DIA Federation Membership and Quorum¶

Document Status¶

Field	Value
`policy-id`	`DIA-FED-001`
`type`	Implementing act (Level 3 of the normative hierarchy)
`version`	0.1.0-draft
`basis`	Art. VI.6, VII.10, XIII.6, XV, XVI of the DIA Constitution; `ENTRENCHMENT-CLAUSE.md`; `NORMATIVE-HIERARCHY.md`

1. Purpose of the Document¶

The Constitution and the entrenchment clause operate on the notion of a "federation," but without an operational definition of federation status, voting rights, and quorum rules, the system remains vulnerable to two pathologies:

deadlock through dead federations - lack of response is mistaken for a real veto,
capture through multiplication of facade federations - one center of control tries to artificially increase the number of votes.

This document defines the minimum model of federation membership, federation statuses, activity criteria, quorum rules, and rules for loss of voting and veto rights.

2. General Principles¶

In inter-federation governance, only voting-eligible federations count.
One active voting-eligible federation = one vote. Capital, node count, traffic, revenue, computing power, or infrastructure position do not increase vote weight.
Voting and veto rights arise from living procedural responsibility, not from the historical fact that a federation once existed.
How a position is produced inside a federation is a matter of local policy, but the external vote MUST leave a trace, an owner of the process, and a signature of the proper role or roles.
Federations under common control may not multiply influence merely through organizational partition. In high-stakes and constitutional matters they are treated as one voting block until they demonstrate genuine procedural independence.

3. Minimum Federation Record¶

Every federation participating in inter-federation governance MUST publish at least the following record:

federation_record:
  federation_id: "FED-[slug]"
  status: "candidate" # candidate | active | dormant | suspended | retired
  governance_endpoint: "[URI or channel for receiving formal decisions]"
  fallback_contact: "[backup channel]"
  governance_keys: []
  policy_refs: []
  heartbeat_at: "[timestamp]"
  last_notice_ack_at: "[timestamp]"
  last_governance_action_at: "[timestamp]"
  declared_common_control: []
  effective_from: "[timestamp]"
  owner_roles: []
  status_reason: "[reason for the current status]"

The minimum federation record is an audit object. Absence of a current record means there is no basis to retain active status.

4. Federation Statuses¶

Status	Meaning	Voting right	Veto right
`candidate`	Federation registered, interoperable, in the entry or probationary period	no	no
`active`	Federation procedurally alive and eligible to participate in inter-federation governance	yes	yes, if the given procedure provides for it
`dormant`	Federation temporarily inactive, non-responsive, or failing activity criteria	no	no
`suspended`	Federation temporarily excluded from voting because of an incident, injunction, or another procedural decision	no	no
`retired`	Federation sunset or one that explicitly left governance	no	no

The statuses candidate, dormant, suspended, and retired are not an ontological punishment: a federation may still exist, route traffic, or provide local services, but it does not participate in inter-federation vote counting until it regains qualification.

5. Criteria for Obtaining and Retaining `active` Status¶

A federation obtains or retains active status only when it jointly:

publishes a current federation record,
has a functioning governance_endpoint and fallback_contact,
has sent a valid heartbeat within the heartbeat_ttl window,
has acknowledged at least one formal notice or performed at least one auditable governance action within the activity_ttl window,
is not covered by an active procedural suspension,
is not in an unresolved common-control dispute requiring aggregation of its vote with another federation.

A candidate status may be raised to active after all the above conditions are met and the probation period candidate_min_age has ended.

6. Status Transitions¶

6.1. `candidate` -> `active`¶

Transition occurs after:

publishing the minimum federation record,
at least one valid heartbeat,
at least one acknowledgement of a formal notice,
completion of the probation period.

6.2. `active` -> `dormant`¶

Transition occurs automatically or procedurally when at least one of the following conditions appears:

heartbeat expired,
the federation failed to acknowledge missed_notice_limit consecutive formal notices,
governance_endpoint and fallback_contact are unavailable for the full notice window,
the federation record is stale or inconsistent and was not repaired within the remediation window.

6.3. `active` or `dormant` -> `suspended`¶

Transition occurs when:

there is an active interim measure or injunction,
there is a security incident concerning governance keys,
there is a hard signal of capture, false identity representation, or manipulation of the voting process.

