TGIP1: Establishing the Telcoin Platform and Association

[parkerspann]

Introduction

The purpose of this proposal is to establish the founding governance of the Telcoin Association, a non-profit organization whose mission is to represent the interests of GSMA Mobile Networks and other stakeholders in maintaining and developing the Telcoin Platform. The proposal is crafted with the intent to usher in a new era for the Telcoin Platform, focusing on community-driven growth and technological advancement. Our goals are threefold:

1. Community Adoption: We aim to secure widespread community support for the upcoming technological and governance upgrades for the Telcoin Platform. These enhancements are designed to streamline operations and empower our users, setting a new standard in our ecosystem.
2. Establishing a New Standard: Our vision is to position the Telcoin Platform as the premier blockchain network infrastructure and token standard for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), the broader telecommunications sector represented by the GSMA, and their mobile subscribers. This involves implementing cutting-edge solutions to redefine our platform’s capabilities and reach.
3. Decentralizing Authority and Duties: A pivotal shift in our governance model involves transitioning control and responsibilities from Telcoin Holdings Pte. Ltd. to the Telcoin Association. This move towards a more decentralized system is guided by the community’s approval of this proposal and adoption of the Association Constitution. The detailed processes and rules proposed in this transition are further defined here and on the Telcoin Association website.

We invite the Telcoin community to engage with this proposal, provide feedback, and participate actively in shaping the future of the Telcoin Platform and Association.

Motivation

The Telcoin Platform is poised to revolutionize how we understand and interact with blockchain-based financial products and services. Our motivation is driven by the unique position of MNOs with their expansive reach, substantial capital, and deep local market knowledge. The telecom industry is the most distributed in the world, with a few national carriers in almost every country in the world - a great fit for running distributed ledgers as a network service. Telecoms also have unparalleled datacenter capacity, own the last mile connectivity to users, and arguably have a greater technical capacity to know their customers and prevent financial fraud than banks. These factors make MNOs ideal for integrating and distributing blockchain technology rapidly and on a global scale.

The current global financial system is fragmented and lacks a universally accepted blockchain infrastructure for consumer and business applications. These market conditions present a significant opportunity. By establishing a global blockchain standard through the telecom industry, we envision creating a universally adopted, compliant, and decentralized system for digital goods, services, and ownership, ubiquitous with the internet and accessible to mobile phone users worldwide.

Our approach integrates mobile access, exchange, and blockchain settlement layers into a unified blockchain infrastructure, and empowers four user groups across the layers of the system with economic and governance power. This shared, decentralized structure not only supports mobile financial services, but also fosters a sustainable, self-governed ecosystem. It aligns mobile networks with their subscribers and the broader GSMA ecosystem, creating a shared blockchain network and value chain for web3 services.

Objectives

1. Blockchain Standard for MNOs: Establish the Telcoin Platform as the leading blockchain network for MNOs, their subscribers, and the broader telecom industry.
2. Decentralization of Authority: Transition control and operational duties to the Telcoin Association, ensuring community involvement in governance.
3. Technological Advancement: Introduce robust, scalable, and adaptable systems for the next generation of the Telcoin Platform.
4. Community Self-Organization: Facilitate the formation of the Telcoin Association and the Miner Councils, fostering communal governance.
5. Sustained Growth: Ensure continuous growth and development of the Telcoin Platform through effective governance.
6. Decentralized Value Chain: Cultivate a self-governed ecosystem for mobile financial and web3 services.
7. Empowerment of Stakeholders: Grant property rights and decision-making authority to stakeholders within the ecosystem.
8. Global Ecosystem Development: Create a universally adopted infrastructure aligning MNOs and mobile users through self-sustaining blockchain infrastructure.
9. Fulfilling the Telcoin Association’s Vision: Implement the Association’s mission and values in governing and managing the Telcoin Platform, sustainably allocating TEL, and in social with each other as individuals and as part of collective units.

Telcoin Platform: The System

Description

The Telcoin Platform system is the combined structure of three interlinked blockchain infrastructure networks that each produce distinct, complementary services, including: Telcoin Network, the blockchain layer; TELx, the decentralized financial marketplace layer; and Telcoin Application Network (TAN), the mobile application layer. Each blockchain network produces a material input to the Telcoin Platform’s combined product:

Mobile access to decentralized financial products and other blockchain-based goods and services.

The Telcoin Platform generates flows of TEL, its native token, from a primary, renewable source - the TEL Treasury - that stores and generates TEL across layers of the Telcoin Platform for miners to harvest.

Miners, including Telcoin Network Validators, TELx Liquidity Miners, TAN Stakers and Developers stake TEL, co-produce system resources across layers, earn fees from consumers, and harvest TEL from their domain of system based on Association rules”.

TEL harvesting rules are set by Miner Councils and enforced both in programmable, self-executing logic embedded into the Telcoin Platform system and socially, through political, legal or other means, by the Telcoin Association.

A portion of TEL gas fees paid to transact each block on Telcoin Network are regenerated to the TEL Treasury, sustaining TEL issuance yield for future generations based on Telcoin Network blockspace consumption.

Visualization of the Telcoin Platform

Telcoin Platform: Infrastructure Networks

Telcoin Network: The Blockchain Layer

Telcoin Network is an EVM-compatible, public blockchain secured by GSMA MNOs globally using proof of stake consensus. The system serves as the underlying blockchain architecture securing private property rights over digital assets and enabling on-chain protocols and applications such as TELx.

• System: Telcoin Network is an EVM-compatible, public blockchain secured by MNOs globally using proof of stake consensus. Telcoin Network serves as the base layer blockchain execution, settlement, programmability and data availability layer that TAN, TELx and other applications built into the system depend on to operate.
• Products: Produces blocks that users pay to transact their assets between peers and validators secure to the blockchain to earn TEL fees and issuance from the network. The system enables consumers to secure their property independent of third parties, generates a continuously-updated, immutable ledger of all transactions, and the EVM facilitates the creation of smart contracts which can be coded to produce any unlimited number of digital goods and services that self-execute on the blockchain, such as DeFi and other web3 use cases.
• Miners: Validators are GSMA Operator Member Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) who manage nodes on Telcoin Network, earn TEL gas fees and issuance each time they secure a block to the blockchain, and participate with others in their Miner Group in governance.
• Governance System: The Platform and Treasury Councils govern and manage Telcoin Network rules using the TELIP process. The Platform and Treasury Councils may direct, finance, and coordinate with the TAO or third party service providers to construct new and maintain existing systems.
  • Learn more

TELx: The DeFi Exchange Layer

TELx is a network of liquidity pools on DeFi protocols that enable user-owned, automated, self-custodial exchange.

• System: Middle layer of the platform, decentralized exchange infrastructure. Includes a network of AMM liquidity pools, which facilitate self-custodial decentralized exchange and liquidity provision, and storage, distribution, extraction, management facilities involved in the allocation, distribution, and extraction of TEL. TELx systems are blockchain programs nested within the EVM on Telcoin Network and other blockchains as assigned by the TELx Council. TELx systems consist of self-executing code (“smart contracts”) operate automatically according to self-executing code, independent of central intermediation and control, are always available, and are as accessible as the internet. Liquidity miners’ each own parcels of their pools and the exchange fees they generate from trades are portioned pro-rata.
• Products: TELx is a network of AMM liquidity pools, which are smart-contract based token reserves used for automated, self-custodial TEL digital asset exchange and on-chain FX powered remittances. Consumers exchange their assets using liquidity pools and pay fees. Liquidity miners provide TEL and other assets to TELx liquidity pools, stake their liquidity provider tokens in TELx, earn fees from trades through their pool, and harvest TEL from TELx.
• Miners: Liquidity Miners provide liquidity to decentralized financial markets on TELx, earn fees from trades, harvest TEL issuance and vote as a part of their Miner Group in governance based on their pro-rata share of liquidity staked on TELx.
• Governance System: The TELx Council governs and manages TELx rules using the TELxIP process. The TELx Council may direct, finance, and coordinate with the TAO or third party service providers to construct new and maintain existing systems.
  • Learn more

Telcoin Application Network: The Application Layer

TAN, the application layer, is a network of mobile applications that are integrated with the Telcoin Platform and enable users to access its services.

• System: A network of mobile applications and smart contracts nested on top of TELx and Telcoin Network as a mobile interface and self-custody layer to the Telcoin Platform, enabling users to access the products and services it generates.
• Products: TAN mobile applications enable users to securely store, transact, exchange their digital assets, and the network generates TEL that Developers and Stakers harvest from the system.
• Miners
  • Application Developers: GSMA members who stake TEL and produce mobile applications on TAN that integrate with the Telcoin Platform and connect users to its services and each other through the system. They earn transaction fees from consumers, harvest TEL based on their mobile user base’s pro-rata share of adoption of the Telcoin Platform, and participate with others in their Miner Group in Telcoin Platform Governance.
  • Stakers: Telcoin mobile application customers who stake TEL, connect with their networks to establish the Telcoin Platform as a shared infrastructure for settling payments. They earn a percentage of their referred users’ fees in TEL, harvest TEL from TAN based on their network’s adoption of the Platform, and participate with others in their Miner Group in governance.
• Governance System: The TAN Council governs and manages TAN rules using the TANIP process. The TAN Council may direct, finance, and coordinate with the TAO or third party service providers to construct new and maintain existing systems.
  • Learn more

TEL: The Native Token

The Telcoin (TEL) Token is the native token of the Telcoin Platform, and the gas fee token of the Telcoin Network.

• Utility: Miners stake TEL as a production and harvesting input on the Telcoin Platform, earn TEL fees from transactions and harvest from flows of TEL issuance. The quantity of TEL a miner has staked on the platform determines both their TEL earning power in production and harvesting processes and their political power within their Miner Group in Telcoin Platform governance.
• Attributes: The Telcoin Platform generates TEL, a scarce digital good with a total supply of 100B units, from the TEL Treasury at an annual rate of 10% of its inventory, with 1B TEL distributed in year 1 from a total extractable supply of 10B TEL, for Miners across each layer of the Platform to harvest. Telcoin Network destroys a portion of TEL gas fees paid each block and regenerates them in equal quantity to the TEL Treasury, sustaining yield for future generations based on blockchain network demand while maintaining a maximum supply of 100B units. When the total TEL distributed from the TEL Treasury is less than the total TEL regenerated by Telcoin Network over time, the TEL issuance rate is sustainable.
• System: The TEL Treasury is the set of TEL storage and distribution facilities which store and generate the primary extractable supply of TEL within the Telcoin Platform. It is the main source of TEL and generates flows of TEL throughout each layer of the platform to storage, distribution, extraction systems at pre-determined levels for miners to harvest according to rules that are set by Miner Councils and enforced in self-executing programs embedded in the system.
• Governance System: The Platform and Treasury Councils govern and manage the TEL Treasury and TEL token contract rules using the TELIP process. Local Councils govern and manage a set of TEL systems and TEL harvesting rules through their local decision-making processes. Councils may direct, finance, and coordinate with the TAO or other third party service providers to construct and maintain systems.
• Learn more

Governance Infrastructure

Miners use a customized technology stack of mechanisms to alter the governance system itself to select council members, and to participate in decision-making processes that provide for system improvements, regulate, store, allocate, distribute the flow of TEL units, structure and enforce operational activities related to the system, communicate, and document information. We refer to these technological systems as governance infrastructure.

Governance Infrastructure: System Summary

Telcoin Governance leverages multiple technologies to create a comprehensive governance system. They include:

Component	Summary
Safe Wallets	Serve as the on-chain representation of councils and constituencies. Each council and constituency has its own Safe Wallets that executes transactions that are approved by Snapshot vote.
Governance NFTs	NFTs mark council members and grant them voting power. TEL streams from the treasury into NFT holders’ wallets.
Snapshot	Snapshot is where councils and constituencies will vote on all governance related decisions.
Zodiac Reality Module	Zodiac Reality integrates Snapshot with Safe Wallets. Since Snapshot is an off-chain tool, an oracle is required to bring results of votes on-chain. Zodiac Reality takes the result of a Snapshot vote from an oracle and allows its corresponding Safe Wallets to execute the transactions defined in said vote.
Zodiac Guard Module	Zodiac Guards can be added to Safe Wallets to prevent the Zodiac Reality module from executing certain transactions. The Compliance Council will be able to veto transactions using the Guards set up on each council’s safe.
Zodiac Bridge Module	Zodiac Bridge enables Safe Wallets on different chains to prompt each other to make transactions. Zodiac Bridge is useful once Snapshot configurations are defined via ENS.
ENS Names	Snapshot spaces require ENS names. As governance matures, Snapshot configuration will be handled via ENS.

Communication and Information Systems

Telcoin.org

• Handbook: A guide for how to participate on the Telcoin Platform and within the Telcoin Association.
• Documentation: An information system and database characterizing the attributes and characteristics of the Telcoin Platform, the Telcoin Association, the miners who produce, harvest benefits from, and maintain the system, and the over-arching governance system which sets, enforces, and revises Platform and Association rules.
• Forum: An information and proposal-sharing mechanism for the Association to discuss system conditions, ideas, and governance proposals for review and feedback by the Association community of Miners and Council Members.

Telcoin Discord

The Telcoin Discord is the primary mechanism by which Miners, Miner Councils, and other involved actors update, deliberate, contest, and generally communicate and share information related to the Telcoin Platform and its governance system.

After the governance system is approved as a result of TGIP1, the Discord will go live.

Telcoin Association

Overview

The Telcoin Association, a Swiss Verein domiciled in the Canton of Ticino in the City of Lugano, Switzerland, is the legal entity which enables and protects miners coming together to run the Telcoin Platform, legitimizes the community’s rights to organize and create, enforce their own rules for interacting with the Platform and each other with legal recognition and basis. The Verein is an Association of persons and/or entities coming together to facilitate a business or activity. It has minimal requirements as to formality, which allows for flexibility as the community evolves, but also provides necessary formality and legal status so that other persons will be able to interact with it and its limited liability structure enforced. An association business model has been around for a very long time and many international businesses use this for their operations. Switzerland’s Verein structure is well supported and recognized throughout the world. It is particularly well-suited for the varied needs of a decentralized organization and its participants.

• Entity Type: A non-profit Swiss Verein, which is an association of persons and/or entities.
• Domicile: The Canton of Ticino in the City of Lugano, Switzerland
• Purpose: Scientific, the sustainable development of the Telcoin Platform and governance regime in accordance with its non-profit goals.

Objectives

To wrap Telcoin governance in a legal association structure and empower the community of Telcoin Miners with:

• Legal recognition: Legal recognition of rights to organize, determine and enforce their own rules for interacting with the Telcoin Platform and each other.
• Legal Person Status: The ability to interact and do business with others,.e.g. enter into legal contracts, as a single legally recognized entity instead of as a group of individuals.
• Tax clarity: A means for Council Members and other involved actors to file and pay taxes properly.
• Limited-liability protection: Since the Verein is a separate legal person and recognized as such by governments and courts, any liability is attributed to the legal entity and this “corporate veil” is very difficult to pierce by claimants. This provides great protection to participants from any liability in taking actions on behalf of the Verein or from liability encountered by the Verein as a whole.
• Legal Protection: Legal standing for Council Members to represent the interests of miners before administrative or judicial proceedings. Furthermore, the Verein itself, and those authorized to act on its behalf, are entitled to attorney-client privileges in any legal action.
• Information-sharing mechanisms: A global forum to discuss mutual problems, expand the level of knowledge about alternative techniques for sustainable management, and investigate a variety of methods for solving shared problems through legal and political means.

Telcoin Association Constitution

The Telcoin Association Constitution (“Association”) is the primary governance document for the Association. It sets forth the parameters for how the Association itself is to be overseen and how Association members operate together in running the Association. Initially executed by Parker Spann, Paul Neuner, and Telcoin Holdings Pte Ltd on August 16th, 2023, the Constitution will be formally ratified by the Telcoin community through their approval of TGIP1.

Download and review the Constitution before voting:

• Telcoin Association Constitution (PDF)

Association: Mission, Vision, Values

The Telcoin Association Constitution articulates a Mission, Vision, and Values for the Telcoin Association to serve as a guidepost for the all participants in the ecosystem working towards a common cause, vision for the future, and set of ethical standards.

