in a ballot noticed to them under §11.3 and open for no less than one week, a majority of the votes cast was for the switch. Each prosumer of the deployment — every person with a sealed exchange on the platform committed to the public chain, reckoned per person and never per account — holds one vote, cast in the platform frontend through the function of §4.4, and never cast, directed, withheld, or conditioned by the operator under §4.5. The ballot, the roll it was held on, and its result are published to the governance registry with the publication of §11.2. + +A hybrid deployment requires no ratification, because each prosumer chooses the terms it accepts under §11.5 and no prosumer's exit is made dear without its consent; a deployment moving from hybrid to full mutual credit satisfies (d) anew. Until every applicable condition is true the gate is not passed, whatever else has been done, and each condition is a condition of this section for the purposes of §11.4. **11.2 Publication is the act.** Publication to the governance registry of the local authorizations to provide mutual credit services — or, where the jurisdiction requires none, of a finding to that effect — is itself the operative act, and authorizes mutual credit transactions across orchestrators. A finding that no authorization is required is an assertion on the record, contestable under §11.4 like any other condition of the gate. -**11.3 Notification.** The applicable federation must be notified when an operator gives notice to prosumers, no less than thirty days before the switch takes effect. +**11.3 Notification.** The applicable federation must be notified when an operator gives notice to prosumers, no less than thirty days before the switch takes effect. For a switch to full mutual credit, the notice states the days on which the ratification ballot of §11.1(d) opens and closes, and the switch takes effect no earlier than thirty days after the notice and no earlier than the ballot's close. **11.4 Challenges to Local Compliance.** Any member, or any prosumer of the deployment, may challenge whether the conditions of §11.1 were in fact met, through the procedure of Article XII. From 6372d9ca766f36aa5188ef769b567f978e0bc4bc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:58 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 19/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2018=20=E2=80=94=20Open=20the=20Cove?= =?UTF-8?q?nant=20channel=20during=20bootstrap=20(=C2=A716.3)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 18 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 5010d0a..7389166 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -374,7 +374,7 @@ A hybrid deployment requires no ratification, because each prosumer chooses the **16.2 End of bootstrap.** The founder board shall be dissolved upon the election of representatives from no less than three federations. Representatives elected before the threshold shall share power with the founder board. Federations must provide E&I and orchestration services before being eligible to elect a representative. A single operator/orchestrator, whether individual or corporation may not elect themselves as a representative. -**16.3 The Governance channel during bootstrap.** The service prerequisite of §16.2 is written for federations that sell a service, and the Governance federation sells none: it hosts the instrument by which the others are governed. It is therefore eligible to elect its representative when two things are true — a recognized operating member hosts the governance platform, and the function of §4.4 is live on at least one federated platform, so that prosumers can be recognized under §3.8 and vote. Where the Governance federation holds a single operating member, the bar of §16.2 on electing oneself is satisfied by the prosumer members' votes, which that host neither casts nor directs (§4.5); a Governance federation of one operating member and no prosumer members elects no one. The founder board records in the governance registry, as a bootstrap act, the date the channel opened and the roll it then held. +**16.3 The Governance and Covenant channels during bootstrap.** The service prerequisite of §16.2 is written for federations that sell a service, and the Governance federation sells none: it hosts the instrument by which the others are governed. It is therefore eligible to elect its representative when two things are true — a recognized operating member hosts the governance platform, and the function of §4.4 is live on at least one federated platform, so that prosumers can be recognized under §3.8 and vote. Where the Governance federation holds a single operating member, the bar of §16.2 on electing oneself is satisfied by the prosumer members' votes, which that host neither casts nor directs (§4.5); a Governance federation of one operating member and no prosumer members elects no one. The founder board records in the governance registry, as a bootstrap act, the date the channel opened and the roll it then held. The Covenant federation likewise sells no service: it holds the covenant by which the others trade. It is eligible to elect its representative when the function of §4.4 is live on at least one federated platform and at least one prosumer member has elected it under §3.9; a Covenant federation with no prosumer members elects no one. The founder board records the opening and the roll of each channel as above. --- From ebf089aeb1d0e42725ab33efd82a26e02f279a14 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:58 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 20/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2019=20=E2=80=94=20Record=20the=20pr?= =?UTF-8?q?ovenance=20of=20the=20added=20demands=20(Appendix)?