Sovereignty-first governance: no state waits on another

A network shared by equal states needs a governance model that is deliberately narrow. If every action required a collective vote, the network would grind to a halt — and, worse, a state could be blocked from serving its own citizens. Our answer is sovereignty-first governance, split into three layers.

• Network membership. Admitting a new state validator requires a 2/3 vote of validators. This is the only thing the whole network votes on.
• National registries. A state registers or suspends its own issuers with no vote at all — enforced in code as onlyOwnerState. Türkiye does not wait for anyone to register a Turkish university.
• Cross-border recognition. Each state unilaterally decides which foreign issuers and categories it recognizes. Founders recognize each other in full; later joiners start from none and opt in at their own pace.

Exit is a right, not a punishment

Removing or leaving the network never invalidates already-issued credentials. A citizen’s diploma does not evaporate because of a political dispute between states; the right to exit is guaranteed in code. This mirrors the EU’s List of Trusted Lists model — cooperation without surrendering sovereignty.

The open question we are still working through is the concrete institutional mapping of governance bodies for each state — the subject of a dedicated governance document. Read the decision in Architecture.