Authority Over

Association Mission, Vision and Values can be revised by the Miner Assembly (using the TGIP process) or by the Platform or Treasury Councils (using the TELIP process).

Telcoin Association Mission

The Telcoin Association’s mission is to provide a legal structure for, and to govern its members in a manner designed to facilitate the connection of Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and a global user base and to enable the sustainable development of blockchain infrastructures, such as the
Telcoin Platform.

Telcoin Association Vision

The Telcoin Association’s vision is to create a globally adopted, self-sustaining ecosystem that aligns GSMA MNOs and mobile phone users across the world around a common, blockchain infrastructure, empowering them and their inclusive, decentralized governance.

Telcoin Association Values

The Values articulated in the Telcoin Association Constitution encompass a series of design principles used to structure the Telcoin Platform governance system and set of standards for the community to adopt and revise over time to order their individual and collective behavior.

Telcoin Association Rationale

Overview

The Telcoin Platform is a blockchain system, openly accessible to anyone with an internet connection, making it costly to exclude users from accessing the system. Users are highly incentivized to participate in the Telcoin Platform as it generates flows of scarce TEL units which are coveted in rivalrous consumption. The result is the Telcoin Platform is a common-pool resource governed by a common property regime, which is largely open to anyone and which operating normally incentivizes large volumes of participation. Thus, the Telcoin Platform needs a flexible method of operation and governance that can facilitate its goals with the above expected operational requirements.

Many similar types of decentralized organizations for communal ownership of crypto-systems have thus far operated with no formal legal structure. In other words, most decentralized crypto governance systems to date are de facto organizations that are regime-less in legal structure and are basically just a group of individuals. This method of organization makes operation inefficient and exposes individuals to unnecessary liability.

The Telcoin Platform wrapped in a Swiss Verein enables these same individuals to operate in a decentralized manner of governance and enter into collectivities that are involved in using and withdrawing benefits from and managing crypto-systems in the same way tangible assets are in the physical world.

Telcoin believes that blockchain-based common-pool resources self-governed by local users and groups should be able to benefit from the same protections, clarity and resources they enjoy from incorporating formal legal structures in the physical world of property in the digital world of property.

The Swiss Verein enables that.

Relative Advantages: Legal structure vs regime-less structure

• Legal Recognition: Recognition as a legitimate organization by a national and local government grants legitimacy to Miners’ collective authority to devise and enforce their own rules in the eyes of governance officials.
• Banking: Incorporating formally empowers Council Members to open up bank and other traditional financial services accounts in the name of the Association.
• Administration: By creating an official legal entity, miner councils can enter into contractual arrangements with third party services providers to administer the collective operation and regulate production of public goods for the community in accordance with its collective standards.
• Taxes: Legal recognition gives Council Members clarity when filing taxes related to council member income. Legal and Political Interests: Without a legal organization, Council Members may not be able to represent the interests of the miners before administrative or judicial bodies.
• Liability Protection: A legal organization may give Council members limited liability protection in relation to their activities in the Association’s operation and governance.
• Legal Protection: A legal organization allows the community to avail itself to governmental enforcement mechanisms (e.g. courts and police) to protect itself against those persons and entities that would do it harm.
• Compliance: A legal organization allows the community to effectively and efficiently implement tailored proactive policies and procedures reasonably designed to protect community members from legal and regulatory scrutiny.
• Accountability: Without official recognition of the right to organize, it will be quite difficult to hold either miner council Members or individual actors accountable for their actions.
• Record-keeping: The legal structure will facilitate the necessary recordkeeping necessary for community members’ legal and regulatory obligations such as tax and other reporting. actions.
• Legitimate Rules: At scale, as the platform continues to develop and market opportunities arise for surplus products, the level of conflict over the allocation of TEL issuance to different miners is likely to escalate. If government agents use their authority to support those who refuse to follow the rules of a regime- less organization, it is hard for the other participants to continue following the rules either. Without formal, legal recognition, a regime-less organization may crumble rapidly when its authority to make legitimate rules for its own members is challenged and not supported by the formal government of a regime.
• Basis for Evolution: The Association gives a solid base for polycentric governance and development while ensuring community involvement and expectations are respected.

Domicile: Switzerland in the Canton of Ticino in the City of Lugano

Overview

We made the choice to domicile the Telcoin Association in Switzerland in the Canton of Ticino in the City of Lugano for a variety of reasons.

Switzerland has been a world financial center for centuries. It has developed legal precedent and structures that are well-adapted to the operating model of decentralized organizations and the Telcoin platform in particular. This support of decentralization is not limited to crypto. For example, 25% of all forestry, a common pool resource, in Switzerland is managed by common property regimes wrapped under a Swiss Verein Association Structure.

Lugano, Switzerland in particular, has demonstrated is forward acceptance of cryptocurrency by integrating it into its government and community operations (e.g. Plan ₿). Further, this general area is home to the Crypto Valley Association, an independent, government-backed body that seeks to leverage Switzerland’s strengths to develop a crypto and blockchain hub for businesses from around the world. The Swiss Verein, for purposes of solidifying its connection to Switzerland may have at least one resident of Switzerland as a Council member, and the talent pool attracted to this crypto center will enable the Association to obtain top talent for that position as well as other human resources needed.

Lastly, Switzerland is centrally-located globally and thus accessible to community members worldwide.

Swiss Verein Entity Structure

A Swiss Verein is an association (“Verein” in German, “association” in French, “associazione” in Italian). In its simplest terms it is a group (people and/or entities) that come together as a group to conduct an activity. This sort of group action is done all of the time. You may have known these types of groups as “clubs” or is a legal structure in Swiss law, similar to the Anglo-American voluntary association - better known as a “clubs,” “societies,” or “consortiums.” In a Swiss Verein, this informal mechanism for group action is given legal structure and recognition, allowing the individuals to truly act as a group while giving them legal abilities and protections attributed to other more formalized legal entities. In sum, it allows informal decentralized operation within a legal corporate-type structure. This makes it most suitable for a decentralized operation such as the Telcoin platform. More specifically:

Why wrap Telcoin governance in a Swiss Verein legal structure?

• Decentralized: A verein by its very nature is a corporate organization that is decentralized. Switzerland regulation is the applicable law and this law supports the decentralized nature of its operation. The very law was set up to support decentralized operation. This is not a situation whereby a decentralized organization is trying to be fit into an existing regulatory structure that did not contemplate a decentralized operation. Rather, Swiss law was created with this very type of organization in mind. Thus the Verein is a suitable arrangement for Telcoin as an openly-accessible, blockchain-based platform embedded in the internet and an international, decentralized community seeking to self-govern their interactions with each other and with the system autonomously.
• Global: Vereins provide a participation mechanism for geographically dispersed blockchain projects without a central location. The organization structure facilitates the interaction of community members with the system and with each other from locations all over the globe.
• Separation of Powers: The Swiss Verein structure enables the checks and balances of a coordinated but decentralized governance so that the community is adequately represented and also protected from concentrated control which may occur in traditional hierarchical legal structures.
• Limited Liability: Members liability is limited with the Swiss Verein providing a limited liability wrapper around a common goal. This protects, enables and incents not only members, but service providers interact with and work on behalf of the collective community.
• Separate Legal Personality: Vereins have a separate legal personality, just like companies or foundations.
• Flexibility: As long as the Association is non-profit, there is no filing requirement. Meaning Vereins can be willed into life via a simple governing document called a Constitution. The Constitution’s requirements and powers are, in the case of the Telcoin platform, facilitated by a smart contract. Community members can participate as individuals or legal entities.

Miners

Overview

Miners are the driving force behind the Telcoin Platform. There are four types of miners, including Validators, Liquidity Miners, Stakers, Developers.

Miners	Platform Role	Activities	Benefits
Validators	Blockchain Security: Create and verify blocks to the Telcoin Network blockchain to enable decentralized transaction execution and settlement for Telcoin Platform users.	Stake TEL for PoS, operate a validator node, create and verify blocks to the Telcoin Network blockchain.	Earn TEL gas fees from users and harvest TEL issuance from each block they secure to the Telcoin Network blockchain.
Liquidity Miners	Liquidity Provision: Produce liquid, decentralized TELx markets that enable Telcoin Platform users to exchange their assets using the blockchain in an automated, self-custodial manner.	Provide liquidity to TELx DeFi markets and stake liquidity in TELx staking contracts.	Earn fees from trades through their liquidity pools and harvest TEL issuance from TELx.
Developers	Mobile Application Development: Produce self-custodial Telcoin mobile applications on TAN that connect users to the Telcoin Platform and its services.	Stake TEL on TAN, develop Telcoin mobile applications.	Earn transaction fees from their customers and harvest TEL issuance from TAN.
Stakers	Platform Adoption: Use Telcoin mobile apps and connect with their payment networks to produce adoption of the Telcoin Platform as infrastructure for settling payments and other blockchain-powered use cases.	Stake TEL on TAN, transact using the system, refer new users to Telcoin by sharing their unique referral code.	Earn a percentage of their referred users fees in TEL and harvest TEL issuance from TAN.

Each Miner Group serves a distinct and complementary function on the Telcoin Platform in the production of the system and the extraction of the benefits it generates including earning fees from consumers and harvesting TEL issuance from the Platform based on their individual efforts according to rules that are determined and enforced by Miner Councils.

The four types of miners, based on their distinct, functional interests and relationship with TEL and the Telcoin Platform, are each empowered with equal authority as “Miner Groups” in the Telcoin Platform governance system. They collectively share full power, control, and duties in Telcoin Platform governance, which they exert using a variety of decision-making processes within numerous organizations across jurisdictional domains of the system, including Miner Groups, the Miner Assembly, and Miner Councils.

Validators

Role: Secure blocks to the Telcoin Network blockchain underlying the Telcoin Platform.

• Eligibility and Participation Rules: All GSMA Operator Member, Mobile Network Operators who are approved by the Compliance Council, stake TEL for proof of stake consensus (PoS), and deploy, manage a node on Telcoin Network may participate as Validators.
• Platform Activities and Benefits: Stakes TEL for PoS on Telcoin Network, operates a validator node, creates and verifies blocks to secure the blockchain, and harvests TEL gas fees and TEL issuance when they secure blocks to Telcoin Network according to rules determined by the Platform and Treasury Council.
• Governance Rights and Powers: Proposes and votes with other Validators in their Miner Group in Telcoin Platform governance based on their pro-rata share of TEL staked for PoS on Telcoin Network.
  • Learn more

Liquidity Miners

Role: Produce liquid, decentralized markets on TELx which enable users to exchange their assets.

• Eligibility and Participation Rules: All users who provide liquidity to TELx markets and stake their liquidity in TELx staking contracts may participate as Liquidity Miners.
• Platform Activities and Benefits: Provides liquidity to TELx markets, stakes their liquidity in TELx staking contracts, earns fees from trades through their liquidity pool, and harvests TEL issuance from TELx pro-rata based on their share of staked liquidity according to rules determined by the TELx Council.
• Governance Rights and Powers: Proposes and votes with other Liquidity Miners in their Miner Group in Telcoin Platform governance based on their pro-rata share of staked liquidity on TELx.
  • Learn more

Application Developers (Developers)

Role: Develop mobile applications that integrate with the Telcoin Platform and securely connect users to the goods and services it generates.

• Eligibility and Participation Rules: All GSMA members who are approved by the Compliance Council, stake TEL in Telcoin Application Network (TAN) staking contracts, and deploy a compliant Telcoin mobile application, may participate as Developers.
• Platform Activities and Benefits: Develops mobile applications that connect users to the Telcoin Platform, stakes TEL, earns fees from customer transactions, and harvests TEL issuance from the TAN based on their user base’s adoption of the Platform vs other Developers according to rules determined by the TAN Council.
• Governance Rights and Powers: Proposes and votes with other Developers in their Miner Group in Telcoin Platform governance based on their pro-rata share of TEL staked on TAN by all registered Developers.
  • Learn more

Stakers

Role: Produce adoption of the Telcoin Platform as infrastructure for settling payments and other blockchain goods and services.

• Eligibility and Participation Rules: All registered Telcoin mobile application customers who integrate another user’s referral code and stake TEL from their mobile application wallet on TAN may participate as Stakers.
• Platform Activities and Benefits: Connects with their payments networks to establish the Telcoin Platform system as infrastructure for settling payments and other blockchain use cases, stakes TEL in Telcoin Application Network (TAN) staking contracts, earns a percentage of their referred users’ fees, and harvests TEL issuance from TAN based on their referred network’s adoption of the Telcoin Platform according to rules determined by the TAN Council.
• Governance Rights and Powers: Proposes and votes with other Stakers in their Miner Group in Telcoin Platform governance based on their pro-rata share of TEL staked on TAN by all referred Telcoin mobile application users.
  • Learn more

Miners: TEL Harvesting Activities and Benefits

Telcoin Network: TEL Harvesting Activities and Benefits

Stake TEL to participate in proof of stake consensus (PoS), operate a validator node to create and verify new blocks to the Telcoin Network blockchain, and harvest TEL from Telcoin Network based on their pro-rata share of blocks secured to the blockchain each day. Telcoin Network harvesting rules are set and required to be enforced by the Platform and Treasury Councils using the TELIP process.

Miner	Harvesting Activities	Y1 TEL Allocation	Basis for Income
Validators	Blockchain Security Manage a validator node to create and verify blocks of transactions to the Telcoin Network blockchain. Stake TEL on Telcoin Network: Stake TEL on Telcoin Network to participate in proof-of-stake consensus.	Total: 200,000,000. Flow: 547,945.205 per day	Basis Formula: Pro-rata share of blocks secured to the Telcoin Network blockchain each day.

TELx: TEL Harvesting Activities and Benefits

Liquidity Miners provide liquidity to TELx DeFi markets, stake their liquidity provider tokens (LPTs) in TELx staking contracts, and harvest TEL from TELx based on their pro-rata share of staked liquidity according to harvesting rules that are set and required to be enforced by the TELx Council.

Miner	Activities	Y1 TEL Allocation	Basis for Income
Liquidity Miners	DeFi Liquidity Provision: Provide liquidity to TELx DeFi markets and enable users to exchange their assets in a decentralized, automated, self-custodial manner. Stake Liquidity on TELx: Deposit TELx liquidity provider tokens (LPTs) in TELx staking contracts to harvest TEL.	Total: 200,000,000. Flow: 16,666,666.66 per month	Basis for Income: Pro-rata share of liquidity staked on TELx over time.

TAN: TEL Harvesting Activities and Benefits

Developers and Stakers harvest TEL from the TAN based on their user base’s adoption of the Telcoin Platform according to harvesting rules that are set and required to be enforced by the TAN Council.

Miner	Activities	Y1 TEL Allocation	Basis for TEL Income
Developers	Mobile App Development: Produce mobile apps which integrate with the Telcoin Platform and securely connect users to its services. Stake TEL: Stake TEL in TAN staking contracts to harvest TEL.	Annual: 166.66M. Flow: 3,205,128.205 weekly	Pro-rata share of their mobile application’s (Referral fees + TELx exchange fees + Telcoin Network gas fees paid by users) vs other developers each week.
Merchant Stakers (Corporate)	Platform adoption: Connect with their business and customer payments networks through Telcoin mobile apps to drive user adoption and establish the Telcoin Platform as infrastructure for settling payments and other blockchain-powered use cases. Stake TEL: Deposit TEL in TAN staking contracts to harvest TEL.	Annual: 166.66M, Flow: 3,205,128.205 weekly	Pro-rata share of their (fees paid + their referred users’ fees paid) vs other merchant stakers each week.
Retail Stakers (Individuals)	Platform adoption: Connect with their social and business payments networks through Telcoin mobile apps to drive user adoption and establish the Telcoin Platform as infrastructure for settling payments and other blockchain-powered use cases. Stake TEL on TAN: Stake TEL in TAN staking contracts to harvest TEL.	Annual: 166.66M Flow: 3,205,128.205 weekly	Pro-rata share of their (fees paid + their referred users’ fees paid) vs other retail stakers each week.