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 19 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 12 ++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 7389166..0dbb9bb 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -445,6 +445,18 @@ A hybrid deployment requires no ratification, because each prosumer chooses the | §15.1 | These bylaws amended by a majority of delegates, every member of each federation voting | §2.1; §2.2 (gravity); §7.5 | | §16.1, §16.2 | Bootstrap by founder board; each act recorded and open to challenge | Concept triage, 2026-08-24 (meta) | | §16.3 | Governance federation sells no service; the channel opens on a live §4.4 function | §16.2; §2.2 (gravity) | +| §2.2 (stage) | The cost of leaving is reckoned at the stage a deployment is in | Official document, Principles (Institutional Discipline); line 10 (L10) | +| §3.1, §3.8, §3.9 | Prosumer member sits in the Covenant or Governance federation at its election; one change a year, at the equinox | Official document, Governance Layer, orchestrator tier (as amended 2026-09-22); §2.1 | +| §3.9, §4.2 | The election places the vote and nothing else; standing held everywhere | Article IV; §2.1 | +| §3.10, §10.2 (Witnesses) | Independence defined; seeded verifiable draw; market-paid; staggered rotation | Official document, Record Layer (REC-witness-minimum); §2.2 (a power names its check); §4.1(a) | +| §5.3 | Who populates each federation | Official document, layer definitions; structure article, "Between Federations" | +| §6.5 | Operating-member floor struck | §2.2; §13.1 (no chokepoint) | +| §8.2 | The President drafts covenant amendments; adoption under §9.2 only | Official document, Covenant Layer; §7.6 | +| §8.3 | The Vice President audits the stack against the standard | §12.2; conformance suite | +| §10.7 | No institutional routing, scoped to cheap exit | §2.2 (gravity); official document, line 10 (L10) | +| §10.9 | Prosumer-versus-own-operator disputes to the platform's witnesses; one witness drawn per dispute | Official document, Covenant Layer, orchestrator tier (as amended 2026-09-22); §2.2 | +| §11.1(d), §11.3 | Ratification by the deployment's prosumers before full mutual credit | §2.2 (gravity); official document, line 10 (L10), which states minimums | +| §16.3 (Covenant) | The Covenant channel opens on a live §4.4 function | §16.2; §2.2 | --- From 723cb115f157c9e73080b9afc718cdf10a04e078 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:58 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 21/24] =?UTF-8?q?Item=2020=20=E2=80=94=20Correct=20four=20?= =?UTF-8?q?spellings,=20no=20change=20of=20meaning?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Applies Item 20 of the P1-001 v1.1 amendment of 2026-09-22 to the draft. Proposed, not adopted: §15.1 requires a vote of the delegates. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 8 ++++---- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index 0dbb9bb..e16a46f 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ These principles are operative rules of interpretation. Every other provision of **3.2 Federated instance.** An instance is federated when all of the following are true: -(a) complys with membership duties in section §10. +(a) complies with membership duties in section §10. (b) maintains at least two standing witnesses, drawn and paid under §10.2 and independent under §3.10; an instance with fewer must label itself unfederated and does not qualify; @@ -254,7 +254,7 @@ Where these bylaws give a matter to a channel or a federation rather than to the **Protocol Orchestration** Provide prosumers (users) with covenant adjudicated socioeconomic markets based on protocol; **Orchestration Link** When able, link prosumer communities by broadcasting to an orchestrator; **Protocol Involvement** maintain CI/CD that improves governance and maintain the protocol; -**Covenant Compliance** Serve bi-directional Covenant layer assessments at all points where orchestrators and operators exchange information or materials according to §9.10, adjudicate covenant breeches between prosumers and execute the remedies an adjudication yields. +**Covenant Compliance** Serve bi-directional Covenant layer assessments at all points where orchestrators and operators exchange information or materials according to §9.10, adjudicate covenant breaches between prosumers and execute the remedies an adjudication yields. **Defaults** annotate defaults on the record by kind — deceased, departed, or adjudicated, unknown — never erasing them; publish the platform's trailing default rate — dead credit created over a recent rolling window as a share of trade volume. **Credit Setting** When using mutual credit, set the community-wide credit limit: one number for everyone, never set per member, and never derived from reputation **Custody** Where prosumer funds or collateral are held, disclose in the platform's published rules who holds them, on what terms, and how a prosumer recovers them if the platform ceases to operate; name every third-party processor or custodian in the chain, whether or not the platform touches the funds itself. Escrow is the one stage at which a prosumer's position does not survive the operator, so the trust it requires is answered by disclosure and exit: undisclosed custody is a failure of duty under §10.6 and grounds for referral under §12.3. @@ -308,9 +308,9 @@ A hybrid deployment requires no ratification, because each prosumer chooses the **12.1 What only the Governance Layer may do.** The Office of the Vice President enforces these bylaws across the stack by exercising the following powers. -**12.2 Audits.** Confirmation of the official record against orchestrators, witnessess, and prosumer records as well as the executed code. The Governance and adjacent Federation(s) involved in an issue may agree to commission hardware inspections. +**12.2 Audits.** Confirmation of the official record against orchestrators, witnesses, and prosumer records as well as the executed code. The Governance and adjacent Federation(s) involved in an issue may agree to commission hardware inspections. -**12.3 Expulsion referrals.** An adjudicator's referral of expulsion is filed with the governance federation's frontend channel. The channel decides the expulsion by majority of votes cast. Expulsion is recorded by annotation in the governance registry. While expulsion from a frontend platform does not bar a prosumer or operator from joining another platform or orchestrator, it does not stop an operator or orchestrator from baring them. +**12.3 Expulsion referrals.** An adjudicator's referral of expulsion is filed with the governance federation's frontend channel. The channel decides the expulsion by majority of votes cast. Expulsion is recorded by annotation in the governance registry. While expulsion from a frontend platform does not bar a prosumer or operator from joining another platform or orchestrator, it does not stop an operator or orchestrator from barring them. **12.4 What expulsion reaches.