Roadmap
P-015ShippedCaptured retroactively

Stewardship governance design

The conceptual design of OLN's governance model — the Decentralized Stewardship Body, the role enum (public / steward / admin), the founding-phase / community-phase transition, and the principle that some authority is deliberately deferred to a body that doesn't yet exist.

Milestone
Multi-year — pre-platform
Posted credit value
26credits
Founder credits accrued
18of 26
Owner
Creator + Brandon
Contributor credits
  • Brandon12Pending loginCo-architect of the stewardship model and deferred-authority pattern
Related
Entry 017

Captured retroactively. This represents multi-year conceptual work that pre-dates the platform. The credit value is a post-hoc estimate per the methodology in Entry 017 and is subject to revision under G-038's calibration mechanism. Brandon's allocation is held in escrow pending his first login.

What this represents

The governance design that the platform's role model and the Gap Register's "Decentralized Stewardship Body" question (G-024) both assume:

  • Three roles, not two. Public, steward, admin. The middle role — steward — is the load-bearing one because it's the seat the community body will eventually hold without admin power.
  • Authority is deferred, not retained. Some decisions are explicitly marked "deferred to the stewardship body when it forms" rather than retained by founders. That pattern requires the Stewardship Body to be a real future body with real authority, not a polite fiction.
  • Founding-phase vs. community-phase. The platform operates under founder authority during the founding phase; the transition to community-phase is a discrete event with criteria, not a vibes shift.
  • The Gap Register itself. The decision to publish "what we have not yet decided" rather than only "what we have decided" comes from this design — it's how deferred authority stays honest.

Why this is on the roadmap

The Phase 1 implementation of profiles.role and requireRole/hasRole took the trio as given. The Tier 1 Gap Register entries reference the Stewardship Body as if it's an obvious concept. Both because the design captured here did the work of making those concepts obvious.

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