• Maximum TEL Issuance: Developers and Stakers ****may mine their accrued weekly issuance if their total staked TEL balance throughout the entire week is greater than their lifetime TEL issuance earnings plus issuance income during the week.
• Excess TEL: Any excess TEL which has not been mined from TAN during the week will be distributed to the TAN Council safe to be allocated by the TAN Council.

Miners: Telcoin Platform Production Activities and Fees

Telcoin Network: Miner Production Activities and Fees

Validators stake TEL for proof of stake consensus, manage a node, create and verify blocks of transactions to the Telcoin Network blockchain, and earn TEL gas fees paid by customers to access each block they secure to the Telcoin Network blockchain.

Miners	Production Activities	Fee Type and Frequency	Fee Percentage and Currency	Basis Formula for Fee Income
Validators	Blockchain Security Manage a validator node to create and verify blocks of transactions to the Telcoin Network blockchain. Stake TEL on Telcoin Network to participate in proof-of-stake consensus.	Gas Fees: Validators earn gas fees, paid in TEL by users to transact using the network. Frequency: Validators earn gas fees from each block they secure to the Telcoin Network blockchain.	Percentage: Validators earn gas fees less base fees, or the portion of TEL gas fees that are destroyed and regenerated to the TEL Treasury. Currency: Gas fees on Telcoin Network are paid in TEL.	Basis Formula: Validators earn TEL gas fees based on the total TEL paid minus the base fees contained in each block they secure to the blockchain. Base Fees: A portion of gas fees in each block are regenerated by Telcoin Network in equal quantity to the TEL Treasury. Priority Fees: Users can choose to pay an extra “fee” that increases the likelihood that their transaction is included in the next block.

TELx: Miner Production Activities and Fees

Liquidity Miners provide liquidity to TELx DeFi markets and earn fees from trades through their markets.

Miners	Production Activities	Fee Type and Frequency	Fee Percentage and Currency	Basis Formula for Fee Income
Liquidity Miners	DeFi Liquidity Provision: Provide liquidity to TELx DeFi markets which enable users to exchange their assets in a decentralized, automated, self-custodial manner.	Exchange Fees: Liquidity miners earn exchange fees when users exchange assets using their market. Frequency: Liquidity Miners earn fees each exchange through their market.	Percentage: Estimated to range approximately from between 0.01%-2.50% depending on pool asset volatility and the use case. Programmed into the pool upon creation by the TELx Council. Currency: Users pay fees in the trade with asset.	Basis Formula: Liquidity Miners earn a pro-rata percentage of all exchange fees from trades through their pools based on their share of liquidity provided.

TAN: Miner Production Activities and Benefits

Developers stake TEL on TAN, produce and operate mobile applications that connect users to the Telcoin Platform and its services, and earn transaction fees from their customers.

Stakers deposit TEL in TAN staking contracts, market the Telcoin Platform by sharing their referral code with their networks, and earn a percentage of their referred users’ fees.

Miners	Production Activities	Fee Type and Frequency	Fee Percentage and Currency	Basis Formula for Fee Income
Developers	Develop Telcoin Mobile Applications: Produce mobile applications on TAN that securely connect users to the Telcoin Platform and its services. Stake TEL on TAN: Deposit TEL in TAN staking contracts from their wallet to participate.	Transaction Fees: Developers earn income from transaction fees paid by their mobile customers to access their services. Frequency: Developers earn transaction fees each time their users transact through Telcoin products and pay fees.	Percentage: Developers determine their own fee schedules including the referral fee rate schedule for stakers. Currency: Developers earn transaction fees in the token used to make the transaction, in TEL, or in any token of their choosing.	Formula Transaction fee minus any referral fees earned by stakers. Non-referred users: If the user has not been referred by a staker, the Developer earns the entire transaction fee. Referred users: If the user has been referred by a staker, the Developer earns the trasaction fee minus any referral fees earned by the staker.
Stakers	Platform Adoption: Connect with their social, business payments networks through Telcoin mobile apps to drive user adoption and establish the Telcoin Platform as infrastructure for settling payments and other blockchain-powered use cases. Stake TEL on TAN: Deposit TEL in TAN staking contracts from their Telcoin mobile application wallet to participate and to determine their referral fee rate.	Referral Fees: Stakers earn a percentage of all of their referred users’ transaction fees, distributed in real-time, in TEL, based on the quantity of TEL they have staked. Frequency: Stakers earn TEL referral fees each time their referred users transact through Telcoin products and pay fees.	Percentage: Developers set their own transaction and referral fee schedule. Currency: Stakers always earn referral fees in TEL. If the referred user pays fees in another asset, that asset will automatically buy TEL from TELx and distributes to the staker in the same transaction.	Basis Formula The percentage staker’s earn of their referred users transaction fees, or their referral fee rate, is based on: TEL Staked: The quantity of TEL they have staked at the time of each transaction, and Fee Schedule: The fee schedules including the referral fee rate are by Application Developers. The first Telcoin Mobile Application to implement referral fees has a referral fee rate range of 15-42% of transaction fees and 10-100M TEL.

Governance System

Introduction

The Telcoin Platform governance system is the prevailing set of processes through which the rules shaping the behavior of miners within the Telcoin Platform and between each other within Association activities are set and revised.

Constituted, represented, and protected legally by the Telcoin Association, Telcoin Platform governance is a polycentric, democratic system of self-governance in which the four miners, acting as individuals through various organizations, share collective power and control.

Background

Embracing Proven Governance Frameworks for Blockchain Communities

The proposed governance framework encapsulates the critical shift in blockchain governance philosophy proposed for the Telcoin Platform, emphasizing the integration of proven governance principles to address current challenges and foster a sustainable, community-driven future.

Rethinking Blockchain Governance

The blockchain governance landscape, predominantly featuring decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and decentralized autonomous corporations (DACs), has been marred by a series of missteps and market failures. This is largely attributed to a widespread reluctance to adopt and integrate established theories and frameworks from the conventional domains of goods, services, and ownership. Prevailing practices, such as token holder voting for every decision and fully on-chain governance, coupled with the absence of legal structures, have led to difficult situations, dilemmas, and a growing list of outright market failures. These challenges, however, present an opportunity to learn from historical governance models and their successes.

Incorporating Time-Tested Principles into Telcoin Governance

The Telcoin Platform governance system is strategically crafted to draw from this reservoir of existing knowledge, best practices, and tools that have historically governed similar economic systems sustainably and communally. The aim is to empower the Telcoin community to effectively manage and navigate the complexities and challenges inherent in their interactions within the platform.

TGIP1: A Step Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Governance

At the heart of this new governance approach is TGIP1, a concerted initiative to embed Elinor Ostrom’s renowned 8 Design Principles into the Telcoin governance framework. These principles, focused on the sustainable management of common-pool resources, are operationalized through the practical application of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) and Social-Ecological Systems (SES) Frameworks. This approach marks a significant shift towards a governance model that is not only robust and adaptable but also inclusive and sustainable, aligning with the unique characteristics of the Telcoin Platform as a digital economic ecosystem.

Strategic Development of Telcoin Platform’s Governance

Defining the Telcoin Platform’s Governance Blueprint

The development of the Telcoin Platform’s governance structure is a meticulous process that integrates academic theory with practical application:

1. Identifying the Nature of the Telcoin Platform: Recognizing the platform as a common-pool resource (CPR), the team has pinpointed specific governance challenges that are typical for such resources. This classification guides the approach to managing collective access and benefits.
2. Understanding the Property Regime: The governance system is defined as a common property regime, acknowledging unique challenges in managing communal resources while ensuring equitable access and sustainability.
3. Implementing Ostrom’s Principles: Elinor Ostrom’s 8 Design Principles, pivotal in governing CPRs, are ingrained as fundamental values within the Telcoin Association Constitution. These principles serve as a cornerstone for the governance model, ensuring robust, enduring communal management.
4. Operationalizing Principles into Action: These guiding principles are transformed into actionable research questions, leading to the development of institutional responses. This operationalization is achieved through the application of the IAD and SES frameworks, embedding these principles into the governance structures and processes, which are publicly available on the Telcoin Association website.
5. Leveraging the IAD Framework: Developed by Ostrom and colleagues, the IAD framework offers a comprehensive tool for analyzing institutional processes, focusing on actors, norms, and rules. Its application to the Telcoin Platform aids in defining the nature of the good, shaping association rules, and understanding the roles and interactions of miners throughout the platform.
6. Applying the SES Framework: Building on the IAD framework, the SES framework delves deeper into the attributes of social-ecological systems, providing a multi-tiered approach to understanding complex governance scenarios. This framework is used to develop a knowledge classification system for the Telcoin Platform, detailing its resource systems, governance structures, and user interactions.

Understanding the Governance of Common-Pool Resources in the Telcoin Platform

Conceptualizing the Telcoin Platform’s Nature and Challenges

The Telcoin Platform is conceptualized as a common-pool resource (CPR), which inherently comes with significant governance challenges. This classification is rooted in its material qualities and economic characteristics, notably its high cost of exclusion and high subtractability of use. These factors make the Telcoin Platform akin to natural resources like lakes or forests, where access is hard to restrict and the extraction of one benefit subtracts from the total supply available to others.

Addressing Unique Governance Dilemmas

The governance of CPRs like the Telcoin Platform faces distinct challenges, primarily around appropriation and provisioning. These challenges manifest in the form of overconsumption and under-provisioning, often leading to the “tragedy of the commons,” where individual rational actions lead to collective irrational outcomes. The governance model must, therefore, incentivize balanced consumption and contribution among users to avoid depletion and ensure sustainability.

Incorporating Established Theories into Governance

The Telcoin governance system draws from established theories in the management of commons, notably Elinor Ostrom’s work. Ostrom challenged conventional notions that commons are inevitably doomed without top-down control or privatization. Her empirical studies across diverse communal governance regimes demonstrated that communities can effectively self-manage CPRs through locally devised rules and institutions. This approach is seen as more effective than relying solely on state or market solutions.

Applying Ostrom’s Principles to Telcoin’s Governance

The proposed governance structure for the Telcoin Platform integrates Ostrom’s 8 Design Principles, which are a synthesis of best practices observed in long-enduring CPR governance. These principles are operationalized through the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) and Social-Ecological Systems (SES) frameworks, providing a structured approach to managing the Telcoin Platform’s unique governance challenges.

Integrating Ostrom’s Principles into Telcoin Governance

Adopting Ostrom’s Design Principles for Effective Governance

Elinor Ostrom’s eight design principles, derived from extensive case studies on communal resource management, have been strategically integrated into the Telcoin governance system. These principles, emerging from patterns of behavior in social-ecological systems, serve as a foundation for creating robust and sustainable governance structures.

Practical Application of Design Principles

The Telcoin governance model operationalizes these principles by translating them into actionable research questions and institutional responses. This approach ensures that each principle is effectively embedded within the governance structures, rules, and processes of the Telcoin Platform.

1. Clearly Defined Boundaries: Establishing clear boundaries for the resource system and user rights.
2. Proportional Equivalence between Benefits and Costs: Aligning resource allocation with local conditions, expected outcomes, and miner production output.
3. Collective-Choice Arrangements: Involving affected individuals in decision-making processes.
4. Monitoring: Implementing effective monitoring of resource conditions and user behavior.
5. Graduated Sanctions: Applying appropriate sanctions for rule violations.
6. Conflict-Resolution Mechanisms: Providing accessible means for dispute resolution.
7. Recognition of Rights to Organize: Ensuring the autonomy of users to determine and enforce their own rules with traditional legal rights and protections afforded to similar property regimes over other common-pool resources.
8. Nested Enterprises (Polycentricity): Organizing governance activities in multi-layered structures.

Frameworks Guiding Governance Structure

The Telcoin governance is further strengthened by the application of the IAD and SES Frameworks. These frameworks provide a comprehensive structure for analyzing the interaction between human groups and their environment, essential for understanding and managing the complex dynamics of the Telcoin Platform.

1. IAD Framework: The IAD framework includes analyzing actors, norms, institutional settings, incentive structures, rules, and more. Social scientists have widely adopted the IAD framework to study institutional arrangements and the emerge and changes of institutions over time. We applied the IAD framework to depict the nature of the good, to craft the Association Rules, the attributes of the Actors (”Miners”) descriptions and variables, interactions and outcomes.
2. SES Framework: The Social-Ecological Systems framework builds upon the IAD by unpacking the material world’s attributes that are acted upon in the action situations to facilitate multidisciplinary efforts toward a better understanding of complex SESs. In this framework, an SES has multiple levels of nested systems. In the first level, the four core subsystems – (i) resource systems, (ii) resource units, (iii) governance systems, and (iv) users – are connected as well as to the social, economic, and political settings and related ecosystems. Each subsystem comprises second-level variables, which are further composed of deeper-level variables. We used the SES framework to create a knowledge classificatory system for the Telcoin Platform on the documentation sections of the Association website.

Understanding the Telcoin Platform as a Resource System

The Telcoin Platform is conceptualized as a multi-tiered resource system, comprising various blockchain infrastructure networks and generating a range of benefits. It is characterized by high costs of exclusion and significant subtractability of use, similar to traditional common-pool resources like fisheries or irrigation systems. The governance system is designed to address the unique appropriation and provisioning challenges of the platform, preventing the “tragedy of the commons” and ensuring sustainable management.

Policy Domain

The Telcoin governance system is a set of rules systems tailored to governing and managing human and technological interactions with the Telcoin Platform, a common-pool resource, including its three blockchain infrastructure networks, the extractable supply of TEL, and the interactions between miners and the system as well as socially within the Association.

Nature of the Good

Classifying the Telcoin Platform: A Common-pool Resource “CPR”

Exclusion Costs: High

• Embedded on the internet as a nested public blockchain network, it’s difficult and costly to control user access to the Telcoin Platform resource system.

Subtractability of Use: High

• The Platform generates a flow of benefits or resource units (e.g. TEL, fees) which fully subtract from the supply upon extraction and can be enjoyed, used to consume platform products, transferred, exchanged, and used as an input in platform production, harvesting, and governance processes.

Identifying Governance Challenges

• Provisioning problems: The public nature of the resource system creates provision problems, such as maintaining blockchain infrastructure, where participants must be incentivized not to free-ride on the efforts of others to provide the public good.
• Appropriation problems: The subtractive nature of the resource units, or the benefits generated by common pool resources, produce appropriation problems, (e.g. overfishing), where participants must be incentivized to temper their consumption of an exhaustible resource.

Based on their functional relationship with the Platform, these challenges pose external costs on miners and their miner groups distinctively, so the task of Telcoin Platform governance is to solve these problems by cooperating across user groups to provide shared infrastructure and to sustainably allocate TEL.

The Telcoin governance institution is a set of rules

A more general way of thinking about the Telcoin Platform governance regime is as a set of rules that regulates the following:

1. Who is allowed to harvest TEL issuance from the Platform;
2. The timing, quantity, location, and technology used to harvest TEL issuance;
3. Who is obligated to contribute resources to plan, finance and coordinate the construction, maintenance, administration of the platform, its subsystems, and other public goods and services;
4. How harvesting and obligation activities are monitored and enforced;
5. How conflicts over appropriation and obligation activities are to be resolved;
6. How the rules affecting the above will change over time with changes in the performance of the resource system and the strategies of participants.

Range of the Telcoin Governance System

The Telcoin governance system possesses authority to set, enforce, and refine the rules for interacting with the Telcoin Platform, including TAN, TELx, Telcoin Network, the TEL token, Treasury systems and inventories, and the Telcoin governance system infrastructure.