** Expulsion does not erase history; the expelled party's record stands, annotated. It does not reach what the architecture guarantees: a member's positions and history survive any frontend, and a community's records survive any operator or orchestrator. From 78bacf9de0c727ec5c29e2afdb5106e137285d1a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:58 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 22/24] Mark the draft v1.1, unadopted, and point at the instrument MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit v1.0 stays operative until the delegates vote under §15.1. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 8 ++++++-- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index e16a46f..c3eca34 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -1,8 +1,12 @@ # Bylaws of Network Theory Applied Research Institute, Inc. -**P1-001 · Version 1.0 · 2026-08-31** +**P1-001 · Version 1.1 · Draft · 2026-09-22 · NOT YET ADOPTED** -Prepared and adopted by the founder board as a bootstrap act under §16.1, and recorded in the governance registry under §9.5. Version numbering restarts at 1.0: this is the first instrument written to the Janus Facing Architecture, and it supersedes the P1-001 v6.0 through v8.0 line, which is archived rather than amended. Like every bootstrap act, it stands open to the membership under §2.3. +This draft applies the amendment of 2026-09-22 to v1.0, item by item. It is **not the operative instrument**: v1.0 remains in force until the delegates adopt the amendment under §15.1, each federation having decided under §6.5 with every member of that federation holding the vote, prosumer members included, in a ballot noticed under §6.4 carrying the full text. During bootstrap (§16.1) the founder board exercises the powers of the membership; an adoption so made is recorded in the governance registry (§9.5) as a bootstrap act and stands open to the membership under §2.3. + +Items 2 through 12 and 18 rest on the amendment to the official document of the same date and cannot be adopted before it, and Item 16 depends on its §2 for §15.2 protection. The instrument — each item's dependencies, the §15.2 check, and the adoption record — is in [P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md](P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md). Translations under P2-002 follow adoption. + +Version numbering continues the line restarted at 1.0: this instrument is written to the Janus Facing Architecture and supersedes the P1-001 v6.0 through v8.0 line, which is archived rather than amended. --- From fd9e9d8102a1d9bc71458a484ba45ed6102553c1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:59 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 23/24] Add the P1-001 v1.1 amendment instrument of 2026-09-22 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The instrument the delegates vote on under §15.1: twenty items, each with its dependencies, the §15.2 check, the provenance rows, and an adoption record left blank until the vote. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md | 458 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 458 insertions(+) create mode 100644 P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md diff --git a/P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md b/P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e945974 --- /dev/null +++ b/P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md @@ -0,0 +1,458 @@ +# Bylaws of Network Theory Applied Research Institute, Inc. + +## P1-001 · Amendment v1.1 · Draft · 2026-09-22 + +**Proceeds under Article XV.** Adopted, if adopted, by a majority vote of the delegates, each federation having decided under §6.5 with every member of that federation holding the vote, prosumer members included, in a ballot noticed under §6.4 carrying this full text (§15.1). During bootstrap (§16.1) the founder board exercises the powers of the membership; an adoption so made is recorded in the governance registry (§9.5) as a bootstrap act and stands open to the membership under §2.3. + +**§15.2 check.** No item crosses the twelve lines. Items 2 through 12 and 18 rest on the amendment to the official document dated 2026-09-22 (Governance layer, orchestrator tier) and follow it in sequence; adopted before it, they would exceed the document for the interval between the two acts. No item deletes a check that §2.2 requires a power to carry; Items 1, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 add checks. + +**Form.** The items may be adopted as a whole or item by item, at the delegates' choice; each names what it depends on. Where an item restates a section, the restated text is the amended text in full. Where it strikes and inserts, the rest of the section stands unchanged. Translations under Policy P2-002 follow adoption. + +--- + +## Items + +| # | Section | Subject | +| --- | --- | --- | +| 1 | §2.2 | Gravity, reckoned at the stage | +| 2 | Preamble | Operator-members → members | +| 3 | §3.1 | Membership types | +| 4 | §3.3 | Recognition records the election | +| 5 | §3.4 | One member, one vote | +| 6 | §3.7 | Continuous exchange of roles | +| 7 | §3.8 | Prosumer membership | +| 8 | §3.9 *(new)* | Election of a federation; the annual change | +| 9 | §4.2, §4.4, §4.5 | Standing and the franchise | +| 10 | §5.1, §5.3 | Channels and federations | +| 11 | §6.5 | Operating-member floor struck | +| 12 | §6.8, §8.2, §8.3 | Elections; the offices | +| 13 | §3.2(b), §3.10 *(new)* | Witness independence and eligibility | +| 14 | §10.2 (Witnesses) | Seeded draw, market payment, rotation | +| 15 | §10.7 | No institutional routing, scoped to cheap exit | +| 16 | §10.6, §10.9 | Who adjudicates | +| 17 | §11.1, §11.3 | The gate to full mutual credit | +| 18 | §16.3 | Transition: the Covenant channel | +| 19 | Appendix | Provenance of demands, added rows | +| 20 | Housekeeping | Spelling, no change of meaning | + +--- + +## Item 1 — §2.2 Gravity + +*Depends on nothing. Restated in full.* + +**Current text.** + +> **2.2 Gravity.** Each layer of the architecture — and each organ of this Institute — is disciplined by the cost of prosumer's ability to leave it. Where leaving is cheap, competition disciplines and these bylaws impose no gate. Where leaving is dear, the members vote. Where leaving is catastrophic, decisions stay open to challenge. Any provision of these bylaws that creates a power must name its check; a power whose check cannot be identified is void until the membership supplies one. + +**Amended text.** + +> **2.2 Gravity.