How decisions get made
Everything a community decides is a signed record in the same history as its payments. There is no separate admin database and nothing an operator can change by hand. This page is the plain-language version of the governance design; the authoritative rules are in the decision records linked at the bottom.
The layers
The Charter. The founding document: principles, rights, founders. Changing it is a formal amendment that chains to the version it replaces, so treaty partners in a future federation can verify they are still dealing with the same community. Amendments need a higher bar than ordinary rules.
Statutes. The community’s ordinary laws, passed through the normal proposal process. A statute cannot contradict the Charter.
Precedent. Jury rulings in disputes build up a record of how the rules are read in practice.
Who decides
The electorate is the established members: those whose computed standing is high enough and whose identity is anchored by vouches. Standing is derived from the history by one formula that no community can tune, so nobody can be minted into the electorate by fiat.
Bootstrap grace
A brand-new community has no established members. Rather than leave it unable to govern, the software runs a grace: while fewer than three members are established, the electorate is the founders plus whoever is established. The app shows a banner while grace is on. It ends by itself the moment a third member becomes established, and it never comes back.
The life of a proposal
- Propose. Any member authors a proposal: a title, a body, and a kind (an ordinary statute, a Charter amendment, or an emergency measure).
- Co-sign. Other members endorse it. A proposal needs enough co-signers before it goes to a vote; this filters noise without letting anyone veto.
- Vote. Established members cast ballots during a deliberation window, about a week for ordinary proposals.
- Tally and enact. When the window closes, the station tallies the votes from the history. A passed statute is in force; a passed amendment becomes the new Charter.
Every step is a signed record. Anyone with the history can recompute the result, and a station cannot fake a tally it did not derive.
Which clock counts
Phones sign proposals and ballots with their own clocks, which may be wrong or lying. The station therefore anchors every window on the admission clock: the time the station admitted the record, not the time the author claimed. A ballot that arrives after the window closed does not count, no matter what time is written on it.
What organizers should watch for
- Quorum by attrition. If members drift away, the electorate shrinks and a few people can pass anything. Keep vouching and trading so the established pool stays broad.
- The emergency lever. It exists to decide faster in a crisis and does nothing else, but it is the sharpest tool in the box. Read Emergencies before you ever need it.
- Charter creep. If you find yourselves amending the Charter often, the content belongs in statutes.