System	Components	TEL Inventory and Storage
Telcoin Platform	The entire nested structure of blockchain infrastructure networks including TAN, TELx, Telcoin Network as one indivisible system. TEL: Token contract, Treasury issuance distribution mechanisms, Communication and information systems, Governance Infrastructure	TEL Treasury
TAN	TAN staking contracts, Off-chain database and scripts	TAN Council Gnosis Safe, TAN Distribution Safe, TAN Staking Module
TELx	Products, Protocols, Market and assets, Staking contracts, TELx website	TELx Council Safe, TELx Distribution Safe, TELx Staking Module, TELx Telcoin-Distributor
Telcoin Network	Virtual machine, Mempool, Gas fees and tokens, TEL regeneration mechanism, Validator staking contracts	Telcoin Network Issuance Safe, Telcoin Network Distribution Safe
Communication and Information Systems	https://telcoin.org/, Telcoin Discord
Governance Infrastructure	Miner and Council voting systems (e.g. Snapshot), Compliance Guard, Governance NFTs, Zodiac Modules	Governance Sablier Streams, TAO Gnosis Safe

Population

Primary Actors: Miners

There are four types of primary actors, who we refer to as miners and as collectives, “Miner Groups,” including Stakers, Developers, Liquidity Miners, and Validators. Miner Groups are made up of individual participants who consume, produce resources, and harvest TEL from the Telcoin Platform based on rules that are set, enforced, and refined by Telcoin Platform governance.

Functionally-based Differentiation

Each type of miner serves a distinct function in production across jurisdictional areas of the Platform and harvests from separate flows of (a) fees from consumption of services they produce and (b) TEL issuance that originates from a primary, renewable source called the TEL Treasury.

Plural Community Interest Groups: Miner Groups

Stakers, Developers, Liquidity Miners, and Validators, the Miner Groups, can be most simply understood as sub-groups of the broader Telcoin Platform Miner (who constitute the Miner Assembly) community. Each Miner Group represents distinct segments of the larger community and possesses distinct attributes, interests, power, and roles in the consumption, production, management, and governance of the Telcoin Platform.

Costs of collective-action

The decisions made in collective action over the shared system and benefits it generates can result in external costs imposed specific to each Miner Group by other Miner Groups. For example, if the system was exclusively governed by Validators, Validators could easily vote to revoke the ability for other groups to harvest TEL.

Empowering Miner Groups with Governance Authority over Telcoin

Based on their functionally-differentiated attributes, relationship with the platform, property rights over the system and the flows of benefits it generates, and their collectives’ shared interests in protecting their rights, each Miner Group is empowered with equal power and control over, with, and within the Telcoin governance system.

Telcoin Platform Governance: Democratic Logic

Democracy can be defined more intuitively at the extremes as a continuum ranging from autocracy, where one person, e.g. a dictator, holds all power and control over all decisions made for some group, and direct democracy with unanimous consent rules, where every member of a group must approve every decision made.

Telcoin Platform governance was designed to reduce decision-making costs and external costs by empowering for the four Platform functionally-differentiated user groups with the capacity to protect and represent their distinct rights, interests, preferences in all collective choices related to the Telcoin Platform and Association- without requiring full member participation on day to day operational decisions.

• Representative Democracy: During annual election and ongoing liquid delegation processes, each Miner Group selects a set of miners into Council Member positions on Miner Councils to represent their interests. Miner Councils participate in democratic decision-making processes that provide for improvements to the Platform, including the construction of new and the maintenance of existing components, the allocation of the flow of TEL units from the TEL treasury and within networks, and set the operational rules for interacting with the system and between actors.

  • Council Member Selection: Miner Groups select other miners in periodic elections and on-going delegation processes to represent their interests on Miner Councils.
  • Representation Rights: Every Miner Group has representation rights on every Miner Council.
  • Basis for Representation
    • Functional: Each Miner Group, which are collectives made up of individual stakers, developers, liquidity miners and validators, selects delegates to every Miner Council to represent their functionally-based interests which vary based on their productive function and the issuance allocation from which they harvest from the system.
  • Representation Rights
    • Balanced: Balanced representation across miner groups on system-wide governing bodies that regulate the primary TEL inventory, the TEL treasury, and balanced on special purpose governing bodies such as the Compliance Council, and
    • Asymmetrical: Fully inclusive on local Councils, where local miners possess rights to enough representatives to ensure all proposals receive consent of at least one representative from every local Miner Group and miners from other sub-systems possess at least one representative on every Council.

  Miner Council Authority and Decision-making Rules

  • Authority: Miner Councils, nested globally, locally, and cross-jurisdictionally, participate in collective choice decision making processes that serve to determine and enforce operational rules for interacting with the system and between each other.
  • Decision-making Rules: All Miner Council Members can make proposals over their policy domains and voting rules range from a super-majority (75% or higher) to fully unanimous consent.

• Democratic System of Self Governance: Miners, the major producers of the system and extractors of TEL issuance possess ultimate, shared, collective authority over and within the governance system.

  Miners: Governance Authority

  Miners are involved over time in making and adapting rules within collective-choice situations regarding the inclusion or exclusion of participants, appropriation(harvesting) strategies, obligations of participants, monitoring and sanctioning, and conflict resolution. Through democratic processes of constitutional and collective choice, Miners possess the authority to:

  • Alter the Governance System
  • Select (and remove) other miners to represent their interests in decision-making processes on Miner Councils.
  • Serve as a Council Member and participate in decision-making processes that provide for the construction and maintenance of the Platform, regulate the flow of TEL issuance, and determine and enforce operational rules structuring interactions with the system and between each other.

• Constitutional Democracy: The Telcoin Platform governance is conducted through a legal entity called a Swiss Verein (”Telcoin Association”), changes to the governance system require consent from all four Miner Groups (or “the Miner Assembly”) over an identical proposal, and individual Miner Groups maintain autonomy to determine their representatives special duties on Miner Councils.

  • Constitutional Order: Telcoin governance is implemented through a Swiss Verein Association (the “Telcoin Association”), which operates pursuant to the Telcoin Association Constitution. Adopted and ratified by the community in Telcoin Governance Improvement Proposal number 1 (“TGIP1”), the Telcoin Association Constitution articulates a Mission, Vision, and set of Values to serve as a guidepost for the community to ethically order its behavior towards a common cause with a vision for the future in line with community standards.
  • Altering the Governance System: In order to alter the governance system, all four Miner Groups, or “the Miner Assembly”, must consent to an identical Telcoin Governance Improvement Proposal (“TGIP”) with an 80% approval vote and a minimum 20% quorum required from each Miner Group.
  • Altering Representatives Duties: Miner Groups may alter their representatives’ special duties and other selection criteria without having to consult with or get approval from other Miner Groups.

• Additional Attributes of Democracy

  • Informed Consent: Each Miner Group has rights to representation on every Council and may replace their council members at any time. In other words, every interest group has a voice in every matter that may affect their functionally-differentiated interests.
  • Separation of Powers: Each Miner Council is empowered with authority over a specific jurisdictional domain of the Telcoin Platform and governance system, ranging from global organizations with nested authority over the Telcoin Platform and the TEL Treasury, local organizations with authority over sub-systems of the Telcoin Platform (e.g. the TAN Council and the Telcoin Application Network).
  • Local Autonomy: Each Miner Group, based on their functional location, has the right to elect enough members to their own local Miner Councils, and, at least one of their representatives must consent to rules changes structuring interactions in their domain.
  • Equal Voting Rights: Each Miner Group has equal power and control in constitutional-choice processes and Miner Group representatives (or “Council Members”) have equal voting rights on Miner Councils in collective-choice processes.

Telcoin Governance is a Polycentric System

Telcoin Platform governance numerous, democratic decision-making units (governance organizations) with considerable autonomy (independence) to make and enforce rules within their own circumscribed domain of authority of the system. In other words, Telcoin Platform governance is polycentric.

Definitional Clarity

In a polycentric governance system, each unit exercises considerable independence(autonomy) to make and enforce rules within a circumscribed domain of authority for a specified geographic area.

Some units are general-purpose governments while others may be highly specialized; units are stationed at different areas (e.g. globally, regionally, state level, local); some units are larger, medium, or smaller sized; and units vary by function ranging from provisioning to distribution to production to conflict resolution.

Applying Polycentricity to Telcoin Governance

Telcoin Platform governance includes four, functionally distinct Telcoin Platform interest groups (”Miner Groups”) who share equal power and control over and within governance. Miner Groups vote in election processes for delegates (”Council Members”) to represent their interests in decisions on five different global, local, and special-purpose, cross-jurisdictional policy-making organizations (”Miner Councils”).

Miner Councils each possess considerable autonomy (independence) to set, enforce, revise Telcoin Platform and Association rules over their own jurisdictional domain of authority, are required to perform specific duties according to their Council and role, and finance, direct, coordinate with the TAO, a legally-separate, operational arm servicing the Telcoin Association, and other third parties at their discretion, to implement, contract, administer and coordinate improvements.

Rationale: Why Polycentricity?

The choice of a polycentric governance system for the Telcoin Platform is rooted in its proven advantages for managing complex, interactive, common-pool resource systems with diverse stakeholders.

• Adaptive Capacity: Polycentric governance is renowned for its dynamic adaptability. It functions as a complex-adaptive system, where parallel experimentation with varied rules and ideas fosters institutional innovation. This adaptability is particularly vital for the Telcoin Platform, facilitating real-time responses to evolving technological and market conditions, thereby ensuring continuous innovation and growth.
• Institutional Fit: Polycentric systems feature multiple, autonomous decision-making centers, enabling the creation of tailored, context-specific institutions. This decentralized approach is crucial for the Telcoin Platform, where a singular decision-making entity might lack the comprehensive knowledge needed to address the platform’s multifaceted challenges effectively.
• Mitigation of Risk through Redundancy: The polycentric model incorporates multiple layers of decision-making, creating a safety net against policy failures. This redundancy increases the overall resilience of the Telcoin Platform, ensuring stability and continuity even in the face of unexpected challenges. For instance, if one decision-making unit encounters an issue, others can step in, preventing system-wide disruptions.

Governance Organizations

Overview

Miners, including Stakers, Developers, Liquidity Miners and Validators, collectively share power and control within the Telcoin Platform governance system, which they exercise as a part of their Miner Groups, within the broader Miner Assembly, acting through Miner Councils, and Constituted, represented, and protected legally by the Telcoin Association.

Acting as individuals within various governance organizations, miners collectively possess the authority to:

1. Alter the Telcoin Platform governance system in constitutional-choice processes.
2. Select other miners into council member positions.
3. Participate as council members on Miner Councils in collective-choice processes that serve to improve the system, regulate the flow of TEL issuance, set and enforce operational rules over their domain.
4. Authorize, finance, coordinate production units to construct, maintain, and administer public services on behalf of and at the direction of communal organizations.

Telcoin Platform governance includes all of the following organizations:

Miner Groups and the Miner Assembly: Plural Community Interest Groups

Each of the four Telcoin Platform Miners (“Miner Groups”), including Stakers, Developers, Liquidity Miners, and Validators, represent a sub-group of the broader miner community with shared rights and interests in the Telcoin Platform. Each Miner Group represents distinct segments of the larger community, each possessing distinct interests, power, and role in the production and governance of the Telcoin Platform. Collectively, Miner Groups share full power and control over and within the Telcoin Platform governance system.

• Miner Groups: Stakers, Developers, Liquidity Miners, and Validators each constitute and participate in governance with others in their Miner Group based on their TEL staked in Platform production processes. Each Miner Group is empowered with the authority to elect Council Members onto every Miner Council in order to represent their functionally-distinct interests in every domain of authority on the Telcoin Platform, and possesses the capability to protect their rights and interests at the constitutional level of authority in which the terms and conditions of governance are set.
• Miner Assembly: The four Miner Groups may collaborate to form an Assembly and, in doing so, may alter any aspect of the Telcoin Platform governance system.

Miner Councils: Policy-making Organizations

Miner Councils encompass a diverse set of global, local, cross-jurisdictional governance organizations, made up of elected officials (”Council Members”) from each Miner Group, who represent their constituents’ interests in collective processes that determine and enforce operational rules over specific jurisdictional domains of the Telcoin Platform and governance system and are required to perform duties towards providing and allocating collective goods within their domain of the Telcoin Platform and its governance system.

Global Councils

Global decision-making units with general purpose, nested jurisdictional authority over and duties towards Platform-wide operational rules and systems, governance infrastructure, communication and information systems, Telcoin Network, the TEL token and Treasury, the Association Constitution and Council Election Authors.

• Platform Council (8 members: balanced representation)
  • Description: Global, general-purpose governance organization with authority over and duties towards platform-wide policies and, in cooperation with the Treasury Council, the TEL Token, TEL Treasury, the Association Constitution and Council Election Authors, governance infrastructure, and Telcoin Network.
• Treasury Council (4 members: balanced representation)
  • Description: Global governance organization with shared authority and duties towards voting for proposals involving the TEL Token, TEL Treasury, the Association Constitution and Council Election Authors, governance infrastructure, and Telcoin Network.

Local Councils

Local decision-making units with authority to determine, monitor, and enforce harvesting rules within networks and are responsible for providing for the construction and maintenance of network-level components.

• TAN Council (6 members: stakers and developers each select 2; liquidity miners and validators each select 1)
  • Description: Local governance organization with authority over and duties toward TAN operational rules, system health and social well-being.
• TELx Council (6 members: liquidity miners select 3; other miners each select 1)
  • Description: Local governance organization with authority over and duties towards TELx operational rules, system health and social well-being.

Special-purpose Councils

Councils that cross jurisdictions of the Platform to perform specialized functions.

• Compliance Council (4 members: balanced representation)
  • Description: Special-purpose, cross jurisdictional governance organization with authority to veto all Miner Council proposals, to authorize new participants into positions, compliance, legal, organizational, and conflict resolution policies and administration.

Telcoin Association: Legal Organizations

The Telcoin Association is a Swiss Verein domiciled in the Canton of Ticino in the City of Lugano, Switzerland, is the legal entity which enables and protects miners coming together to run the Telcoin Platform, legitimizes the community’s rights to organize and create, enforce their own rules for interacting with the Platform and each other with legal recognition and basis.

Telcoin Association Operations UAB (TAO) is the operational arm for the Telcoin Association. The TAO’s purpose is to be a producer and administrator of collective goods and services on behalf of the Telcoin Association at its direction and financing.

(5 members: Telcoin Holdings Pte. Ltd. selects all members in the first term)

• Overview: The TAO is a corporation that is financed by, and authorized to facilitate, construct, maintain, coordinate, and otherwise administrate a variety of collective goods and services on behalf of the Telcoin Association of Miners and Miner Councils.

• Purpose: The purpose of the Telcoin Association Operations UAB (TAO) is to be a special-purpose producer and administrator of collective goods and services on behalf and at the direction and financing of the Telcoin Association.

• Organization Type: Special-purpose production and administration unit.

• Authority

  Organization	Proposal Authority	Voting Authority	Approval Rate	Quorum Rate
  TAO	All Miner Council Snapshots	TAO Snapshot	4/5 super-majority	100%
  TAO	All Miner Group Snapshots	Validator Snapshot until a quorum of 10 validators is reached	Plurality	100%

• Duties: On behalf of the association, The TAO

  • Governance: Facilitates governance activities such as elections, including submitting election proposals and substituting for Miner Groups who fail to elect Council Members with a 20% quorum.
  • Monitoring and Enforcement: Monitors and enforces Council Rules according to the collective-choice rules and at the direction of the Compliance Council.
  • Agency, Coordination: Contracts and coordinates with third parties to implement proposals and maintain existing systems,
  • Development: Produces and maintains code including the initial development of Telcoin Network and the ongoing maintenance of various other network components as directed by the Association,
  • Administration: Takes on administrative and compliance tasks on behalf of the Association, and
  • Ecosystem Development: Drives ecosystem development internal and external within and to the association.

• Initial Membership

  • Parker Spann: Executive Director
  • Tim Mahota: Legal and Compliance Director
  • Rajesh Sabari: Ecosystem Development Director
  • Amir Shirif: Smart Contract Development Director
  • Grant Kee: Blockchain Development Director

Rationale: Why create the TAO?

The Telcoin Platform is governed and managed by four distinct types of miners operating through two legal structures, a Swiss Verein and a Lithuanian corporation.

The Telcoin Association is the legal entity with authority over governance and platform management activities that structure interactions with Telcoin Network, TELx and Telcoin Application Network (collectively the “Telcoin Platform”) and the flow of TEL it generates.