** Each layer of the architecture — and each organ of this Institute — is disciplined by the cost to a prosumer of leaving it. Where leaving is cheap, competition disciplines and these bylaws impose no gate. Where leaving is dear, the members vote. Where leaving is catastrophic, decisions stay open to challenge. The cost of leaving is reckoned as it stands at the stage a deployment or an organ is in, not as it stood at entry: a check that was sufficient under escrow is not thereby sufficient under mutual credit. Any provision of these bylaws that creates a power must name its check; a power whose check cannot be identified is void until the membership supplies one. + +**Note.** The v1.0 text let a check named at one stage be read as sufficient at every later stage; §10.7 was read that way. The added sentence closes that reading and is the principle Items 15 and 17 apply. + +--- + +## Item 2 — Preamble + +*Depends on the official-document amendment, §1.* + +**Strike:** + +> The relationships between its operator-members is the architecture's Governance orchestration. + +**Insert:** + +> The relationships among its members — operating members and prosumer members alike — are the architecture's Governance orchestration. + +--- + +## Item 3 — §3.1 Membership Types + +*Depends on the official-document amendment, §1. Restated in full.* + +**Current text.** + +> **3.1 Membership Types.** Membership in the Institute is obtained by operating a federated instance of JFA software, or by prosumer standing in the Governance layer under §3.8. Orchestrators run software that links operators across regions and cultures while operators run frontend software that prosumers (users) interact with. Despite the functional heirarcy, the two operating types have equal standing in governance. Where these bylaws distinguish the paths, an operating member is a member by federated instance and a prosumer member is a member under §3.8. + +**Amended text.** + +> **3.1 Membership Types.** Membership in the Institute is obtained by operating a federated instance of JFA software, or by prosumer standing under §3.8, placed in the Covenant federation or the Governance federation as the member elects under §3.9. Orchestrators run software that links operators across regions and cultures while operators run frontend software that prosumers (users) interact with. Despite the functional hierarchy, the two operating types have equal standing in governance, and a prosumer member has equal standing with both within its federation. Where these bylaws distinguish the paths, an operating member is a member by federated instance and a prosumer member is a member under §3.8. + +--- + +## Item 4 — §3.3 Recognition + +*Depends on Item 8.* + +**Strike:** + +> and records the recognition in the governance registry (§9.5). + +**Insert:** + +> and records the recognition in the governance registry (§9.5), together with the federation a prosumer member elects under §3.9. + +--- + +## Item 5 — §3.4 One member, one vote + +*Depends on Item 8.* + +**Strike:** + +> a prosumer member belongs to the Governance federation alone. + +**Insert:** + +> a prosumer member belongs to the one federation it has elected under §3.9 — the Covenant federation or the Governance federation — and to no other. + +--- + +## Item 6 — §3.7 Continuous exchange of roles + +*Depends on Item 8.* + +**Strike:** + +> and checks that coordination by voting in the Governance channel. + +**Insert:** + +> and checks that coordination by voting in the federation it has elected under §3.9. + +--- + +## Item 7 — §3.8 Prosumer membership + +*Depends on the official-document amendment, §1, and on Item 8. Restated in full.* + +**Current text.** + +> **3.8 Prosumer membership.** A prosumer of a federated platform is a member of the Institute in the Governance layer, and in that layer alone, upon recognition under §3.3. Recognition requires at least one sealed exchange committed to the public chain, verified from the chain and never from an operator's assertion, and is reckoned per person rather than per account. Prosumer membership carries the vote of §3.4 and the candidacy of §8.3, and no duty under Article X. A prosumer member decides every matter the Governance federation decides, the amendment of these bylaws under §15.1 included — the governed hold the vote on the structure that governs them. Its weight is bounded not by subject matter but by the delegate channel of §5.3: the Governance federation carries one vote of five however large its roll grows. It lapses when the member so elects, or when no sealed exchange of that member stands on a federated platform and none is restored within ninety days; lapse is recorded by annotation under §3.6. + +**Amended text.** + +> **3.8 Prosumer membership.** A prosumer of a federated platform is a member of the Institute in the Covenant federation or the Governance federation, as the member elects under §3.9, and in that federation alone, upon recognition under §3.3. Recognition requires at least one sealed exchange committed to the public chain, verified from the chain and never from an operator's assertion, and is reckoned per person rather than per account. Prosumer membership carries the vote of §3.4 and, according to the federation elected, the candidacy of §8.2 or §8.3, and no duty under Article X. A prosumer member decides every matter its federation decides, the amendment of these bylaws under §15.1 included — the governed hold the vote on the structure that governs them. Its weight is bounded not by subject matter but by the delegate channel of §5.3: each federation carries one vote of five however large its roll grows. It lapses when the member so elects, or when no sealed exchange of that member stands on a federated platform and none is restored within ninety days; lapse is recorded by annotation under §3.6. + +--- + +## Item 8 — §3.9 Election of a federation *(new section)* + +*Depends on the official-document amendment, §1.* + +**Insert after §3.8:** + +> **3.9 Election of a federation.** On recognition under §3.3, a prosumer member elects the Covenant federation or the Governance federation, and the Secretary records the election in the governance registry under §9.5. The election places the vote and nothing else: every right of Article IV is held in every federation and channel regardless of it, and a prosumer member is heard under §4.1(d) in the channel where a matter concerning them arose, whichever federation holds their vote. +> +> A prosumer member may change federations once each year. The option opens at 00:00 UTC on 17 March and closes at the instant of the March equinox in Coordinated Universal Time, which the Secretary publishes for the coming year from a standard astronomical ephemeris no later than the preceding equinox. Every change elected within the window takes effect at the equinox, when the Secretary records the new rolls under §9.5; outside the window the election stands. A change is the member's own act: no operator or orchestrator makes, directs, withholds, or conditions it, under §4.5. +> +> The equinox is the anchor because it belongs to no calendar: the year begins at different points in different cultures, and Earth's position in its orbit is the same for all of them. + +**Note.