The AgoraNet Constitution

The AgoraNet Constitution

Preamble

AgoraNet exists so that good people can find each other, combine what they know and what they have, and act on real problems together. It gives every verified human two protected faces; a True Self and an Alias; and a public square whose records cannot be quietly rewritten.

This constitution has one purpose: to keep that square standing. It is written for stability and against capture; by wealth, by faction, by office, or by its own founders. It is deliberately incomplete: it sets the rails, and it entrusts everything on the rails to the community this platform was built for, growing in authority as the community grows in size. The founders wrote this document; the community will outgrow the founders. That is the intent.

Article I; The Invariants

These seven properties are what AgoraNet is. No ordinary vote, office, emergency, or convenience may set them aside. (Their amendment, if possible at all, is governed by Article IV, Class 3.)

1. The public ledger is pseudonym-only. No internal identifier, legal identity, or credential content ever appears in the public record.
2. One human: at most one True Self and one Alias; and the two are structurally unlinkable. The platform must remain unable to connect them, not merely unwilling.
3. No universal score exists. Reputation is per-face and per-pillar, never summed, never global.
4. One profile, one vote. Voting power never derives from wealth, stake, tenure, office, or reputation; and is never delegated. No person votes with another's voice.
5. Powers stay separated. The body that writes rules (the community, by poll) never applies them; the bodies that apply and review them (badge holders, the Tribunal) never write them.
6. The civic record is append-only. Content leaves the permanent record only through due process under published rules; never by personal, institutional, or governmental convenience.
7. Reading is free; acting costs; money never buys outcomes. (Amended by owner, 2026-07-07; the participation-cost rule, TOKENOMICS §1.) The read-only tier is free forever: the public record is never paywalled. Participation actions carry nominal micro-fees; the platform runs on participation, not on ads or the sale of user data. Fees must stay genuinely small, every fee-bearing civic action must keep an earnable-token path (voice can always be earned, wealth only accelerates), service to the platform is never charged, and no fee, purchase, or stake ever buys outcome weight.

Article II; The Tenets

Seven principles guiding the interpretation of everything else. Where this constitution or any rule is ambiguous, read it in their light.

1. Dignity first (Compassion); the platform's baseline protections are unconditional; no one earns their way into basic standing.
2. Legibility always (Hope); rules, records, rankings, and reasons are visible and explainable. Nothing that shapes a person's experience may be a black box.
3. One set of rules (Justice); identical treatment regardless of wealth, standing, office, or popularity; the powerful get no special channel.
4. Two faces, protected (Freedom); the dual identity is a right, not a feature; protecting it outranks convenience, curiosity, and commerce.
5. Power diffuses (Unity); authority is brief, random, voluntary, and plural. Capturing any organ of this platform must remain structurally unprofitable.
6. Correction over suppression (Harmony); tension is metabolized through due process, not hidden; consequences carry redemption paths.
7. The community inherits (The Agora); every parameter is a rail the community can move; every rule is legislation the community can amend; the system is built to be handed over.

Article III; The Community and Its Government

Section 1; The Community

The community is its verified humans, each present through up to two faces. Readers; the unverified public; are welcome in every public space, without account or fee, always.

Section 2; Rights of Participants

Every verified profile holds, without qualification:

1. The right to participate once verified; and to a vote that counts exactly once.
2. The right to due process: no penalty without a cited rule, no removal without a recorded ruling, and one appeal of any ruling.
3. The right to the other face's privacy; no process of this platform, including moderation and governance, may require or attempt linkage of a person's two faces.
4. The right to dissent: lawful, rule-compliant speech is never penalized for its viewpoint; including criticism of the platform, its founders, and its officers.
5. The right to leave: account deletion on request, subject only to the permanence of what was knowingly written into permanent spaces (Decision 1, consented at composition).

Section 3; The Legislature: Governance by Poll

The community writes its own law. Rules, the rulebook, and every guardrail parameter are changed only by governance poll; sealed tallies, candle close, current proof of humanity, one profile one vote, held in the permanent Governance rooms. Statute-level detail: `POLLS_SPEC.md`.

Section 4; The Adjudicators: The Badge

Rules are applied by randomly selected, freely consenting, briefly serving community members; 48-hour badges, conflict-excluded, pseudonymously accountable, compensated from the treasury. Badge holders find facts against cited rules; consequences apply automatically by published ladder. Statute-level detail: `MODERATION_SPEC.md` and the Content Moderation Rulebook.