The Telcoin Association is a non-stock, nonprofit collective association of persons that come together through a legally-recognized entity called an association. Telcoin Association’s nonprofit mission is to use of blockchain technology to globally support financial inclusion and prosperity.

The TAO is meant to be a general-purpose operating entity that serves to carry out the directives of the Telcoin Association. Another way to look at it, is that the TAO is a producer of collective goods and services that is financed by, and authorized to facilitate, produce, administer on behalf of the Telcoin Association.

The TAO also serves to facilitate governance activities within the Telcoin Association and work with Miner Councils. Further, the TAO helps to drive Telcoin Platform ecosystem development internally with the community and externally with prospective miners. Some further examples of the efficiency and effectiveness provided by the TAO include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Social, Legal, Economic Scalability: It allows the Telcoin Platform, to operate at a larger scale and engage with service providers who require formal contracts – for example, it could establish a banking relationship to pay for certain service providers that do not accept crypto.
• Decentralization and Adoption: It encourages further decentralization of the Telcoin ecosystem because this entity, at the direction of the Telcoin Association, can leverage other teams to execute work that can further the adoption of the Telcoin Platform.
• Reduction of Risk: It also allows for a sustainable external organization and process for the Association to handle tax, accounting, legal, regulatory, and operational risk.
• Reduces Decision-making Costs: It reduces decision-making costs in governance by serving as the proposal author for all elections, substituting on behalf of Council Members who fail to vote in a timely manner and on behalf of Miner Groups who have yet to achieve a quorum, importantly, it represents the interests of Validators prior to the release and sufficient decentralization of Telcoin Network. The TAO is responsible for assisting prospective miners, council members and others in authorization processes with the Compliance Council. Additionally, the TAO reduces decision-making costs and increases minority representation through its empowered universal proposal authority in all governance module.
• Minority Representation: The TAO has universal proposal authority, and so it can submit proposals on behalf of individuals whose voices are not otherwise being represented by their Council Members.

Overall, the TAO is meant to effectively be a production unit that helps miners and Telcoin Association Miner Councils to implement proposals in terms of construction and maintenance, research and development, education, networking and other operational tasks as determined by the Assembly working through Miner Groups and their elected Miner Councils.

The Miner Councils provide funding to the TAO to either implement proposals itself or coordinate with external parties to implement and contract for services. TAO’s revenue to cover the above expenses comes primarily from periodic sales of TEL as directed by the Telcoin Association.

Association Rules

Formal rules (e.g. legal and platform rules) and norms (e.g. Association values) that shape interactions with the Telcoin Platform and govern social interactions between Telcoin stakeholders.

Rules: Introduction

There are three vertical levels of rule-ordered authority within the Telcoin governance system, including the operational, collective and constitutional-choice levels of analysis. The outcomes of choices made at higher levels of governance are rules that structure interactions at the lower levels.

Rules: Overview

• Operational Rules: The set of rules about everyday activities, directly involving the use of various resources related to the Telcoin Platform and day-to-day social interactions. These rules change frequently, and are determined, enforced by Miner Councils in collective-choice processes.
• Council Rules: Rules set used to change the operational-choice rules, including council member selection rules and miner council decision-making rules. These rules change at a slower pace, and are set in constitutional-choice processes by Miner Groups and the broader Miner Assembly.
• Constitutional Rules: Rules used to set the terms and conditions of governance, including the set of rules about how to change the collective-choice rules and about who occupies certain key positions at the collective-choice level. These rules change at the slowest pace, and are set and refined by the community based on their needs, viewpoints and traditions that determine what kinds of rules at the lower levels are seen and accepted as legitimate.
• Meta-Constitutional Rules (”Association Values”): Moral intuitions, social norms, and traditions that determine what kinds of rules at the lower levels are seen and accepted as legitimate. The Telcoin Association Constitution, adopted and ratified by the community in TGIP1, articulates a Mission, Vision, and set of Values to serve as a guidepost for the community to ethically order its behavior towards a common cause, vision for the future, and set of standards.

Constitutional-choice Rules

Overview

The set of processes used to set the terms and conditions of governance, such as collective-choice rules and certain positions at the choice level.

At the constitutional level of authority, the four Miner Groups may form a Miner Assembly and may alter any aspect of the governance system by passing an identical Telcoin Governance Improvement Proposal (TGIP). Independently, each Miner Group may alter their Council Member’s special duties and required attributes for participation using the Telcoin Representative Improvement Proposal (TRIP) process.

• Telcoin Governance System Improvement Proposal (TGIP): The process used by the Miner Assembly to alter any aspect of the Telcoin Platform governance system.
• Telcoin Representative Improvement Proposal (TRIP): The process used by Miner Groups to alter their Council Members’ special duties.

Constitutional-choice: Miner Groups, Eligibility Requirements, and Voting Rules

Voters	Eligibility Requirements	Voting Rules
Stakers	All registered Stakers on a Telcoin mobile app with a staked TEL balance at the time of the election or delegation proposal may vote.	Power: Staked TEL on TAN from Telcoin mobile app user wallets. Approval: 80%. Quorum: 20%. Duration: 7 days
Developers	All registered Developers with a staked TEL balance at the time of the election or delegation proposal may vote.	Power: Staked TEL on TAN from authorized Developer wallets. Approval: 80%. Quorum: 20%. Duration: 7 days
Liquidity Miners	Anyone with a staked TELx LPT position at the time of an election or delegation proposal may vote.	Power: Staked TELx LPTs containing TEL tokens. Approval: 80%. Quorum: 20%. Duration: 7 days
Validators	All registered Validators may vote if they have a staked TEL balance for validation and there are 10 or more authorized, block producing nodes on Telcoin Network, or else the TAO will vote on their behalf.	Power: Staked TEL from authorized Validator wallets. Approval: 80%. Quorum: 20%. Duration: 7 days

Constitutional-choice: Decision-making Processes and Rules

Decision-making Process	Authority	Proposal Rules	Voting Rules
Telcoin Governance Improvement Proposal (TGIP)	The Miner Assembly may use the TGIP process to alter any aspect of the Telcoin Platform governance system.	Individual miners with 2% of their Miner Group’s voting power and TAO members may submit TGIP proposals at any time.	All four Miner Groups, including Stakers, Developers, Liquidity Miners, and Validators, must affirm an identical TGIP proposal at the following rates: Approval: 80%. Quorum: 20%. Duration: 7 days
Telcoin Representative Improvement Proposal (TRIP)	Miner Groups may use the TRIP process to alter their Council Members’ special duties.	Individual miners with 2% of their Miner Group’s voting power and TAO members may submit TRIP proposals.	Individual Miner Groups(e.g. Stakers) must affirm a TRIP proposal at the following rates: Approval: 80%. Quorum: 20%. Duration: 7 days

Council Rules (Collective-choice)

Overview

The processes by which the operational rules structuring everyday activities with the Telcoin Platform and in social processes are set, enforced and refined.

Miner Groups select Council Members to represent their interests on Miner Councils, and Miner Councils participate in decision-making processes that set and refine the operational rules for interacting with the Telcoin Platform (e.g. TEL Harvesting Rules) and each other in social processes (e.g. Communication Rules).

Council Member Selection Rules

The rules that structure the processes by which Miner Groups elect Council Members to represent their interests on Miner Councils.

• Voting and Representation Rules: The set of rules which structure Miner Group participants, voting power, mechanisms, the number of Council Members, and the basis for representation on the Miner Councils.
• Elections: Annual ceremonies in which the Miner Groups elect all of their representatives to the Miner Councils.
• Liquid Delegations: Special election ceremonies which Miner Groups may use to replace their existing Council Member(s) at any time outside of a regular election window.

Miner Groups: Voting and Representation Rules

Voters	Eligibility Requirements	Voting Rules	Representation Rules
Stakers	All registered Stakers on a Telcoin mobile app with a staked TEL balance at the time of the election or delegation proposal may vote.	Power: Staked TEL on TAN from Telcoin mobile app user wallets. Approval: Plurality, the candidate(s) with the most votes win. Quorum: 20%. Duration: 7 days	Platform Council: 2. Treasury Council: 1. TAN Council: 2. TELx Council: 1. Compliance Council: 1
Developers	All registered Developers with a staked TEL balance at the time of the election or delegation proposal may vote.	• Power: Staked TEL on TAN from authorized Developers wallets. Approval: Plurality. Quorum: 20%. Duration: 7 days	Platform Council: 2. Treasury Council: 1. TAN Council: 2. TELx Council: 1. Compliance Council: 1
Liquidity Miners	Anyone with a staked TELx LPT position at the time of an election or delegation proposal may vote.	Power: Staked TELx LPTs containing TEL tokens. Approval: Plurality. Quorum: 20%. Duration: 7 days.	Platform Council: 2. Treasury Council: 1. TAN Council: 1. TELx Council: 3. Compliance Council: 1
Validators	All registered Validators may vote if they have a staked TEL balance for validation and there are 10 or more authorized, block producing nodes on Telcoin Network, or else the TAO will vote on their behalf.	Power: Staked TEL from authorized Validator vaults. Approval: Plurality. Quorum: 20%. Duration: 7 days	Platform Council: 2. Treasury Council: 1. TAN Council: 1. TELx Council: 1. Compliance Council: 1

Election Rules

Elections	Rules
Description	Annual ceremony in which all four Miner Groups elect all Council Members.
Frequency	Every 12 months
Duration	7 days
Nomination Rules	Candidates submit only one nomination application to the Telcoin forum at most 1 month and at least 24 hours prior to the election.
Proposal Rules	TAO Members must submit election proposals for every Miner Council to every Miner Group including all eligible candidates from the past month, or else the existing compliance council must revoke their NFTs and administer the election. In addition to the Miner Assembly, the Platform Council may alter how elections are coordinated and by who or what decentralized technology using the TIP process.
Voting Rules	All four Miner Groups elect all of their representatives into Council Members positions in five separate election proposals on each Group’s Snapshot.
Approval	Plurality, the candidate(s) with the most votes win.
Quorum	20%
Outcome	The candidates with the most votes win and are transferred Council Member governance NFTs, conferring them proposal, voting authority and a flow of TEL issuance. In the event a quorum is not reached on any given election proposal, the TAO will vote on behalf of the Miner Group until a quorum is met.

Liquid Delegation Rules

Delegations	Rules
Description	Special election ceremonies in which Miner Groups replace their existing Council Members with new representatives.
Frequency	Miners may submit liquid delegation proposals anytime outside of an election window.
Duration	7 days
Nomination Rules	Must submit a nomination application to the Telcoin forum at most 6 months and at least 24 hours prior to the proposal.
Proposal Rules	A miner with 2% of their Group’s voting power or a TAO member submits at least two candidates to the Miner Group’s snapshot: a replacement candidate(s) from the forum and the existing Council Member. In addition to the Miner Assembly, the Platform Council may alter how delegations are coordinated and by who or what decentralized technology using the TIP process.
Voting Rules	The Miner Group votes for the Council Member(s).
Approval	Plurality, the candidate(s) with the most votes win.
Quorum	20%
Outcome	The candidate with the most votes either retains or is transferred the Council Member governance NFT, conferring them proposal, voting authority and a flow of TEL issuance.

Miner Council Decision-making Rules

The processes used by Miner Councils to set the rules that structure day-to-day interactions within their domain of the Telcoin Platform and governance system.

• Telcoin Improvement Proposal (TIP): The process used by the Platform Council to set, enforce, and refine platform-wide social policies.
• TEL Improvement Proposal (TELIP): The process used by the Platform and Treasury Councils to set, enforce and refine the rules related to the TEL Token Contract and Treasury, Telcoin Network, and all other platform-wide social and legal policies.
• TELx Improvement Proposal (TELxIP): The process used by the TELx Council to govern TELx operational rules and improvements.
• TAN Improvement Proposal (TANIP): The process used by the TAN Council to make decisions related to TAN improvements and policies.
• Compliance Council Improvement Proposal (CCIP): The process used by the Compliance Council to veto Miner Council proposals, develop authorizations and conflict resolution procedures, and to authorize participants into positions of authority on the platform.

Council Decision Rules: Overview

Councils	Representation	Process, Domain of Authority	Decision-making Rules
Platform Council	Platform Council: Members: 8. Representation: Balanced across all four Miner Groups.	TIP: Platform-wide rules including communication and information, compliance, legal and organizational rules.	Proposal Authority: Platform, Treasury, Compliance Councils, TAO. Approval: 6 out of 8. Quorum: 100%. Duration: 120 hours. Channel: Snapshot
Platform Council, Treasury Council	Platform Council: Members: 8. Representation: Balanced across all four Miner Groups. Treasury Council: Members: 4. Representation: Balanced across all four Miner Groups.	TELIP: Platform-wide rules that involve the TEL Treasury, TEL token contract, Telcoin Network, the Telcoin Association Constitution and the Council Election Proposal Authors, and governance infrastructure.	1. Platform Council: Must approve before submitting to the Treasury Council Approval: 6 out of 8 Quorum: 100% Duration: 120 hours Channel: Snapshot 2. Treasury Council: Must vote after the Platform Council has affirmed. Approval: 4 out of 4 Quorum: 100% Duration: 72 hours Channel: Snapshot
TAN Council	TAN Council. Members: 6. Representation: Stakers: 2 reps Developers: 2 reps Liquidity Miners: 1 rep Validators: 1 rep	TANIP: TAN operational rules including allocation, harvesting, planning and financing, information, communication.	Proposal Authority: TAN Council, TAO Approval: 5 out of 6 Quorum: 100% Duration: 120 hours Channel: Snapshot
TELx Council	Members: 6 Representation: Stakers: 1 rep. Developers: 1 reps. Liquidity Miners: 3 reps. Validators: 1 rep	TELxIP: TELx operational rules including allocation, harvesting, planning and financing, information, communication.	Proposal Authority: TELx Council, TAO Approval: 5 out of 6 Quorum: 100% Duration: 120 hours Channel: Snapshot
Compliance Council	Members: 4. Representation: Balanced across all four Miner Groups.	CCIP: Veto authority over all Miner Council proposals. Compliance, Legal and Organizational, Conflict Resolution, Actor Authorizations	Proposal Authority: TAO, Compliance Council Approval: 3 out of 4 Quorum: 75% Duration: 72 hours Channel: Snapshot

Operational Rules

The set of rules that structure day-to-day human and technological interactions with the Telcoin Platform and between Association Miners. Set and enforced by Miner Councils in collective-choice processes.

TEL Harvesting Rules

The rules that define who may harvest, how much TEL, based on what formula, by what means, using what technology, and via what infrastructure.

• TEL Treasury: The TEL Treasury distributes issuance at a rate of 10% of the TEL in the Treasury per year, with 1B TEL distributed in year one, based on rules that are set by the Platform and Treasury Councils.
• TAN: Developers stake TEL, harvest from a flow of 166.66M TEL in year one at a rate of 3,205,128.205 TEL per week pro-rata share of their mobile application’s fees vs other Developers. Merchant and retail stakers each harvest 166.66M TEL in year one at a rate of 3,205,128.205 TEL based on their pro-rata share of their fees paid and their referred users’ fees paid vs other merchant or retail stakers each week. TAN Miners may harvest their accrued weekly issuance if their total staked TEL balance throughout the entire week is greater than their lifetime issuance earnings plus issuance income during the week. TAN rules are set and enforced by the TAN Council.
• TELx: Liquidity Miners produce DeFi markets, stake TELx LP tokens, and harvest from a flow of 200M TEL in year 1 on TELx, pro-rata based on their share of staked liquidity, according to rules according to rules that are set by the TELx Council.
• Telcoin Network: GSMA Operator Member, mobile network operators stake TEL for proof of stake consensus on Telcoin Network, manage a validator node, and harvest from a TEL allocation of 200M TEL in year one. They harvest TEL at a rate of 547,945.205 TEL per day, based on their pro-rata share of blocks secured to the blockchain. Telcoin Network harvesting rules are set, enforced, and refined by the Platform and Treasury Council using the TELIP process.
• Council Members: When they are elected, Council Members are transferred a Council NFT. In year one, a total TEL allocation of 30M distributes on a per block basis, at an annual rate of 909,090.909 TEL per member, to each Council NFT for members to harvest. Council Member TEL harvesting rules are set by the Platform and Treasury Councils using the TELIP process.
• TAO: An initial TEL airdrop of 20M TEL and an on-going stream of 50M TEL flows to the TAO in year one to finance its purposes. TAO harvesting rules are set by the Platform and Treasury Council using the TELIP process.