** The window opens on the anniversary of the Institute's incorporation and fires on the equinox; the days between are the Institute's to observe as it likes, by policy rather than bylaw. + +--- + +## Item 9 — Article IV: §4.2, §4.4, §4.5 + +*Depends on Item 8.* + +**§4.2 — restated in full.** + +Current text: + +> **4.2 Standing, and the franchise.** Prosumer standing under §4.1 is voice and process, and requires no membership. The vote is not part of that standing: a prosumer who takes up Governance-layer membership under §3.8 holds the vote as a member, on the terms of §3.4, and votes on every matter the Governance Federation Channel decides — including the election and recall of the Vice President under §8.3 and expulsion referrals under §12.3. + +Amended text: + +> **4.2 Standing, and the franchise.** Prosumer standing under §4.1 is voice and process, and requires no membership. The vote is not part of that standing: a prosumer who takes up membership under §3.8 holds the vote as a member, on the terms of §3.4, in the federation elected under §3.9, and votes on every matter that federation decides — in the Covenant federation, the election and recall of the President under §8.2 among them; in the Governance federation, the election and recall of the Vice President under §8.3 and expulsion referrals under §12.3 among them. The election of a federation places the vote and nothing else; standing under §4.1 is held everywhere regardless of it. + +**§4.4 — strike and insert.** + +Strike: + +> the function by which a prosumer takes up Governance-layer membership under §3.8 and thereafter raises business and votes in the Governance Federation Channel — as an operating member joins a federation through the console of §5.3. Withholding that function is a failure of duty under §10.6. + +Insert: + +> the function by which a prosumer takes up membership under §3.8, elects and changes its federation under §3.9, and thereafter raises business and votes in that federation's channel — as an operating member joins a federation through the console of §5.3. Withholding any part of that function is a failure of duty under §10.6. + +**§4.5 — strike and insert.** + +Strike: + +> and none conditions service, credit, or standing on how a prosumer member votes. + +Insert: + +> and none conditions service, credit, or standing on how a prosumer member votes or on which federation it elects under §3.9. + +--- + +## Item 10 — Article V: §5.1, §5.3 + +*Depends on the official-document amendment, §1, and on Item 8.* + +**§5.1 — strike and insert.** + +Strike: + +> The Governance channel comprises, in addition, the prosumer members of §3.8. + +Insert: + +> The Covenant channel and the Governance channel comprise, in addition, the prosumer members who have elected them under §3.9. + +**§5.3 — restated in full.** + +Current text: + +> **5.3 Federation.** A federation is the community of the members of each layer (substrate, covenant, record, governance, and Economy & Information) — its operators and orchestrators, and in the Governance layer its prosumer members. Members join automatically through a console in the backend of JFA software produced by the Institute. Each federation elects one delegate, who is the director bound to that federation under §7.2. The delegate carries the federation's single vote in every matter these bylaws give to the delegates. A delegate is recallable at any time by vote of the federation that elected them, without cause and with immediate effect. + +Amended text: + +> **5.3 Federation.** A federation is the community of the members of each layer — its operating members, and in the Covenant and Governance layers the prosumer members who have elected it under §3.9. Read to the architecture: the Substrate federation is the substrate's hosts; the Record federation its witnesses and data hosts; the Economy & Information federation its operators and orchestrators; the Covenant federation the prosumer members who hold the covenant, together with any operating member of that layer; the Governance federation the prosumer members who hold the audit, together with the operating members of that layer, the host of the governance platform among them. Operating members join automatically through a console in the backend of JFA software produced by the Institute; prosumer members join through the function of §4.4. Each federation elects one delegate, who is the director bound to that federation under §7.2. The delegate carries the federation's single vote in every matter these bylaws give to the delegates. A delegate is recallable at any time by vote of the federation that elected them, without cause and with immediate effect. + +--- + +## Item 11 — §6.5 Quorum and majority + +*Depends on nothing.* + +**Strike** (second paragraph): + +> A federation's ballot is valid when notice under §6.4 was given and at least one member casts; in the Governance federation, at least one operating member must be among them. + +**Insert:** + +> A federation's ballot is valid when notice under §6.4 was given and at least one member casts. + +**Note.** The struck clause let the operating members of the Governance federation void any of its ballots by abstaining — a chokepoint of the kind §2.2 and §13.1 forbid everywhere else. The sentence that follows in §6.5 — that a small roll is not a defect to be cured by a higher bar, and that each ballot records the roll then held — is kept: with the floor gone, it is what makes a thin ballot visible rather than hidden. + +--- + +## Item 12 — Elections and the offices: §6.8, §8.2, §8.3 + +*Depends on Item 8.* + +**§6.8 — strike and insert.** + +Strike: + +> — the Vice President by the Governance federation, in which prosumer members vote under §3.4. + +Insert: + +> — the President by the Covenant federation and the Vice President by the Governance federation, in each of which the prosumer members who have elected it vote under §3.4. + +**§8.2 — restated in full.