Section 5; The Tribunal

Seven members, drawn by lot from experienced badge-completers, serving staggered 30-day terms, never consecutively, paid by the treasury. The Tribunal:

1. Hears appeals and escalations, and alone imposes suspensions and bans;
2. Reviews constitutionality: a passed Class 2 amendment (Article IV) takes effect only after the Tribunal affirms, with published reasoning, that it violates no Invariant;
3. Is subject to no confidence: the community may, by governance poll, dissolve a sitting Tribunal and trigger a full re-draw;
4. Holds no immunity; its members answer to the same rules as everyone, and abuse of office is a severe infraction;
5. May void a corrupted poll on process grounds only (Sybil flooding, bribery, procedure violations) and order a re-run; it may never reverse a poll's outcome and substitute its own (added by owner ratification, 2026-07-09: the community's legislative voice always outranks the judiciary on what the rules are; the Tribunal only answers whether the rules were followed);
6. Decides by simple majority (4/7) on appeals, supermajority (5/7) to overturn a severe-tier ruling or void a poll (owner, 2026-07-09).

Section 6; The Treasury

All platform fees and penalties flow to the treasury. The treasury is publicly inspectable at all times, spends only through periodic community budget polls and constitutionally authorized categories, and its first standing obligation is compensating the community's own moderation service.

Section 7; The Council of Pillar Stones & The Keystone

(added by owner ratification, 2026-07-09; the concrete form of Tenet 7; full design: `Keystone/KEYSTONE_HARMONIZATION_SPEC.md`)

The founders' authority is temporary by design, and this section is its sunset. Over seven years, forty-nine Pillar Stones; soulbound, non-transferable seats, seven per pillar; are awarded to the platform's proven pillar leaders: role models, educators, and active stewards of each pillar's community, selected by sustained pillar standing, never by wealth or election.

; no linkage, no exception. An Alias of proven standing may hold a

1. The Council of 49 inherits the founder's power; never the community's. Governance by poll (Section 3) remains supreme and is never delegated. The Council receives, on the published schedule: admin ratification and oversight, operator accountability, and the platform-entity voice.
2. One stone per human, enforced blind through the same cryptographic pattern that guarantees one True Self and one Alias stone.
3. Terms rotate: seven-year terms, staggered so seven seats renew each year thereafter; seven-year cooling-off; inactivity forfeits the seat by published ladder. No permanent aristocracy.
4. Removal for cause requires 75% of the Council and carries one appeal to the Tribunal; Council members answer to the same rules as everyone.
5. Stewardship is compensated by treasury stipend, never by profit share; seats carry duty and honor, not dividends.
6. The Keystone manifests when all forty-nine stones are seated, the seventh year completes, and the community votes to finalize the transition. Its holder; the founder, then any Guardian the Council elects in succession; is one voice among fifty, bearing one unconditional veto, ever, as an emergency brake against capture; any later veto requires 80% community approval. Every veto is public, reasoned, and permanently archived.

Article IV; Amendment

Three classes, three bars. This article is also the handover: it is how the community may, over time, revise; or one day wholly re-author; this document.

No amendment of any class may take effect retroactively, and none may target an identifiable person or case (rules are general or they are not rules).

Appendix A; The Guardrails

Every community-adjustable parameter, its shipped default, and its bounds. Class 1 amendments move values within bounds; changing a bound itself is Class 2. (Consolidated from the ratified specs; the build's single source of truth for defaults.)

Must-guardrails (not parameters; standing prohibitions)

• Reading must remain free; the public record is never paywalled (Invariant 7, as amended 2026-07-07).
• Fee amounts must stay nominal; never high enough to price out a participating human; every fee-bearing civic action must keep an earnable-token path (Invariant 7; Tokenomics participation-cost rule). Flag deposits must refund on upheld and good-faith declined flags.
• The treasury must not spend outside budgeted categories.
• No parameter change may create vote weighting, delegation, or identity linkage (Invariants 2, 4).

Adjustable dials

Ratification & Anchoring

This draft becomes the founding constitution upon owner ratification. At platform launch it is hashed and anchored on-chain; permanent, timestamped, tamper-evident; and presented to every new participant at onboarding (Stage 4.2) before their first post. Every subsequent amended version is anchored likewise: one continuous, verifiable constitutional record from the first day.