How to read this document

Every foundational document has one sentence it usually leaves out: who wrote it.

Everything you read here was proposed by the founding group

The architecture, the compliance mechanism, the nine roles, every economic number, even the way nine missions are divided into three sets — all of it was built and proposed by the founding group. Not one line in this document has been through a community vote.

Saying that is necessary. Without it, a reader will assume this is the truth of the system. It is not. It is what one group of people chose, written down so that others can read it, argue with it, and change it.

A small group has to begin, because something must exist before there is anything to discuss. The difference between beginning and owning lies in exactly one place: whether the group that began will let others change it, how far they may change it, and until when.

Four labels, used consistently throughout

From here on, everything this document mentions belongs to exactly one of four states. Reading a claim without reading its label is the easiest way to mistake a proposal for a commitment.

The shortened reading rule: anything not marked ENGRAVED can be changed. And the ENGRAVED list is short on purpose — with a long engraved list, "the community decides" is only a figure of speech.

Figure 2 — The path of a decision. The gate in the middle is where the project blocks itself: see Nine roles.

The window that is still open, and when it closes

Changing a proposal is cheap while it is still words. It gets more expensive once it becomes code. And it is all but unchangeable once it enters the genesis of mainnet — a wrong genesis cannot be patched, it can only be rebuilt as a whole network.

So the most valuable stretch in the whole life of this project is the one from now until mainnet: the stretch where a stranger's question can still change the design. The three testnet periods are three times that window is reopened.

The window closes at the genesis of mainnet, not at the genesis of a testnet — and a genesis should only happen after passing the gates in Check the network yourself. On the roadmap, the closing point has a clear name: the vote that chooses the branch — after that comes engraving. Put another way, the window stays open exactly as wide as the remaining distance to level four — and you can measure that distance yourself, without asking anyone.

Three things the founding group binds itself to

Never ratify anything permanent with its own votes. Distributing voting power to the point where the project loses its veto must come before any ratification of anything permanent. The full reasoning is in Nine roles — the most candid page in this document.

State what does not work yet right beside what does, in the same table, so that nobody has to join two separate lists together.

Measure the promise to withdraw with a countable number: how many tasks still require an administrative key. If that number goes down, the promise is real; if it stands still, the promise is only words.

In short: a project that calls itself community-owned must answer two questions, not one: what can the community change, and what can no one change any more. The four labels above answer both — and you should hold that same table up against every new thing we say.

In this part

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