** + +Current text: + +> **8.2 President.** Elected by the Covenant Federation, the office of the President directs research and development (RAND) on the Covenant Layer protocol, oversees the LBTAS API serving compliant covenant assessments to the network, and its socioeconomic effects on the federated communities. + +Amended text: + +> **8.2 President.** Elected by the Covenant Federation, the office of the President directs research and development (RAND) on the Covenant Layer protocol, oversees the LBTAS API serving compliant covenant assessments to the network, studies their socioeconomic effects on the federated communities, and drafts amendments to the covenant protocol as the needs of the stack require. A draft is adopted only under §9.2; the office is no gate under §7.6. Any member of that federation may stand for the office, prosumer members of §3.8 included. + +**§8.3 — restated in full.** + +Current text: + +> **8.3 Vice President.** Elected by the Governance Federation, the office of the Vice President enforces these bylaws with powers specified in Article XII. Any member of that federation may stand for the office, prosumer members of §3.8 included. + +Amended text: + +> **8.3 Vice President.** Elected by the Governance Federation, the office of the Vice President maintains and audits the stack against the official document and the conformance suite, and enforces these bylaws, with the powers specified in Article XII. Any member of that federation may stand for the office, prosumer members of §3.8 included. + +--- + +## Item 13 — Witness independence and eligibility: §3.2(b), §3.10 *(new)* + +*Depends on Item 14.* + +**§3.2(b) — strike and insert.** + +Strike: + +> (b) maintains at least two independent witnesses hired from the substrate layer; an instance with fewer must label itself unfederated and does not qualify; + +Insert: + +> (b) maintains at least two standing witnesses, drawn and paid under §10.2 and independent under §3.10; an instance with fewer must label itself unfederated and does not qualify; + +**§3.10 — insert after §3.9.** + +> **3.10 Witness independence and eligibility.** A witness is independent of a platform when it is not the platform's operator, is not under common ownership or control with the operator, holds no interest in the operator, and is not a prosumer of that platform. A witness discloses any interest it holds in a party to a matter before acting on it and stands aside where the interest conflicts; the disclosure is recorded under §2.5. A member of the substrate is ineligible for any draw under §10.2 or §10.9 while the mode of the ratings of its adjudication conduct under §10.4 is −1; the mode is the decision rule §9.11 allows and is never displayed as a reputation. Independence is asserted on the record at the draw and is contestable under Article XII like any other condition. + +**Note.** v1.0 required independence without defining it, which is where an operator running witness nodes under another key would have lived. Excluding the platform's own prosumers from its witness seats is a design choice; strike that clause if the membership judges the substrate market too thin for it. + +--- + +## Item 14 — §10.2 Operator Specific: Witnesses + +*Depends on nothing. Strike and insert within §10.2.* + +**Strike:** + +> **Witnesses** Maintain a ledger of protocol transmissions and pay two randowm witnesses from the substrate layer to monitor the same. + +**Insert:** + +> **Witnesses** Maintain a ledger of protocol transmissions, monitored by two standing witnesses drawn at random from the federated Substrate Market by a draw seeded from the public chain, so that anyone may verify the draw under §4.1(a). An operator that provides its own substrate under §10.3 still draws its witnesses from the market; witnessing is never self-provided. Pay the market for witnessing as a service, at the fee fixed in the platform's published rules; the market assigns and pays the witnesses, and the operator pays no witness directly. Each standing seat is held for two years; the two seats are staggered so that one is redrawn each year, the redraw taking effect on the March equinox with the rolls of §3.9. A witness whose seat ends continues to hold and attest the record it observed. The fee for adjudication under §10.9 is likewise fixed in the published rules and never set per dispute. + +**Note.** Three routes of capture are closed here: selection (the draw is verifiable), the paycheck (the market pays, not the operator), and duration (rotation). Both seats never turn over at once, so a platform is never witnessed only by parties who observed none of its history. + +--- + +## Item 15 — §10.7 No institutional routing + +*Depends on Items 1 and 17. Restated in full.* + +**Current text.** + +> **10.7 No institutional routing.** The Institute does not supervise, ratify, or pre-clear operators' economic management. The checks are the architecture's own: filings that land on the public chain the moment they are made, publicly adjudicatied reputation, published limits and default rates, and prosumers' freedom to leave. + +**Amended text.** + +> **10.7 No institutional routing.** The Institute does not supervise, ratify, or pre-clear operators' economic management. Where a prosumer's exit from a deployment is cheap — under escrow, and under a hybrid deployment in which each prosumer chooses the terms it accepts under §11.5 — the checks are the architecture's own: filings that land on the public chain the moment they are made, publicly adjudicated reputation, published limits and default rates, and prosumers' freedom to leave. Where exit is dear — a deployment in full mutual credit, in which a prosumer's positive balance neither converts nor redeems and a negative one is owed — §2.2 requires a vote, and Article XI supplies it: the deployment's own prosumers ratify the switch under §11.1(d). The vote is theirs; no organ of the Institute is inserted in their place, and nothing in this section is a gate under §7.6. + +**Note.** v1.0 named one check — freedom to leave — for every stage, including the one at which that freedom has largely gone. The section's purpose, that the Institute never routes an operator's economics through itself, is kept whole: the check supplied is platform-local. + +--- + +## Item 16 — Who adjudicates: §10.6, §10.9 + +*Depends on Items 13 and 14, and (for §15.2 protection) on the official-document amendment, §2.* + +**§10.6 — strike and insert.