Eligibility and Authorization Rules

The required attributes and conditions for participants to enter, maintain, and exit various positions of authority within the Telcoin Platform governance system.

• Validators: All GSMA Operator Member MNOs using a GSM family technology who are approved by the Compliance Council through the CCIP process, stake TEL for proof-of-stake consensus and deploy, and manage a node on Telcoin Network may participate as Validators.
• Liquidity Miners: All users located in non-sanctioned jurisdictions who provide liquidity to TELx markets and stake their liquidity in TELx staking contracts, may participate as liquidity miners, harvest TEL rewards, propose and vote in Telcoin Platform governance.
• Application Developers: All GSMA members located in non-sanctioned jurisdictions who are approved by the Compliance Council through the CCIP process, stake TEL on TAN, and deploy a compliant Telcoin mobile application may participate as a Developer, harvest TEL rewards from TAN staking contracts, propose and vote with their Miner Group in Telcoin Platform governance.
• Stakers: All Telcoin mobile application customers who enter another user’s referral code and stake TEL on TAN may participate as Stakers, harvest TEL rewards from TAN staking contracts, propose and vote with their Miner Group in Telcoin Platform governance.
• Council Members: All miners who are elected by their Miner Group and possess a governance NFT may participate as Council Members. All Council Members must complete KYC/AML with the Compliance Council and/or the TAO within 30 days of their election, or else their NFT will be revoked by the TAO who will then substitute vote for the Miner Group until a new Council Member is elected.

Maintenance and Construction Rules

The rules that define who is responsible for providing, constructing and maintaining Telcoin Platform infrastructure.

• Platform-wide: The Platform and Treasury Councils possess shared authority over Platform-wide construction and maintenance rules and are responsible for planning and financing those improvements. The TAO is responsible for maintaining Platform-wide systems.
• TAN: The TAN Council possesses authority over TAN construction and maintenance rules and is responsible for planning and financing those improvements. The TAO is responsible for maintaining TAN network infrastructure.
• TELx: The TELx Council possesses authority over TELx construction and maintenance rules and is responsible for planning and financing those improvements. The TAO is responsible for maintaining TELx network infrastructure.
• Telcoin Network: The TAO possesses authority over Telcoin Network construction rules and is responsible for planning, financing and physically constructing and maintaining the system. After the main network is live with 10 Validators, authority and duties will transfer to the Platform and Treasury Councils.

Communication and Information Rules

The rules that define how, what, where and when actors may and must communicate and share information.

• Community Updates and Meetings: All Miner Councils must schedule recurring meetings every two weeks with the community to provide updates, interview and debate proposal authors, and answer questions from the community related to their domain. Meetings take place in the Recurring Council Meetings channel on the Telcoin Association Discord.
• Communication and information Channels: Rules related to the Telcoin Association Discord and websites.
• Control, Monitoring, and Enforcement: Rules that structure authority, monitoring and enforcement activities related to communication and information rules.

Conflict Resolution Rules

The rules that structure how conflicts are resolved and disputes are mediated. The Compliance Council is responsible for creating and administering a robust, low-cost conflict resolution system for the Telcoin Association.

Telcoin Governance is a Common Property Regime

Background

The concept of user-ownership is at the core of the Telcoin community’s shared mission, vision, and values; user-ownership is embedded in the DNA of the platform as code and within the governance system as a set of rules that structure ownership over the Telcoin Platform and the benefits it produces.

But what does user-ownership mean and why is it important?

Although property is sometimes treated as an all-or-nothing concept, ownership and control over resources comes in shades and degrees.

A resulting product of the underlying rules-in-use and material attributes of a particular domain or “thing”, property rights systems vary based on the levels of ownership held by involved actors in relation to some thing, ranging from: the ability to access the system, withdraw benefits from it, manage system improvements and use patterns, determine who may participate in the aforementioned rights and fence off outsiders (exclusion), and the ability to sell, lease, bequeath or otherwise transfer the aforementioned rights (alienation).

By understanding the levels of ownership held by involved actors over various goods and services, we can infer, to what degree, users can obtain ownership over a system and what type of property rights system exists. Applying this framework, the proceeding section classifies the Telcoin Platform property regime.

• Definitional Clarity

  • Property Rights: A property right is an enforceable authority to undertake particular actions in a specific domain. Property rights define actions that individuals can take in relation to other individuals regarding some ‘thing’ (ie a good or service). Property rights are not rules. Instead, property rights, and property rights systems, are the product of the rules-in-use and define relations among people in relation to things, and specify both duties and obligations.

  • Nature of Property Rights: Property rights refer to social institutions, and not to any inherent natural or physical qualities of the resource.

  • Privateness of a Property right: The privateness of a right refers to the clarity, security, and especially the exclusivity of the right over some “thing”.

    A fully private right:

    • Clarity: Clearly specifies what the rights-holder is entitled to do,
    • Security: Is secure so that the holder of the right is protected from confiscation by others.
    • Exclusivity: Is exclusively vested in the holder of the right and definitely not in non-holders of the right.
    • Intact: They should comprise an intact bundle of rights, so the holder of use rights also holds the right to change the way the resource is used, even to destroy it, as well as rights of alienation through sale or bequeathal (Schlager and Ostrom, 1992, 1993).

  • Distinguishing between property rights and property rights holders (e.g. owners): It is important to note here that the privateness of a right has to do with the right, and not the entity holding it; there is no requirement that this entity be a single individual.”

  • Property Rights Holders: We can view rights-holders as the individuals or entities (“bodies”) who possess property rights or “ownership” related to a system and the flow of benefits it generates.

  • Property Rights Systems or Property Regimes: System of interrelated rights as defined by legal and institutional context: public, private, common-property, open-access.

    • Public Property Regimes: Bundles of rights held by official agents of some unit of government.
    • Private Property Systems: Bundles of rights held by and exchanged among individuals or legally recognized corporate entities; typically including full rights of alienation.
    • Common (or communal) Property Systems: Bundles of rights held, defined, and exchanged by some communal entity as a whole.
    • Open-access Regimes: No effective restrictions on use of resources.

Introduction

Unlike a private property rights system, such as a corporation, a public property regime like a government, or open-access systems in which no governance arrangements exist, the Telcoin Platform governance system is a common property rights regime in which four distinct types of miners, as individuals and participating as part of a communal entity, share in common ownership over the Telcoin Platform and the flows of benefits it generates.

Telcoin Governance: a Common Property Rights System

The primary consumers and producers of Telcoin Platform products and services, and appropriators of TEL issuance and fees, the Miners (which includes Stakers, Developers, Liquidity Miners, and Validators), have formed a communal, legal entity (The Telcoin Association) to govern the rules that structure individual and shared private property rights over the Telcoin Platform to individual miners and collective organizations stationed across productive zones of the system.

Identifying Ownership and Owners over the Telcoin Platform: Overview

Individual miners share private property rights to access the Platform and consume, enjoy its blockchain goods and services and the right to withdraw TEL from the Telcoin Platform based on their efforts and abilities according to Association Rules. Miners, participating as individuals within collectivities, share in the collective choice rights to manage the system and regulate internal use patterns, and the right to determine who may participate in management, withdrawal and access.

• Individual, Private Property Rights
  • Access: The right to access the platform and consume its services. Miners are a natural consumer of resources produced by their domain of the system and the subsidiary infrastructure levels.
  • Withdrawal Rights: The right to withdraw TEL from the system. Individual miners use TEL as a material input in production processes and perform labor to harvest TEL from the platform and fees based on their efforts, abilities, and consumer demand.
• Collective-choice, Property Rights
  • Management Rights: The right to manage the system in terms of providing infrastructure and regulating TEL use patterns. Miners, as individuals within Miner Groups and the overall the Miner Assembly, and as Council Members on Miner Councils, possess the collective-choice right to transform the platform by making improvements and regulate internal use patterns by allocating the flow of TEL issuance.
  • Exclusion Rights: The right to participate in determining who may or may not participate in the proceeding rights or exclusion. Miners, as individuals within Miner Groups and the overall the Miner Assembly, and as Council Members on Miner Councils, possess the collective-choice right and duty to determine who may participate in appropriation (harvesting) and management.
• Non-Right
  • Alienation Rights: The right to sell collective-choice rights of exclusion or management. No one possesses full alienation rights over the shared stock or facility (the Telcoin Platform) and the flow of benefits it generates as management and exclusion rights cannot be sold to others.

Classifying the Telcoin Platform Property System

Given this bundle of rights is held and defined by the community of miners as a whole, the Telcoin property rights system is a common property regime. The following section defines the four types of property regimes and then compares those ownership models with the Telcoin Platform governance system and its common property system of ownership.

• Common Property Regime: Bundles of rights held, defined, and exchanged by some communal entity as a whole, such as in the case of the Telcoin Platform governance system. Groups of individuals are considered to share communal property rights when they have formed an organization that exercises at least the collective-choice rights of management and exclusion in relationship to some defined resource system and the resource units produced by that system. In other words, all communal groups have established some means of governing themselves in relationship to a resource.
  • Examples: The Telcoin Platform governance system, agricultural associations in the Swiss Alps, Angling Associations in Germany, Ethereum and Bitcoin governance.

Defining and Distinguishing Between Other Ownership Systems

• Public Property Systems: Bundles of rights held by official agents of some unit of government. A rights system in which a body which represents the general public, such as a government, possesses full property rights over some domain, making it available to the general public for joint use and consumption.
  • Example: A state government with ownership over a state park.
  • Compared to Telcoin: The Telcoin Platform is governed bottom-up by a community of miners rather than top-down by a governmental entity.
• Private Property Systems: Bundles of rights held by and exchanged among individuals or legally recognized corporate entities; typically including full rights of alienation. An individual or entity is considered to possess full private property rights when those rights are clear, secure, exclusive to the holder, and comprise a full bundle of rights including full alienation rights over the productive stock of the system and flow of revenue produced by it.
  • Examples: The modern joint stock equity company (henceforth a “Corporation”), involves a complex development of private property.
    • Collectively, the owners of a corporate stock possess the three rights listed above, but they delegate these rights to “The Corporation” and can exercise them only indirectly.
    • In normal circumstances, the rights of use, sale, and proceeds are not exercised by individual stock holders, but by corporate employees.
    • These employees, although they may own Corporate stock, exercise property rights on behalf of the corporation not as stockholders but as officers or employees.
    • In particular, while they are authorized to sell Corporate property, they do so only on behalf of the Corporation and have no right as individuals to the proceeds of the sale. These belong to the corporation and ultimately to the stock holders.
    • The stockholders participate in this arrangement in the hopes that they will receive benefits from the corporation.
    • These benefits are, almost universally, in cash, not in kind.
      • Example: Owners of GM stock do not receive their dividends in autos and spare parts, and may not even buy the products of the company.
  • Compared to Telcoin: By contrast, the owners in common property system, such as in Telcoin Platform governance, typically own the “source” and the “flow” in different senses.
    • They jointly “own” the common pool resource (“CPR”.)
      • That is they jointly possess the right to use it, and to determine who else may use it and in what way.
    • But, they individually own what they harvest from the CPR.
      • Each individual acquires the rights of use, transfer, and proceeds to whatever he takes from the CPR following sanctioned procedures.
    • While corporate owners typically employee others to exercise their property rights and produce a stream of cash benefits for them, commoners typically use their common property to produce benefits for themselves in kind.
    • Even in cases in which commoners employ others to exercise their rights to the commons, the individual commoners manage the appropriate process, contribute resources that are vital to it, and receive an individual stream of benefits in kind. They act, one might say, more like entrepreneurs than like corporate shareholders.
    • Unlike Corporate Property, where full rights of alienation exist and can be exercised, as an example, by trading the company’s stock, no actors or bodies on Telcoin possess full ownership rights of alienation over any component of the common system.
• Open-Access Systems: No effective management exists over the resource.
  • Examples: The open seas and atmosphere are two classical examples where open-access or “non-property” regimes exist.
  • Compared to Telcoin: The Telcoin governance system inclused collective-choice processes to devise who may withdraw how many TEL from the Platform; whereas no such arrangement exists in an open-access property system (or non-property).

TGIP1: Process, Outcomes and Implementation Plan

TGIP1: Overview

Parker Spann will submit the formal TGIP1 proposal to the Council of Rivendell snapshot channel on the Winter Solstice for TEL users to vote and approve (or reject) the new system democratically and ratify the Telcoin Association cryptographically. The decision-making rules for TGIP1 are as follows:

TGIP1: Where and When

• Voting Channel: Snapshot
• Proposal Date: Thursday, Dec 21, 2023 at 9:27 PM CST
• Voting Ends: Thursday, Dec 28, 2023 at 9:27 PM CST

TGIP1: Voter Eligibility and Authority Rules

All TEL holders on Ethereum and Polygon, TELx liquidity miners, Telcoin mobile app TEL holders and stakers may vote on TGIP1, subject to the following conditions.

• Telcoin App Users: All Telcoin mobile application users with staked or unstaked TEL delegated to an external, snapshot-compatible wallet (e.g. MetaMask) at the time of the proposal’s creation may vote. Their voting power is based on their pro-rata share of the total TEL voting power exercised in TGIP1.
• TEL Holders (Non-Telcoin Wallets): All Ethereum and Polygon TEL holders using a snapshot-compatible, Ethereum wallet with a TEL balance at the time of the proposal may vote. Their voting power is based on their pro-rata share of the total TEL voting power exercised in TGIP1.
• TELx Liquidity Miners: All TELx liquidity miners may vote on the proposal based on the total TEL value of their TELx liquidity positions pro-rata relative to the total TEL voting power exercised in TGIP1.
  • Example: A liquidity miner has a position in an 80/20 TEL/X pool, their 80% TEL position is added to the TEL equivalent of their 20% contribution and their voting weight is proportionate the total voting power exercised in the proposal.
  • Note: TEL/DFX/USDC LPTs must not be staked at the time of the vote, or else those positions will not count towards the vote.

TGIP1: Decision-making Rules

• Approval Rate: Simple Majority
• Quorum Threshold: None required
• Duration: 7 days

TGIP1: How to Vote

For a comprehensive explanation on how to vote in TGIP1, head to:

• Medium: How to Vote on Telcoin Governance Improvement Proposal 1 | Medium
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1cSQpcvEVU&t=6s

TGIP1: Outcomes

TGIP1: Approved

• Telcoin Association Constituted: The Telcoin community successfully ratifies the Telcoin Association Constitution.
• New Systems Approved: The Telcoin community formally consents to the new Telcoin Platform and governance systems described here and on the Telcoin Association website.
• Telcoin Holdings Role: The approval of this proposal will authorize Telcoin Holdings into the position of Application Developer, de-concentrating the firm’s status and role from primary decision-maker over Telcoin Platform improvements and the allocation of the TEL token and its extractable inventory, to one out of any unlimited number of participants in one out of four Miner positions. Application Developers are one of the four types of Miners (“Miner Groups”) who collectively share equal power, control over, within and duties towards the Telcoin Platform and its governance system.
• TEL Transfers: The following TEL transfers will be made from the TEL Treasury to the TAO Safe Wallet to finance the code audit and Telcoin Network block explorer. After the code is fully audited, the TAO will commence issuance distribution and miners will begin harvesting TEL based on the rules set here and throughout the Telcoin Association website.
  • Code Audit: 10,000,000 TEL
    • Description: The TAO will pay and coordinate with Sherlock to audit the Telcoin Platform and governance code described in this proposal prior to adoption by miners.
  • Telcoin Network Block Explorer: 30,000,000 TEL
    • Description: The TAO will pay and coordinate with third-party vendors to host a secure Telcoin Network Block Explorer.
• Platform Adoption: The four miner groups begin producing the Telcoin Platform using the new systems and harvest TEL according to Association rules.
• Self-Organization: The four Miner Groups self-organize the Association by nominating themselves and electing Council Members to each of the five Miner Councils in the inaugural ceremony.
• Implementation Plan: The Telcoin Platform and governance system implementation plan will commence (described below).

