The chain
The roles that exchange value. What is required: that every role produces AND receives identifiable value.
Open standard · version 0.3
The charter of the attested economy
Ten commitments verifiable from the outside. Noowow is its reference implementation; the text belongs to whoever wants to adopt it.
- Open licence
- Versioned, never rewritten
- Free to adopt, without permission
Foreword
This document does not declare values
It describes verifiable commitments, and it commits to keeping them. An economy, in whatever form, produces, distributes and consumes value. Each of its exchanges carries a cost paid before the price itself: the cost of trust.
Societies have always paid that cost to third parties: notaries, registrars, auditors. Their work is expensive, so attestation stayed a luxury. What changes is the cost: automation brings it to almost nothing per operation, and what was reserved for large affairs becomes affordable at the scale of ordinary life.
The difference from a page of “company values” is one sentence: every commitment below is falsifiable from the outside. It says what a conforming implementation makes observable, and how anybody can check it without access to anything internal.
The definitions
Three words, and the standard reads
The arbiter
The third party that attests. It is not in the chain: it does not compete, does not vote, does not rank. It counts, seals, holds the money, protects.
An attested fact
A statement the arbiter observed itself, as opposed to one declared by a member or bought by them.
The ten commitments
The statement, then what it makes observable
Every commitment follows the same shape. Conformance is the only matter the standard judges.
Money never buys the measure
Paying can buy reach, backing, visibility, never WEIGHT IN A MEASURE. A contribution that is paid, offered or free weighs exactly the same in everything the arbiter counts. There is no coefficient for sale, at any price, to anybody.
Conformance · The counting rule of each measure is published, and the public breakdown of its sources lets a third party verify that no paid source weighs more than another.
An attested fact is not rewritten
What the arbiter attested is timestamped and sealed. Nobody, not the member concerned, not even the arbiter, rewrites it. Correcting means publishing a next version, dated, the previous one staying readable.
Conformance · Every published attested fact carries its sealing date, publicly readable, years later; any correction appears as a new dated version.
Attention is not the inventory
The arbiter never sells access to its members' attention. Nothing comes between them and what they came for: no space, no moment, no rank is sold to the highest bidder. A third party who pays appears only ATTACHED TO A CONTRIBUTION.
Conformance · The forms of funded presence are listed publicly, each tied to the contribution that justifies it; their density is bounded and announced; every funded presence is labelled as such and answers “why am I being shown this”.
Reputation is an observation, never a rating
What the arbiter says about a member is an ATTESTED, DATED FACT, never an opinion score, never a rank for sale, never a declared rating.
Conformance · Every published element of reputation states the fact that grounds it and its date; no aggregated trust index on a named person; any fee covers a verification, never its result.
Everybody knows who pays what
The complete grid of flows is public: who pays, what, when, and what each role never pays. The arbiter's deductions happen at named moments, never as fees discovered after the fact.
Conformance · The grid is a public, dated document; a third party can reconstruct who paid what from the published rules.
Trust is never optional
Protecting people, the integrity of measures, fraud resistance, the protection of minors, the right to get your money back, is the same for everybody, WHATEVER EACH ONE PAYS. It is not sold, not negotiated, and not switched off.
Conformance · The list of “what is never paid for and never negotiable” is published; its observance can be checked by the member who pays the least; the undeclared-age rule is announced.
Data serves the person who produced it
Every piece of personal data has a purpose announced before it is collected; behavioural targeting is not sold; whatever influences WHAT IS PROPOSED TO A PERSON is visible to them and cleared by their gesture; erasure is real and verifiable.
Conformance · Purposes are published before collection; the person has a view of what influences what they are shown and a way to start over; erasure is offered and its scope described.
The machine proposes, the person decides
No automatic system, artificial intelligence included, holds authority over a measure, a payment, a publication or the running of the system. The machine analyses, drafts, proposes; an identifiable human being decides.
Conformance · Automatic contributions are labelled as such; every act of authority carries an identifiable human decider; this policy is published.
Whoever speaks for the arbiter binds it
An arbiter that lets intermediaries sell in its name, resellers, affiliates, introducers, partners, publishes WHAT THEY MAY AND MAY NOT PROMISE, makes their status VERIFIABLE BY THE BUYER, and answers for what they promised.
Conformance · The list of permitted and forbidden promises is a public, dated document. An intermediary's status can be checked without asking them, from an identifier they carry, and the check answers just as clearly when the status has been withdrawn.
Every role leaves with something
For each role in its chain, the adopter publishes WHAT THAT ROLE BRINGS AND WHAT IT RECEIVES, identifiable value, not a promise of atmosphere. A role that brings without receiving is not a role: it is a resource.
Conformance · The map of the chain is a public document: role by role, what goes in and what comes out, money, attestations, audience, data, rights. Any member can read there what is owed to them by virtue of their role, and check they receive it.
What the charter does not say
And that is deliberate
These bounds protect the standard as much as those who adopt it.
It bounds prohibitions, not revenues
Any revenue model respecting the ten commitments conforms, including ones that do not exist yet. Conformance is judged on the commitments, never on resemblance to what exists.
It judges what is observed, never what is built
The standard asks nobody to reveal their architecture, tools or methods. An implementation proves conformance by its public behaviours; its know-how stays its own.
It binds the arbitration, not the content
It does not promise every publication is true nor every member honest. It promises the arbitration is.
It does not claim to be the first idea of its kind
Giving the tools to the community is an old and shared ideal. What this standard adds is a verifiable form, not a new intention.
Amendment
A published version is never rewritten
Amending means publishing the next version, dated, with its changes named. Every version stays readable, forever.
Removing one of the ten commitments requires a major version: the standard's name followed by its number always says exactly what is being adopted.
Until it has an independent body, the editor is the reference implementation, and that responsibility is written here, in the open.
Adopting the standard
Without permission, and without revealing anything
The text is free: take it, translate it, extend it.
Claiming conformance requires publishing, for each of the ten commitments, the observable behaviour and its external verification. Never the internal architecture.
The standard's name is reserved for implementations that publish that complete declaration.
Noowow is the first conforming implementation
The competition profile applies these ten invariants to a domain. It is what our decisions implement, never this document directly.