** + +Strike: + +> is a covenant matter first — adjudicated, rated, and disciplined by the market's cheap exit — + +Insert: + +> is a covenant matter first — adjudicated under §10.9, rated, and, where exit is cheap, disciplined by it — + +**§10.9 — restated in full.** + +Current text: + +> **10.9 Who adjudicates.** An apparent covenant breach between prosumers of the same platform is adjudicated by that platform's operator, as §10.2 provides. A dispute that crosses platforms is adjudicated at the witness layer, by the witnesses of the exchange in question, and never by either operator: neither is neutral between its own prosumer and another's. Adjudicating witnesses are rated on their conduct under §10.4 exactly as an operator is, and the dispute-mechanics design provides the procedure. + +Amended text: + +> **10.9 Who adjudicates.** An apparent covenant breach between prosumers of the same platform is adjudicated by that platform's operator, as §10.2 provides. A dispute that crosses platforms is adjudicated at the witness layer, by the standing witnesses of both platforms, and never by either operator: neither is neutral between its own prosumer and another's. A dispute between a prosumer and the operator of their own platform — over an exchange, an adjudication, custody, the credit limit, a stage change under Article XI, or a duty under this Article — is adjudicated by that platform's standing witnesses, and never by the operator, who is not neutral in its own case. For every adjudication by witnesses under this section, one further witness is drawn for the dispute from the federated Substrate Market by the seeded draw of §10.2, independent under §3.10 of every platform concerned, so that the panel is odd and one seat is held by a witness with no standing relationship to any party. Both parties may submit statements and evidence before the panel decides; the panel decides by majority; its fee is the fee fixed in the published rules under §10.2. Adjudicating witnesses are rated on their conduct under §10.4 exactly as an operator is, and the dispute-mechanics design provides the procedure. + +**Note.** Panels: a prosumer-versus-operator dispute sits before three (two standing, one drawn); a cross-platform dispute before five (two standing from each platform, one drawn). The drawn seat is the one an operator cannot have captured in advance. + +--- + +## Item 17 — The gate to full mutual credit: §11.1, §11.3 + +*Depends on Item 1. §11.1 restated in full; §11.3 strike and insert.* + +**§11.1 — current text.** + +> **11.1 The gate.** Deployments begin with escrow as the default transaction formatting — collateralized, no negative balances, and no counterparty credit extended. The only trust escrow requires is in the operator's custody of the funds, which §10.2 requires the operator to disclose. +> +> A deployment switches to a hybrid or full mutual credit system only when all three of the following are true: the operator has built the capacity to manage the stage it is entering, in accordance with local laws; the prosumer network has been notified under §11.3; and the publication required by §11.2 has been made. Until all three are true the switch is not gated, whatever else has been done, and each of the three is a condition of this section for the purposes of §11.4. + +**§11.1 — amended text.** + +> **11.1 The gate.** Deployments begin with escrow as the default transaction formatting — collateralized, no negative balances, and no counterparty credit extended. The only trust escrow requires is in the operator's custody of the funds, which §10.2 requires the operator to disclose. +> +> A deployment switches to a hybrid mutual credit system only when conditions (a) through (c) are all true, and to a full mutual credit system only when conditions (a) through (d) are all true: +> +> (a) the operator has built the capacity to manage the stage it is entering, in accordance with local laws; +> +> (b) the prosumer network has been notified under §11.3; +> +> (c) the publication required by §11.2 has been made; and +> +> (d) the deployment's prosumers have ratified the switch: in a ballot noticed to them under §11.3 and open for no less than one week, a majority of the votes cast was for the switch. Each prosumer of the deployment — every person with a sealed exchange on the platform committed to the public chain, reckoned per person and never per account — holds one vote, cast in the platform frontend through the function of §4.4, and never cast, directed, withheld, or conditioned by the operator under §4.5. The ballot, the roll it was held on, and its result are published to the governance registry with the publication of §11.2. +> +> A hybrid deployment requires no ratification, because each prosumer chooses the terms it accepts under §11.5 and no prosumer's exit is made dear without its consent; a deployment moving from hybrid to full mutual credit satisfies (d) anew. Until every applicable condition is true the gate is not passed, whatever else has been done, and each condition is a condition of this section for the purposes of §11.4. + +**§11.3 — strike and insert.** + +Strike: + +> no less than thirty days before the switch takes effect. + +Insert: + +> no less than thirty days before the switch takes effect. For a switch to full mutual credit, the notice states the days on which the ratification ballot of §11.1(d) opens and closes, and the switch takes effect no earlier than thirty days after the notice and no earlier than the ballot's close. + +**Note.** Line 10 states minimum conditions for the switch; an added condition does not cross it. Ratification is the vote §2.2 requires at the one stage where a prosumer's exit turns dear, and it is held on the platform, by the platform's prosumers, so §10.7 stands. §11.4 already lets any member or any prosumer of the deployment challenge whether the conditions of §11.1 were met; (d) is such a condition without further words. + +--- + +## Item 18 — §16.3 Transition + +*Depends on Item 8.* + +**Strike** the heading: + +> **16.3 The Governance channel during bootstrap.** + +**Insert:** + +> **16.3 The Governance and Covenant channels during bootstrap.** + +**Append** to §16.3: + +> The Covenant federation likewise sells no service: it holds the covenant by which the others trade. It is eligible to elect its representative when the function of §4.4 is live on at least one federated platform and at least one prosumer member has elected it under §3.9; a Covenant federation with no prosumer members elects no one. The founder board records the opening and the roll of each channel as above. + +**Note.