TGIP1: Rejected

The status quo remains. Telcoin Holdings will first review, contest, deliberate feedback with the community, and, if necessary, incorporate feedback from the community and submit a new TGIP1 proposal.

If after numerous votes consensus is still not achieved, Telcoin Holdings will fork to a new Telcoin Platform technological, governance system, and TEL token, through either one of the following processes or another at our discretion:

• Redemption: 1:1 TEL redemption rate for the new TEL token over a fixed time period.
• Airdrop: 1:1 TEL airdrop for the new TEL token to the community of consenting voters from the most recent proposal.

TGIP1 Implementation Plan: Telcoin Platform and Governance System

The process of decentralizing the Telcoin Platform and its governance system from Telcoin Holdings Pte Ltd to the Telcoin community via the ratification and self-organization of the Telcoin Association spans from the release of the Association website through the end of the first Miner Council election and finally, upon the migration of TAN and TELx from Polygon to Telcoin Network.

Review the following decentralization process for a timeline and milestones at each step:

1. TGIP1 Informal Proposal
   1. Forum Proposal: Telcoin Holdings submits the forum TGIP1 proposal for the community to review the new system, provide comments, and prepare their TEL to vote in the formal snapshot vote.
   2. Date: Friday, December 16th, 2023
2. TGIP1 Formal Proposal
   1. Snapshot Proposal and Vote: The formal governance proposal is submitted to the Council of Rivendell snapshot for TEL voters to approve the new system democratically and ratify the Telcoin Association cryptographically.
   2. Date: Thursday, Dec 21st, 2023 at 9:27 PM CST
3. Initial TEL Distribution
   1. Genesis Wallet Transfers: The following TEL allocations will be distributed from the Genesis wallet to the TAO to finance the code audit and the block explorer.
      1. Code Audit: 10,000,000 TEL
      2. Block Explorer: 30,000,000 TEL
4. Council Nominations Commence
   1. Nominations: Individuals may begin submitting their nomination applications to the Telcoin forum to be considered in the first election.
   2. Date: Thursday, Dec 28, 2023 at 9:27 PM CST
5. Telcoin Platform Code Audit
   1. Code Audit: The TAO finances and coordinates with the service provider to complete a full audit of the code.
   2. Date: 5-10 days after TGIP is approved. ~Jan 2-7, 2024.
      1. Service Provider: Sherlock
      2. Costs: 22,500 USDC
         1. Contest Rewards: 18,000 USDC
         2. Sherlock Fee: 2,500 USDC
      3. Lines of Code: 445
      4. Duration: ~21 days
6. TEL Issuance and Harvesting Commences
   1. Economic Decentralization, Miners Begin Harvesting TEL: The TAO will distribute TEL from the TEL Treasury and the network inventory systems, and will initiate the TEL distribution and extraction mechanisms to generate TEL issuance across the Telcoin Platform for miners to harvest. Miners stake TEL to participate in the new system, harvest TEL based on their share of production according to Association rules, and may vote for Council Members in the next election.
   2. Date: ~ Jan 23-28, 2024, after the code audit is completed.
7. First Election Commences
   1. Election: The TAO will submit Council Election proposals for each of the five Miner Councils to the four Miner Group snapshots for elections voting.
   2. Date: ~Feb 8-15th
   3. Duration: 7 days
8. Telcoin Association Self-Organized and Operational
   1. Initial Decentralization Process Complete: After Council Members are elected, Telcoin Platform governance will be Constituted, operational, and decentralized to the Telcoin Association, the Telcoin Platform will be operational with each Miner Group capable of participating, harvesting TEL, and representing their distinct interests in governance decisions. Miner Councils will set and enforce operational rules and fulfill operational duties according to their role and station.
   2. Date: ~Feb 15-22
9. Telcoin Network Development: Test Network, Early Adoption Phase
   1. Initial Network Development and Participation: Telcoin Network is under ongoing development towards its main network release, constructed and governed by the TAO, and Validators begin participating in an incentivized test net.
   2. Dates
      1. Beta Testnet: 2024 Q1
      2. Alpha Mainnet: 2024 Q2
10. Telcoin Main Network Live
    1. Telcoin Network Governance Transferred to Councils: After the main Telcoin Network is launched with 10 validators securing the system, authority over network rules, such as providing system updates and altering TEL harvesting rules will transfer from the TAO to the Platform and Treasury Councils, who will use the TELIP process to make decisions.
    2. Date: As this milestone depends on Validator adoption by MNOs, the timeline cannot be practically estimated at this time. At the earliest, we would estimate a target date around 2024 Q3 or later.
11. Telcoin Platform Migration
    1. Migration to Telcoin Network: After the system is operational and there are sufficient protocols and utilities to service the Platform’s use cases (e.g. DeFi protocols) TAN and TELx will migrate from Polygon to Telcoin Network.
    2. Date: As this milestone depends on Validator adoption by MNOs, the timeline cannot be practically estimated at this time. At the earliest, we would estimate a target date around 2024 Q4 or later.

Disclaimer: All dates are rough estimations subject to change based on the actions of individuals and collective organizations within the Telcoin Association, the conditions of the Telcoin Platform, and any number of events that unfold over time.

Risk Management

The risk management approach adopted is structured to systematically identify and mitigate potential risks associated with Web3 and blockchain services. This approach utilizes the OWASP Risk Rating Methodology, a recognized industry-standard framework, ensuring comprehensive and effective risk management. The alignment with this methodology is reflected in the following sections:

• Risk Identification: This initial step involves the identification of specific risks that the project may encounter, such as security vulnerabilities, challenges in regulatory compliance, and operational disruptions. This aligns with the OWASP methodology’s emphasis on understanding and pinpointing distinct risks in software and web applications.
• Risk Impact Assessment: The potential impact of each identified risk is assessed, categorized as high, medium, or low. Understanding the impact is critical in prioritizing response strategies, a crucial element in the OWASP framework that stresses the evaluation of risk severity.
• Likelihood of Occurrence Evaluation: The probability of each risk occurring is estimated, facilitating effective resource allocation for risk mitigation. This step is in line with the OWASP methodology, which underscores the importance of evaluating risk probability.
• Mitigation Strategies Development: Specific actions or strategies are outlined to mitigate or manage each identified risk, encompassing technological solutions, policy changes, or user education. This reflects OWASP’s comprehensive approach to addressing software and web application security risks.
• Assignment of Responsible Party: Responsibility for each risk is assigned to designated teams or individuals, ensuring focused and efficient risk management. This practice resonates with OWASP’s recommendations for continuous monitoring and management of security risks.

Through this structured approach, the project ensures that all potential risks are systematically managed. This reduces the likelihood of security breaches and operational issues, enhancing the overall reliability and security of the provided services. The following list is not exhaustive, and is meant to serve as a starting point for the community to further develop.

Risk Identification	Description	Impact	Likelihood	Mitigation Strategies	Responsible Parties
Smart Contract Vulnerabilities	Flaws in smart contract code can lead to security breaches or loss of funds. Financial losses, reputation damage, and legal liabilities.	Medium	Low	Conduct thorough code reviews, perform an audit for any major changes or updates, and regularly update and patch libraries such as OpenZeppelin. Use established best practices for smart contract development	Councils Monitor systems, the Compliance Council takes legal action if necessary, and Councils instruct the TAO where applicable.
Security Vulnerabilities in SaaS Platforms and Wallet Integrations	Flaws in code can lead to security breaches or loss of funds. Financial losses, reputation damage, and legal liabilities.	High	Medium	Ensure the SaaS platform undergoes regular penetration testing and adheres to best security practices. Implement robust wallet integration security measures. Educate users on the risks of signing suspicious contracts.	Developers are responsible for the security of their applications. The Compliance Council and TAO are required to review and authorize Developers into their role based on their systems, policies, and procedures, and to monitor and enforce application requirements upon Developers
Regulatory Non-Compliance	Changing or unclear regulations around blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and the surrounding regulatory environment globally.	Medium	Medium	Regularly update compliance protocols; conduct compliance audits; review ongoing regulatory requirements. Stay informed on regulatory changes, engage with legal experts, and adapt practices to comply with local laws.	Compliance Council possesses veto authority over all Council proposals, which it may exercise based on its interpretation of laws, Association rules, and values. The Platform and Compliance Councils may propose and enforce compliance policies using the TIP process. The Compliance Council is required to authorize Council Members, Developers, Validators, and third party services providers using KYC/AML technologies and processes in order for them to participate. Developers are required to employ KYC/AML systems and processes on their users and mobile apps. They must demonstrate this compliance prior to authorization into the role, and the Compliance Council will monitor their activities over time and impose sanctions if necessary.
Regulatory Enforcement Actions	Regulatory and subsequent enforcement actions against the Telcoin Association in the event that it deems a violation of law.	Medium	Medium	The Compliance Council represents the Association.	The Compliance Council is responsible for representing the Telcoin Association and its members in administrative and judicial proceedings.
Scalability Issues	Limited transaction throughput can lead to network congestion and high transaction fees. Reduced usability, lower user adoption, and potential loss of competitive edge.	Medium	Medium	Telcoin Network is designed with scalability in mind through an efficient approach to consensus. Telcoin Network Validators are exclusively GSMA MNOs with robust network infrastructure and commercial grade compute power.	Upon the release of the Telcoin Network main network, the Platform and Treasury Councils will possess authority over and duties towards Telcoin Network protocol and Association rules.
Key Management and Loss	Loss or theft of private keys leading to irreversible loss of assets. Validators that lose keys may need to leave the network.	High	Medium	Implement robust key management protocols, use multi-signature wallets, and educate users on security best practices.	All Telcoin blockchain platform users are responsible for securing their private keys.
Interoperability Challenges	Difficulty in achieving seamless interaction with other blockchain networks. Limited functionality, hindering growth and user experience.	Medium	High	Utilize cross-chain protocols, participate in blockchain standardization efforts, and collaborate with other projects for interoperability solutions. Engage with the community for open-source solutions to provide interoperability on multiple chains.	The TAO is authorized and responsible for constructing bridges prior to the release of main net. Authority and duties transition to the Platform and Treasury Councils upon a main network.
Environmental Impact	High energy consumption of certain consensus mechanisms, leading to environmental concerns. Public criticism, regulatory scrutiny, and potential shifts in user preference.	Low	Low	Implement state-of-the-art Proof-of-Stake consensus in a efficient coding language (Rust). The protocol doesn’t require specialized hardware for consensus.	The Compliance Council monitors laws, other Councils monitor system conditions and outcomes.
TEL Exhaustion	The extractable supply of TEL units is exhausted.	Medium	Low	Miner Councils craft allocation and harvesting policies to temper their extraction of TEL in order to sustain the resource. Telcoin Network regenerates a portion of all TEL fees each block to the TEL Treasury.	Miner Councils set harvest rates for TEL issuance from the TEL treasury.
Lack of Adoption	MNOs and other Miners fail to meaningfully adopt the system.	Medium	Medium	Miner Councils craft rules to ensure rules are tailored to incentivize miner participation, and the TAO and others drive ecosystem development on behalf of the Association.Stakers (and other users and miners) drive adoption of the Telcoin Platform as infrastructure.	Miner Councils monitor participation and adapt the rules to drive adoption.
Governance System Capture	A hostile takeover of the Telcoin Platform governance system.	High	Low	Establish a governance system with a strong foundation based on community participation, transparency, accountability, and local autonomy. All Four Miner Groups must consent to any changes to the governance system with 80% approval and 20% quorum.	Four Miner Groups, each with rules concerning who may participate, elect Council Members to five Miner Councils who make system decisions.
Telcoin Network Protocol Rules Violated	MNOs and other miners fail to operate nodes in accordance with Telcoin Network Protocol	High	Low	TN Protocol enforces rules during consensus through executing blocks. A majority of nodes would need to coordinate maliciously before the protocol became susceptible.	TAO is required to approve changes to the protocol prior to mainnet going live. Afterwards, authority and duties transfer to Global Councils.
Council Rules Breached	Council Members fail to vote, violate other Council Rules such as failing to uphold duties, or Miner Groups do not achieve a quorum	High	Low	The TAO substitutes on behalf of Miner Groups in Council positions when they fail to achieve a quorum, monitors to ensure rules are followed and if a Council Member violates a rule, the Compliance Council may instruct the TAO to revoke their NFT and substitute.	The Compliance Council and the TAO are responsible for monitoring and enforcing council rules, while Miner Groups select and remove Council Members in election and liquid delegation processes, adding an extra layer of accountability.
Operational Rules Violated	TEL harvesting, communication, information or other day to day rules are breached. For instance, if TELx staking contracts do not work according to the harvesting rules.	Medium	Medium	Councils are required to monitor system and social interactions for rules compliance. The Compliance Council instructs the TAO to fix system issues and resolves, for example, hacks to smart contracts, through legal or other means where necessary.	Councils monitor rules compliance and the Compliance Council either resolves the situation through legal means or directs the TAO to take enforcement actions with the system.
Conflicts between Actors	Disputes arise between miners, elected officials and all combinations within the Association.	Low	High	The Compliance Council is required to develop and administer a low-cost, easy to access conflict resolution mechanism for the community.	The Compliance Council is responsible for mediating disputes between actors.

Conclusion

This proposal encapsulates the mechanics, actors, and governance structures of the Telcoin Platform, rooted in proven frameworks from the traditional world, including Elinor Ostrom’s design principles and the IAD and SES frameworks. These foundations guide our model towards democratic governance, rule adherence, and structured decentralization, crucial in the blockchain context. Recognizing the dynamic nature of this field, we acknowledge the need for ongoing refinement and research.

Our vision is a governance system that evolves with the platform, embodying sustainability, equitability, and resilience. This system will be finely tuned to the technological intricacies and the collective ethos of the Telcoin ecosystem. We believe in the power of continuous engagement, real-world trials, and iterative feedback to build a governance model that aligns with these principles and meets the modern demands of blockchain-based, common-pool resource management.

The Telcoin Platform is poised to create a groundbreaking blockchain network and token standard for the telecommunications industry. Coordinated around mobile network operators, the GSMA, and their subscribers, it aims to establish a global, alternative financial system and a trusted web3 marketplace for digital goods and decentralized services, accessible to every mobile phone user worldwide.

The proposed governance structure is crafted to empower a community-driven approach, where decision-making and responsibilities are vested in the hands of those involved in the production of the platform, are impacted by its outcomes, and ultimately drive its growth and usage by adopting it as infrastructure. With this proposal’s implementation, Telcoin Holdings will transition into an Application Developer role, stepping back from primary decision-making to embrace a more community-focused governance model.

We envision the Telcoin Association as a vibrant, self-governing community, jointly owning and actively shaping the Telcoin Platform’s future. This shared ownership and participation model is the cornerstone of our strategy for a sustainable and prosperous ecosystem.

The immediate next step is the community voting on the TGIP1 proposal, scheduled for next Thursday, December 21st. This marks a significant milestone in our journey towards comprehensive decentralization, setting the stage for a governance model that is as innovative and dynamic as the Telcoin Platform itself.

Disclaimer

The Telcoin Association and its affiliates not providing any advice or recommendation to you on how to vote or otherwise. Seek professional guidance if you are unsure as to what to do in light of this communication. This communication is only for informational purposes only, and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy securities or other service or product. The terms of the Telcoin Association constitution control as to Telcoin Association’s governance and actions. There is no guarantee of success or positive return. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The Telcoin logo and word mark are trademarks of Telcoin Pte. Ltd., and are used herein pursuant to license.

[Coty]

#Telfam, this is just the start! Huge shoutout to the entire Telcoin team—what a wild ride! Let’s prove there’s a better, smarter way to send money. Telcoin!.

@parkerspann

[CryptoSteveO]

Congratulations to @parkerspann and the entire Telcoin team for this monumental step forward!

There is a bunch of us really looking forward to participating and spreading the word.

[dreamingawake09]

Super excited for the future of Telcoin! Congrats to the entire team for this achievement!

