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DIA Federation Membership and Quorum

Document Status

Field Value
policy-id DIA-FED-001
type Implementing act (Level 3 of the normative hierarchy)
version 0.2.0-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

  1. In inter-federation governance, only voting-eligible federations count.
  2. One active voting-eligible federation = one vote. Capital, node count, traffic, revenue, computing power, or infrastructure position do not increase vote weight.
  3. Voting and veto rights arise from living procedural responsibility, not from the historical fact that a federation once existed.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Participant membership and sponsorship inside a federation are entry-policy mechanisms. They MAY inform who can participate in local federation procedures, but they MUST NOT become a shortcut around inter-federation quorum, activity, common-control, or suspension rules.

2.1. Operational Trust Anchoring

  1. A federation's common trust scope MUST be represented by a procedurally established, versioned, and cryptographically verifiable federation root. The Orbiplex reference implementation expresses it through federation-root.v1; another implementation MAY use a semantically equivalent internal representation if it preserves these invariants and can publish and consume an explicit, interoperable root contract subject to independent verification.
  2. The root's legitimacy derives from the adopted governance procedure and custody policy. A cryptographic signature proves the integrity and authorization of a specific decision; by itself it does not prove that the decision is true, just, or consistent with the Constitution.
  3. The root identifies sovereign subjects and custody rules authorized to establish the federation's foundational technical order. It IS NOT a complete membership roster, a universal trust ranking, or a claim that every node possesses the root subjects' keys.
  4. Authority derived from the root is purpose-scoped. A node or service does not gain unlimited authority through infrastructure position, availability, computing power, technical reputation, or assurance level. Official-service status requires a separate, bounded, and revocable endorsement appropriate to its purpose.
  5. Transport, mutual reachability, a shared relay, a Matrix server, a directory entry, or the ability to route traffic do not establish federation membership, trust, or authority.
  6. A federation identifier alone is neither proof of identity nor a global claim to a name. Federation admission binds the identifier to a locally accepted root, its sovereign subjects, and its succession trace.
  7. The root MUST have auditable procedures for establishment, rotation, succession, revocation, appeal, rollback protection, and sunset. A valid root rotation does not create a new federation when continuity has been demonstrated under the applicable procedure.
  8. Every node locally verifies, at the point of use, an artifact's signatures, scope, validity, revocations, and applicable policy. The root is a reference point for that verification, not a substitute for verification.

3. Minimum Federation Record

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

federation_record:
  federation_id: "FED-[slug]"
  federation_root_ref: "[URI or content-addressed reference]"
  federation_root_digest: "[algorithm]:[digest]"
  federation_root_pack_version: 1
  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]"
  signatures: []

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

federation_root_digest pins the exact root artifact referenced by the record, while federation_root_pack_version denotes its monotonic operational version rather than the schema version. It is a projection name in the enclosing federation_record that maps without a semantic change to the referenced federation-root.v1 artifact's pack_version field; the field inside the root pack remains named pack_version. governance_keys MAY overlap with root custody keys, but they are not presumed identical: voting keys and root-establishment keys serve distinct roles. The record itself MUST be signed by the proper governance role or roles under the federation's local policy; the record signature does not replace the signatures and verification of the referenced root. The digest algorithm is explicitly tagged and comes from the applicable cryptographic profile rather than being frozen in this act.

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:

  1. publishes a current, correctly signed federation record,
  2. makes available the current federation root referenced by the record, whose signatures, version, continuity, and custody rules are cryptographically verifiable under the applicable admission policy,
  3. has a functioning governance_endpoint and fallback_contact,
  4. has sent a valid heartbeat within the heartbeat_ttl window,
  5. has acknowledged at least one formal notice or performed at least one auditable governance action within the activity_ttl window,
  6. is not covered by an active procedural suspension,
  7. 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:

  1. publishing the minimum, correctly signed federation record,
  2. accepting and verifying the referenced federation root,
  3. at least one valid heartbeat,
  4. at least one acknowledgement of a formal notice,
  5. completion of the probation period.

6.2. active -> dormant

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

  1. heartbeat expired,
  2. the federation failed to acknowledge missed_notice_limit consecutive formal notices,
  3. governance_endpoint and fallback_contact are unavailable for the full notice window,
  4. the referenced federation root is unavailable, unverifiable, rolled back, or inconsistent with the record and was not repaired within the remediation window,
  5. the federation record is stale, unsigned, signature-invalid, or inconsistent and was not repaired within the remediation window.

6.3. active or dormant -> suspended

Transition occurs when:

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

6.4. dormant or suspended -> active

Reactivation requires:

  1. a fresh, correctly signed federation record,
  2. a current, accepted, and verified federation root,
  3. a fresh heartbeat,
  4. confirmation of the ability to receive notices,
  5. removal of the cause of suspension or dormancy,
  6. 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

  1. A federation that does not have active status at the moment the electorate snapshot is created has no veto right.
  2. A federation that lost active status does not block subsequent constitutional or ordinary processes merely because it historically belonged to the federation set.
  3. 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.
  4. 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:

  1. the federations are temporarily grouped into one voting block in matters of high_stake and entrenched_core,
  2. the dispute is tracked as a COI-by-default problem,
  3. 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.
  • Proposal 076 and Solution 041: define Orbiplex's current executable mapping of the federation root and network selector. Their schemas and mechanisms implement this act, but they are not the source of its normative legitimacy and may not weaken the safeguards defined here.