6.4. `dormant` or `suspended` -> `active`¶

Reactivation requires:

a fresh federation record,
a fresh heartbeat,
confirmation of the ability to receive notices,
removal of the cause of suspension or dormancy,
a reactivation trace with reason and effective_from.

6.5. `dormant` -> `retired`¶

Transition occurs after exceeding retired_after or through an explicit statement of exit from inter-federation governance.

7. Voting-Eligible Federation¶

For the purposes of quorum and veto counting, a voting-eligible federation is exclusively a federation that:

has status active,
is included in the electorate snapshot created at the opening of the given decision process (electorate_snapshot),
has not been grouped with another federation into a single voting block due to common control.

The electorate snapshot MUST contain:

electorate_snapshot:
  decision_id: "[identifier of the process]"
  created_at: "[timestamp]"
  eligible_federations: []
  grouped_blocks: []
  quorum_base: 0
  decision_class: "ordinary" # ordinary | high_stake | entrenched_core

Once the snapshot is created, the quorum base for that process does not change. Changes of federation status affect subsequent processes; they do not recalculate a process already opened.

8. Decision Classes and Quorum¶

8.1. Basic Rule¶

Silence is not a vote. abstain counts toward quorum, but not toward the yes/no majority, unless a given procedure states otherwise.

8.2. Decision Classes¶

Decision class	Quorum	Condition for adoption
`ordinary`	at least `floor(N/2) + 1` voting blocks from the snapshot	more `yes` than `no`
`high_stake`	at least `ceil(2N/3)` voting blocks from the snapshot	at least `ceil(2N/3)` explicit `yes` votes
`entrenched_core`	`N` out of `N` voting blocks from the snapshot	every eligible `active` must cast an explicit `yes`; `no`, `abstain`, or silence means lack of consent

Interpretation:

N means the number of voting blocks in the electorate snapshot,
a voting block may represent one federation or a group of federations covered by the common-control rule,
if N = 0, the inter-federation process may not be opened,
this document does not remove the additional requirements from ENTRENCHMENT-CLAUSE.md; it only defines who counts toward unanimity.

9. Timeouts and Minimum Parameters¶

The parameters below are defaults and may be tightened by federations, but may not be weakened below the indicated minimum:

Parameter	Default	Minimum / maximum
`heartbeat_ttl`	30 days	max 45 days
`activity_ttl`	90 days	max 120 days
`candidate_min_age`	30 days	min 14 days
`missed_notice_limit`	2	min 2
`notice_window`	7 days	min 72 hours
`ordinary_vote_window`	14 days	min 7 days
`high_stake_vote_window`	30 days	min 14 days
`retired_after`	180 days	min 90 days

A federation may be more cautious, but it may not keep "active" federations without a heartbeat for half a year or reduce the entry period to zero.

10. Loss of Veto Right by a Dead Federation¶

A federation that does not have active status at the moment the electorate snapshot is created has no veto right.
A federation that lost active status does not block subsequent constitutional or ordinary processes merely because it historically belonged to the federation set.
A federation that remains silent in a process requiring unanimity may block that concrete process if it was active in the snapshot, but after crossing missed_notice_limit it moves to dormant and loses veto in later processes.
An explicit exit from inter-federation governance acts immediately for the future: the federation moves to retired and is no longer counted toward quorum.

The rule is simple: veto belongs to living responsibility, not to its shadow.

11. Common Control and Vote Multiplication¶

The following count at minimum as signals of common control:

a shared governance key,
the same dominant decision-making role,
the same source of funding or the same entity able to unilaterally force decisions,
lack of real separation of trace, responsibility, and appeals procedure.

If there is a credible dispute about common control:

the federations are temporarily grouped into one voting block in matters of high_stake and entrenched_core,
the dispute is tracked as a COI-by-default problem,
restoration of separate votes requires proof of procedural separateness.

This rule does not serve to build a center. It serves to prevent capital or an organizational apparatus from buying itself additional votes by multiplying facades.

12. Relation to Other Documents¶

Constitution Art. VI.6 and VII.10: this document operationalizes federated growth without loss of local autonomy and scaling through local accountability.
Constitution Art. XIII.6: federation statuses implement procedures of sunset, handover, and archiving.
Constitution Art. XVI: the document defines the quorum base and the participants of amendment and enforcement processes.
ENTRENCHMENT-CLAUSE.md: the document specifies which federations count toward unanimity and veto.
NORMATIVE-HIERARCHY.md: the federation membership and quorum policy is a Level 3 document.