[HodlerVaughn]

Some thoughts on the Constitution:

The vote on December 21-28 will be decided on a Simple Majority. However, Article 4.1.c.xii suggests that decisions are made on super majority (75%+). While this article is pending ratification of the constitution, it might be useful to clarify or align.

Note: article 4 and article 25 define super majority as 75%+, whereas Article 14 and article 30 defines it as 80%+. It may be necessary to align. NB the use of “i.e.” in these articles should be avoided, and an explicit quantity be stated.

The constitution preamble refers to “certain Miners” as coming together to form the Association. However it is not clear who these “certain Miners” are or what are the criteria to be part of these “certain Miners”. To avoid ambiguity it is necessary to explicitly define these “certain Miners” and the qualifying criteria.

Based on the Dec 21-28 voting eligibility, it appears that self-custody of TEL is a criterion for voting. However this is not explicit in the constitution (see Article 14). It also seems contradictory that any self-custody is acceptable. In the spirit of growing the Telcoin project, it seems prudent to limit “membership”, or voting rights to self-custody on the Telcoin Platform.

On Article 16, the implication is that these figures will be made available to members so that they’d know if they qualify to make proposals; is this the case? To note: clarity is required concerning instances where several members - individually holding less than 2%, but collectively hold more than 2% - and wish to make proposals? Perhaps Article 16 should also permit councils to make such proposals.

Section VI. To whom and how is the Board held accountable? It may be necessary to require all councils to have a minimum participation expectation for each council/board member. For example, they may be expected to participate in 75% of meetings, and do x work allocated etc. Key is ensuring that they deliver on the work.

Article 30. I strongly recommend that the dissolution should not be a simple process. Member Groups should make recommendation to dissolve, but such a decision should be ratified by a Special General Assembly.

What does TELIP mean in Article 30? All abbreviations should be explained in the introduction section of the constitution.

It might be necessary to clearly and explicitly state how power is separated between Telcoin Association and Telcoin Holdings.

[TellaNevaSella]

The future of finance is here.

Awesome work team, we really appreciate all you do!

Very very exciting times ahead.

[Andrew_Pinch]

Wow… just read through all 20,000+ words, and I can tell there was a lot of effort and thought that went into this initial proposal to establish the Telcoin Platform and Association.

Congrats to the team on this impressive milestone!!

Looking forward to what the next chapter has in store for Telcoin!!

[peteinthepocket]

Wow @parkerspann & team, all I can say is epic!!!

[HodlerVaughn]

Worth reading each and every word.

[Andrew_Pinch]

Agreed! Totally worth investing the time to read and fully understand how each individual can utilize and benefit from what the Telcoin team is building!

[parkerspann]

Hi @HodlerVaughn !

Thank you for your feedback. I greatly appreciate your attention to detail and questions as we work towards the (lifelong) endeavor of ultimately “getting things right.”

Please find responses to your (fantastic) questions below:

Question 1: The vote on December 21-28 will be decided on a Simple Majority. However, Article 4.1.c.xii suggests that decisions are made on super majority (75%+). While this article is pending ratification of the constitution, it might be useful to clarify or align.

Response 1: Within the Telcoin Association Constitution, the rules stipulate a super-majority is required to make changes. However, TGIP1 is a special, one-time proposal process used by the community to adopt these decision-making rules and to then operate within those rules once the Association is constituted.

Question 2: Article 4 and article 25 define super-majority as 75%+, whereas Article 14 and article 30 defines it as 80%+.

Response 2: Super-majority is anything between a simple-majority and unanimous consent. Super-majority can differ in contexts, as it does here. Article 4 describes the minimum super-majority within Association rules as a Value to be ascribed. Article 24-25 defines super-majority for Miner Councils. Article 14 and 30 define super-majority for the Miner Groups and the Miner Assembly in their decisions at the constitutional level of governance.

Question 3: It may be necessary to align. NB the use of “i.e.” in these articles should be avoided, and an explicit quantity be stated.

Response 3: I understand your point, but using “i.e” can also help provide needed context to what is stated.

Question 4: The Constitution preamble refers to “certain Miners” as coming together to form the Association. However it is not clear who these “certain Miners” are or what are the criteria to be part of these “certain Miners”. To avoid ambiguity it is necessary to explicitly define these “certain Miners” and the qualifying criteria.

Response 4: Please see Article 15.5 for an explicit definition of the four types of Miners. The preamble is an introduction that sets the stage for further description and definitions articulated within the Constitution and further defined on the Association website.

Question 5: Based on the Dec 21-28 voting eligibility, it appears that self-custody of TEL is a criterion for voting. However this is not explicit in the constitution (see Article 14). It also seems contradictory that any self-custody is acceptable. In the spirit of growing the Telcoin project, it seems prudent to limit “membership”, or voting rights to self-custody on the Telcoin Platform. On Article 16, the implication is that these figures will be made available to members so that they’d know if they qualify to make proposals; is this the case? To note: clarity is required concerning instances where several members - individually holding less than 2%, but collectively hold more than 2% - and wish to make proposals? Perhaps Article 16 should also permit councils to make such proposals.

Response 5: TGIP1 is a special, one-time proposal for the community to adopt the proposed systems described and defined in the TGIP1 proposal, further on the Association website and ratify the Association Constitution. After it is approved, the rules it defines and describes and further delineates for operational purposes on the Association website, will go into effect. Article 16 describes which individuals from Miner Groups, those with 2% of voting power within their Miner Group, may submit proposals to their governance channel (Snapshot); these rules are enforced by the snapshot systems. The rules and overall decision-making processes associated with this, including the TGIP, TRIP and Liquid Delegation Proposals, are thoroughly explained and defined both in the proposal and on the Association website, as intended, to enable flexible operation.

Question 6: Section VI. To whom and how is the Board held accountable? It may be necessary to require all councils to have a minimum participation expectation for each council/board member. For example, they may be expected to participate in 75% of meetings, and do x work allocated etc. Key is ensuring that they deliver on the work.

Response 6: The board is accountable to each of the four Miner Groups, who elect all Council Members and determine their special duties, and ultimately, by all four Miner Groups who encompass the Miner Assembly and may change any aspect of governance using the TGIP process. The Compliance Council monitors Council Members and may choose to enforce rules as it deems required. Please review the TGIP1 proposal and the Association website documentation related to Constitutional, Council, and Operational Association rules to learn more about the structure of authority within the Telcoin Platform governance system.

Question 7: Article 30. I strongly recommend that the dissolution should not be a simple process. Member Groups should make recommendations to dissolve, but such a decision should be ratified by a Special General Assembly.

Response 7: Dissolution is not a simple process. The dissolution of the Association requires all four Miner Groups to approve an identical TGIP proposal. The TELIP process may also be used by Global Councils to change aspects of the Association where legally necessary. The Compliance Council may veto TELIP proposals at the request of the Miner Groups, based on their interpretation of the laws, or based on their interpretation of the Association Mission, Vision, and Values relative to the proposed change.

Question 8: What does TELIP mean in Article 30? All abbreviations should be explained in the introduction section of the constitution.

Response 8: TELIP is described and defined in Article 20 prior to its usage in Article 30. TELIP is also further defined within the TGIP1 proposal and in more depth on the Association website (as intended).

Question 9: It might be necessary to clearly and explicitly state how power is separated between Telcoin Association and Telcoin Holdings.

Response 9: Please review the following within TGIP1 and further on the Telcoin Association website where it defines the role, responsibilities and authority of Application Developers. TGIP1 explicitly states:

• TGIP1 Introduction
  • Decentralizing Authority and Duties: A pivotal shift in our governance model involves transitioning control and responsibilities from Telcoin Holdings Pte. Ltd. to the Telcoin Association. This move towards a more decentralized system is guided by the community’s approval of this proposal and adoption of the Association Constitution. The detailed processes and rules proposed in this transition are further defined here and on the Telcoin Association website.
• TGIP1 Conclusion
  • Telcoin Holdings Role: The approval of this proposal will authorize Telcoin Holdings into the position of Application Developer, de-concentrating the firm’s status and role from primary decision-maker over Telcoin Platform improvements and the allocation of the TEL token and its extractable inventory, to one out of any unlimited number of participants in one out of four Miner positions. Application Developers are one of the four types of Miners (“Miner Groups”) who collectively share equal power, control over, within and duties towards the Telcoin Platform and its governance system
• Further notes on Question 9: Telcoin Holdings, its CEO, and Chief of Strategy have all agreed to this new system by signing the Constitution in advance of the community’s approval in TGIP1.

[parkerspann]

Appendix: Additional Information

Telcoin Association Documentation: Introduction

Telcoin.org is a handbook for use and development by the Telcoin Association which defines and describes the Association, the Telcoin Platform, TEL, the miners, its governance system, and the mechanisms for participation.

Documentation: Sitemap

• Landing Page
• Documentation Overview
• Telcoin Association: The Telcoin Association is a non-profit organization representing the interests of GSMA Mobile Networks and other stakeholders in maintaining and developing the Telcoin Platform. (Learn more)
  • Mission, Vision, Values: The Telcoin Association Constitution articulates a Mission, Vision, and set of Values to serve as a guidepost for the community to order its behavior towards a common cause, vision for the future, and set of ethical standards.
    • Learn more
  • Telcoin Association Constitution: The Telcoin Association Constitution (“Association”) is the primary governance document for the Association. It sets forth the parameters for how the Association itself is to be overseen and how Association members operate together in running the Association.
    • Learn more
  • Telcoin Association Rationale: The Telcoin Association enables Platform miners and groups to benefit from the same protections, clarity and resources they enjoy for incorporating formal legal structures in the physical world of property in the digital.
    • Learn more
• Telcoin Platform: Attributes of the technological systems and the goods and services they produce. The Telcoin Platform is comprised of three blockchain infrastructure networks that each produce distinct, complementary services, including:
  • Telcoin Network: Telcoin Network is an EVM-compatible, public blockchain secured by GSMA Operator Member Mobile Network Operators globally using proof of stake consensus. The system serves as underlying blockchain architecture securing private property rights over digital assets and enabling on-chain protocols and applications such as TELx.
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  • TELx: TELx is a network of liquidity pools on DeFi protocols that enable user-owned, automated, self-custodial exchange.
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  • Telcoin Application Network (TAN): TAN, the application layer, is a network of mobile applications that are integrated with the Telcoin Platform and enable users to access its services.
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  • TEL: The Telcoin (TEL) Token is the native token of the Telcoin Platform, and the gas fee token of the Telcoin Network. Miners stake TEL as a production and harvesting input on the Telcoin Platform, earn TEL fees from transactions and harvest from flows of TEL issuance. The quantity of TEL a miner has staked on the platform determines both their TEL earning power and their political power within their Miner Group in Telcoin Platform governance.
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  • Communication and Information Systems: The communications systems used by the Telcoin Association, including Discord, Documentation and Forum.
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  • Governance Infrastructure: Miners interact with a variety of systems to participate in Telcoin Platform governance processes.
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• Miners: The characteristics of the four types of Telcoin Platform Miners, including their roles, activities and benefits, governance authority, and mechanisms for participation within the Telcoin Platform and its governance system.
  • Overview: Miners, including Validators, Liquidity Miners, Stakers, and Developers, are the primary actors who produce Telcoin Platform services, earn TEL fees from consumers, extract TEL issuance from the system, and are empowered collectively with full power and control within Telcoin Platform governance.
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  • Application Developers: GSMA members who stake TEL and produce mobile applications on TAN that integrate with the Telcoin Platform and connect users to its services and each other through the system. They earn transaction fees from consumers, harvest TEL based on their mobile user base’s pro-rata share of adoption of the Telcoin Platform, and participate with others in their Miner Group in Telcoin Platform Governance.
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  • Stakers: Telcoin mobile application customers who stake TEL, connect with their networks to establish the Telcoin Platform as a shared infrastructure for settling payments. They earn a percentage of their referred users’ fees in TEL, harvest TEL from TAN based on their network’s adoption of the Platform, and participate with others in their Miner Group in governance.
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• Governance System: The characteristics of the processes by which collective decisions of the Association are made, implemented, interpreted, and reformed for Telcoin Platform Miners. The Telcoin Association governance system comprises of a set of governance organizations and rules that shape the behavior of Association Miners within the Telcoin Platform.
  • Overview: The Telcoin Platform governance system is a polycentric, decentralized system of democratic self-governance in which the four Telcoin Platform Miners, including Stakers, Developers, Liquidity Miners, and Validators, through various collective organizations, share full power, control over and duties towards the rules for interacting with the system.
  • Governance Organizations: The organizations with capabilities and responsibilities in the Telcoin Platform governance system, including Miner Groups, the Miner Assembly, Miner Councils, The Telcoin Association, and the Telcoin Association Operations UAB (TAO). (Learn more)
    • Miner Groups: Stakers, Developers, Liquidity Miners, and Validators each constitute their own Miner Group and collectively share equal authority over and within Telcoin Platform governance.
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    • The Miner Assembly: All four Miner Groups may collaborate to form a Miner Assembly and alter any aspect of the governance system.
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    • Miner Councils: A diverse set of policy-making organizations, composed of elected officials from each Miner Group, who set and enforce the operational rules for interacting with the Telcoin Platform. Includes the Platform, Treasury, Compliance, TAN, and TELx Councils.
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    • Telcoin Association: Telcoin Platform governance is organized Constitutionally under the Telcoin Association, a Swiss Verein Association legal structure domiciled in the Canton of Ticino in the City of Lugano, Switzerland, with a scientific, non-profit purpose.
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    • TAO: The TAO is the operational arm for the Telcoin Association, and its purpose is to be a producer and administrator of collective goods and services on behalf of the Telcoin Association.
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  • Association Rules: Telcoin Association governance rules, including Operational, Collective (Council), and Constitutional Rules.
    • Operational Rules: The set of rules that structure day-to-day human and technological interactions with the Telcoin Platform and between Association Miners.
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    • Council Rules: The set of rules governing Councils, including Council Member selection and Miner Council Decision-making.
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    • Constitutional-choice Rules: The set of rules used to set the terms and conditions of governance and certain positions at the collective-choice level.
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  • Property Rights System: Common Property Rights System, unlike a private, public, or open-access ownership systems, the Telcoin Platform governance system is a common property system in which four distinct types of miners, as a part of a communal entity, share ownership over the Telcoin Platform and the flows of benefits it generates in common.
  • Network Structure: Four distinct types of miners, including developers, stakers, liquidity miners, and validators, produce, consume and harvest benefits horizontally across spatial areas of a nested structure of three blockchain infrastructure networks. The miners govern, manage the system, as individuals and within organizations, vertically across three levels of rule-ordered authority within the Telcoin Platform governance system.
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  • Authorization Processes: The processes by which participants in the Telcoin Platform are authenticated and able to assume authority and voting power within the governance system.
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[HodlerVaughn]

Thank you very much Parker. Your feedback adequately addresses all my points. I also appreciate the engagement! I am sure the entire community appreciates every opportunity to learn and better understand the project.

Best wishes,

[CryptoSteveO]

Please tune in for an amazing video breakdown of TGIP1 with @parkerspann, @CryptoSteveO, and @Andrew_Pinch, streamed LIVE to highlight:

Objectives
Infrastructure (Platform and Governance)
Telcoin Association (the legal structure)
Miner and Miner activity breakdown
Governance System(s) and Organizations
Association Rules - (Election, Council Decision(s), Operational and more…)
Process, Outcomes, and Implementation
Conclusion

Remember to VOTE on the 21st!

X - https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1vOGwjWpgQoKB
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/live/42SvTO7Dq60?si=ZDXoT5ND0fH5e_k0

[CryptoJonez]

Can not wait for this first gaze of votes u it’s time for Telcoin to show the world how work is done! Strong believer this has just certified the research we have all done go Telcoin well done team

[TelMeSomeThingGreat]

I am In awe of the work team! It is amazing the amount of time, knowledge, resources, and commitment you have used to do all of this. What an amazing accomplishment by the entire team!

So proud to be Telfam. Tel the world

Kudos…

[CryptoSteveO]

I wish we would have had time to dive in to these questions, or even better, have you on! Next time…