Governance

Future proposals

Governance and design decisions that are deferred — either because they depend on conditions not yet met, require more community input before drafting, or are optional under RCOS and not urgently needed.

Owner: Blueprint Steward / Membership Admin
Review cadence: Reviewed at each Reflection & Learning meeting; priorities updated as community context changes

High Priority

Treasury Spending Thresholds

Deferred until: First community funds received in the treasury
Required by: Layer 3 — Treasury Ruleset (§5.3.3); currently Finance Steward has €0 unilateral spending authority
What to define: Explicit spending tiers (e.g. Operational threshold ≤ €X, Strategic for larger amounts), authorized role/body, escalation path, and treasury transparency reporting cadence
Layers affected: Layer 2 (Decision Matrix), Layer 3 (Treasury Ruleset)
RCOS requirement: REQUIRED — spending authority must be explicitly bounded by thresholds

Medium Priority

ECO Accumulation Limits and Decay Mechanism

Deferred until: ECO utility is better defined
Required by: Layer 3 — Internal Economy Protocol (§5.2.4, §5.4.2); currently non-transferability is the only accumulation-limiting mechanism
What to define: Whether ECO should expire after inactivity, decay gradually, or have a hard cap; redistribution or burn mechanism; technical feasibility in Offcoin
Trigger: When ECO utility expands beyond Puckstack permissions, or when accumulation disparities become visible
Layers affected: Layer 3 (Internal Economy Protocol — Internal Units, Accumulation Constraints)
RCOS requirement: REQUIRED to define at least one accumulation-limiting mechanism; non-transferability currently satisfies the minimum. Additional mechanisms would strengthen compliance with §5.4.4 (concentration risk indicators).
See also: missing-technical-implementations.md — item 9

Economic Concentration Risk Indicators

Deferred until: Multiple members and meaningful ECO/XP balances exist
Required by: §5.4.4 — MUST define reviewable indicators of economic concentration risk and an explicit adjustment mechanism
What to define: Simple indicators (e.g., if one member holds >50% of total ECO supply, a review is triggered automatically at the next Reflection & Learning meeting); adjustment pathway (Strategic vote to tighten constraints)
RCOS requirement: REQUIRED

Per-Commons Resource Maintenance Obligations

Deferred until: First governance adoption cycle
Required by: §5.1.4 — for each commons resource, maintenance obligations must be explicit
What to define: Who is responsible for maintaining each resource (platform uptime, content accuracy, backups); what the maintenance obligation consists of; frequency
RCOS requirement: REQUIRED (partially addressed — stewards are named but obligations not listed per-resource)
Where to add: Internal Economy Protocol resource table (add “Maintenance obligations” column)

Low Priority / Optional

Consent-Based Decision Making for Strategic Decisions

Deferred until: Community is large enough to benefit from non-majority processes
Required by: Not a MUST requirement — §4.2.2 says decision mechanisms MAY include consent-based methods
What to define: Consent process for Strategic decisions as an alternative to simple majority vote; objection handling rules
Blocker: Requires ecohubsOS to support consent-based voting, or a modified proposal workflow
Layers affected: Layer 2 (Decision Matrix, Governance Protocol)
RCOS requirement: OPTIONAL

Ecological Identity Constraint Enforcement Mechanism

Deferred until: First community partners or pilot projects engaged
Required by: §2.4.3 — identity constraints MUST be testable and enforceable through defined processes
What to define: Measurable criteria for what constitutes “sustained net harm to local ecosystems”; enforcement pathway for the EcoHubs network context (as a steward of the standard, not an operator of physical land); how the Layer 4 accountability process would handle an ecological harm concern
RCOS requirement: REQUIRED (partially addressed — behavioral constraints enforced via Layer 4; ecological constraints lack a defined enforcement mechanism)

Resolved

Suspended Member State — resolved 2026-08-31

Was deferred until: ecohubsOS supports differentiated access control RCOS requirement: OPTIONAL — §3.7 says “MAY define” Resolution: The blocker is gone. ecohubsOS implements a distinct standby membership status with its own access rules: a standby member reaches a gated reactivation screen instead of the desktop, cannot vote or propose, and can request reactivation by a community vote. Standby is now defined as a membership state in the Membership State Registry and governed by the Suspension (Standby) section of the Exit & Separation Protocol, covering all three entry routes (own request, inactivity, protective suspension pending a community decision), the time bounds required by §3.7.2, and the anti-substitution rule required by §3.7.3. Remaining technical gaps: Standby upon a member’s own request, the 14-day steward-review deadline for an inconclusive case, and the decision threshold used for removal votes — see missing-technical-implementations.md

Substitution of Participation Rule — resolved 2026-08-31

Was deferred until: First governance adoption cycle Required by: §3.5.3 — substitution of participation must be explicitly governed Resolution: “Substitution of Participation” added to the Membership Agreement. Work on a task may be delegated, including to a non-member, but the personal acts of membership — voting, authoring proposals, consenting to the agreement, taking part in a conflict process, exercising role authority — may never be. Substituted work discharges the task without counting toward the delegating member’s own participation, XP and ECO follow whoever did the work and only where they are a member, and a Trial Member cannot reach Level 1 on work done by someone else. Unit attribution is mirrored in the Internal Economy Protocol.