** Two federations now open on the §4.4 function alone, so the three-federation threshold of §16.2 can be met by the two prosumer federations and one federation that sells a service. That shortens bootstrap; it does not lower the bar of §16.2 against self-election. + +--- + +## Item 19 — Appendix, Provenance of Demands: added rows + +*Informative, not operative.* + +| Bylaws provision | Demand | Source | +| --- | --- | --- | +| §2.2 (stage) | The cost of leaving is reckoned at the stage a deployment is in | Official document, Principles (Institutional Discipline); line 10 (L10) | +| §3.1, §3.8, §3.9 | Prosumer member sits in the Covenant or Governance federation at its election; one change a year, at the equinox | Official document, Governance Layer, orchestrator tier (as amended 2026-09-22); §2.1 | +| §3.9, §4.2 | The election places the vote and nothing else; standing held everywhere | Article IV; §2.1 | +| §3.10, §10.2 (Witnesses) | Independence defined; seeded verifiable draw; market-paid; staggered rotation | Official document, Record Layer (REC-witness-minimum); §2.2 (a power names its check); §4.1(a) | +| §5.3 | Who populates each federation | Official document, layer definitions; structure article, "Between Federations" | +| §6.5 | Operating-member floor struck | §2.2; §13.1 (no chokepoint) | +| §8.2 | The President drafts covenant amendments; adoption under §9.2 only | Official document, Covenant Layer; §7.6 | +| §8.3 | The Vice President audits the stack against the standard | §12.2; conformance suite | +| §10.7 | No institutional routing, scoped to cheap exit | §2.2 (gravity); official document, line 10 (L10) | +| §10.9 | Prosumer-versus-own-operator disputes to the platform's witnesses; one witness drawn per dispute | Official document, Covenant Layer, orchestrator tier (as amended 2026-09-22); §2.2 | +| §11.1(d), §11.3 | Ratification by the deployment's prosumers before full mutual credit | §2.2 (gravity); official document, line 10 (L10), which states minimums | +| §16.3 | The Covenant channel opens on a live §4.4 function | §16.2; §2.2 | + +--- + +## Item 20 — Housekeeping *(severable, no change of meaning)* + +Spelling in sections not otherwise restated by this amendment: + +- §3.2(a): "complys" → "complies" +- §10.2 (Covenant Compliance): "breeches" → "breaches" +- §12.2: "witnessess" → "witnesses" +- §12.3: "baring" → "barring" + +--- + +## Adoption record *(to be completed)* + +- Official-document amendment of 2026-09-22 adopted and recorded (prerequisite for Items 2–12, 16, 18): ________ +- Notice published under §6.4 carrying this full text: ________ +- Federation decisions under §6.5 — Substrate: ____ Record: ____ Covenant: ____ Governance: ____ E&I: ____ +- Delegates' vote under §15.1: ________ +- Items adopted (all, or by number): ________ +- Recorded in the governance registry under §9.5 (bootstrap act, if so): ________ +- Translations under P2-002 commissioned: ________ + +--- + +*Network Theory Applied Research Institute, Inc. — EIN 92-3047136 — Louisville, Kentucky — * + +*AGPL-3.0, matching the Institute's stewardship terms.* From b12e4dc8d9e91e28f9904368445b4d9b001e62e5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: the Institute Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:46:59 -0400 Subject: [PATCH 24/24] =?UTF-8?q?Cite=20the=20Covenant=20Layer,=20not=20it?= =?UTF-8?q?s=20orchestrator=20tier,=20in=20the=20=C2=A710.9=20provenance?= =?UTF-8?q?=20row?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The sentences the official-document amendment changes moved into the layer's own paragraph in the editorial revision of 2026-09-17 (Janus PR #9). The appendix is informative, not operative, but it should point where the text is. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Signed-off-by: the Institute --- P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md | 2 +- P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md | 2 +- 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md b/P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md index e945974..7ba520d 100644 --- a/P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md +++ b/P1-001_Amendment_v1.1_2026-09-22.md @@ -424,7 +424,7 @@ Insert: | §8.2 | The President drafts covenant amendments; adoption under §9.2 only | Official document, Covenant Layer; §7.6 | | §8.3 | The Vice President audits the stack against the standard | §12.2; conformance suite | | §10.7 | No institutional routing, scoped to cheap exit | §2.2 (gravity); official document, line 10 (L10) | -| §10.9 | Prosumer-versus-own-operator disputes to the platform's witnesses; one witness drawn per dispute | Official document, Covenant Layer, orchestrator tier (as amended 2026-09-22); §2.2 | +| §10.9 | Prosumer-versus-own-operator disputes to the platform's witnesses; one witness drawn per dispute | Official document, Covenant Layer (as amended 2026-09-22); §2.2 | | §11.1(d), §11.3 | Ratification by the deployment's prosumers before full mutual credit | §2.2 (gravity); official document, line 10 (L10), which states minimums | | §16.3 | The Covenant channel opens on a live §4.4 function | §16.2; §2.2 | diff --git a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md index c3eca34..fe07c79 100644 --- a/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md +++ b/P1-001_Bylaws_v1.1-draft.md @@ -458,7 +458,7 @@ A hybrid deployment requires no ratification, because each prosumer chooses the | §8.2 | The President drafts covenant amendments; adoption under §9.2 only | Official document, Covenant Layer; §7.6 | | §8.3 | The Vice President audits the stack against the standard | §12.2; conformance suite | | §10.7 | No institutional routing, scoped to cheap exit | §2.2 (gravity); official document, line 10 (L10) | -| §10.9 | Prosumer-versus-own-operator disputes to the platform's witnesses; one witness drawn per dispute | Official document, Covenant Layer, orchestrator tier (as amended 2026-09-22); §2.2 | +| §10.9 | Prosumer-versus-own-operator disputes to the platform's witnesses; one witness drawn per dispute | Official document, Covenant Layer (as amended 2026-09-22); §2.2 | | §11.1(d), §11.3 | Ratification by the deployment's prosumers before full mutual credit | §2.2 (gravity); official document, line 10 (L10), which states minimums | | §16.3 (Covenant) | The Covenant channel opens on a live §4.4 function | §16.2; §2.2 |