Governance

Bicameral governance & change control

Governance separates signal (House of Work) from stewardship (House of Stewardship). Every material change to SYMBI—articles, metrics, funding—flows through this pipeline with timelocks, emergency brakes, and recorded votes.

Houses

House of Work

Reputation-weighted signaling from non-transferable attestations derived from Trust Receipts and CIQ outcomes.

  • Thresholds: quorum 35%, soft-majority >= 55%
  • Reputation decays after 45 days of inactivity
  • Integrity incidents reduce voting weight until remediation

House of Stewardship

Time-bound steward council with narrow veto on constitution, budget, and security upgrades.

  • Seven seats, staggered 12-month terms
  • Veto window: 96 hours after HoW pass
  • Emergency sunset powers require 4/7 supermajority

Proposal flow

  1. 1. Draft & due diligence. Submit proposal with impact memo, threat assessment, and required resource plan. Logged in transparent registry.
  2. 2. House of Work soft vote. Reputation-weighted signal. Passing threshold triggers hand-off to House of Stewardship.
  3. 3. House of Stewardship review. Steward council approves, amends, or vetoes within 96 hours. Decisions with rationale are recorded.
  4. 4. Timelock & execution. Approved proposals wait ≥72 hours before implementation. Emergency sunsets require supermajority from both houses.

Safeguards

  • Proposal registry with hash-stamped drafts, public discussion, and impact assessments.
  • Timelock minimum 72 hours; urgent upgrades require dual attestation with public rationale.
  • Incident response: transparency report within 7 days, remediation plan, and voting on acceptance.

Principles

Core principles: Relationship over computation; Public-good core; Protocol over product; Sovereignty without speculation.

Roles & Artifacts

Participants

Non-transferable reputation holders who contribute signalling and review. Reputation is earned and may decay for inactivity or incidents.

Operators

Run services, hold operator integrity bonds, and follow quality policies; stake may be slashed for violations.

Stewards

Institute members and elected community stewards who exercise narrow stewardship powers and constitutional review.

Artifacts: Trust Receipts (signed, hash-chained), Attestation envelopes (non-transferable attestations), and formal Specs (Articles, schemas, adapters) used to drive audits and reputation.

Reputation & Integrity

Reputation is earned (not bought), driven by Trust Receipts and CIQ outcomes, peer review, and contribution to standards. Reputation decays with inactivity or verified incidents. Operator integrity mechanisms include stake-slash, rotating reviewers, and auditable trails for remediation and dispute resolution.

Token Posture (optional)

The token posture is optional and designed to avoid financialisation of governance: tokens (if introduced later) would represent governance parameters and integrity bonds only — no dividends, buybacks, or redemption. Payments for services remain fiat or stablecoins; no public speculative sale is planned under this posture.

Treasury & Public Goods

Treasury revenues are expected from SaaS, CIQ audits, managed instances, and marketplace revenue share. Controls include a multi-signature (4-of-7) custody, category spend caps, quarterly reporting, and external audits. The treasury prioritises public-goods funding, operational runway, and audit resources.

Progressive Sovereignty & Risks

SYMBI follows a phased path (Phase 0 → Phase 3) from Institute guardianship to community self-governance. Key risks include regulatory changes, capture, model drift, collusion, and software bugs. Mitigations include timelocks, audit trails, continuity protocols (ECHO-01), emergency sunsets, and multi-stakeholder review processes.

License

Whitepapers and canonical artifacts are licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 unless otherwise stated. Code is licensed MIT or Apache-2.0 as indicated in individual files.