Foundational Governance Practices

Status: Draft - Open for Input
Created by; The Meta-Layer Infrastructure SIG Board
Origin Date: 7 Sept 2025
Last Updated: 8 Sept 2025

Preamble:

The Internet experience begins at the interface, where people encounter information, agents, and one other. Protocols and signals are essential, but they are not the experience. We don't make the foundational protocols; we stitch them together and enable them to cooperate in the layer above the web. This is the meta-layer: the space of meaning, annotation, identity, and interaction. Where the IETF ensures the plumbing flows, we ensure that what flows connects people in ways that are open, trustworthy, and interoperable.

Our ethos is familiar - rough consensus and running code - but our vision is distinct: a people-centered Internet that cannot be reduced to pipes and packets. We build the interface layer that gives context to content, trust to transactions, and voice to communities. Just as the IETF stewarded the web's foundation, the MLTF must steward its next level.

1. Purpose

This Draft establishes the foundational governance practices of the Meta-Layer Infrastructure SIG. It is not only a request for input, but an act of unfolding: the SIG itself will emerge through these practices.

We propose to adopt a hybrid governance framework inspired by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - rooted in transparency, decentralization, and inclusiveness - while adapting it to the opportunities and challenges of interface-level civic infrastructure.

By publishing ML-Draft-001, we are setting the table for the entire organization: how it documents itself, how it makes decisions, and how it evolves. This document will serve as the operational directive for the formation and growth of the SIG.

2. Document Lifecycle: ML-Draft → ML-RFC

• ML-Drafts: Exploratory, open documents for capturing ideas, lessons, and proposals. Drafts may be submitted by individual members, but we anticipate and encourage that most will emerge from guilds-small, high-trust groups that review, draft, and steward ideas in the open. Not binding; some may never advance, and that's acceptable.
• ML-RFCs (Meta-Layer Requests for Comment): Stable documents promoted from ML-Drafts by community consensus and, when needed, formal vote. Represent adopted practices, principles, or shared frameworks for the SIG.
• Archiving & Provenance: All ML-Drafts and ML-RFCs will be permanently archived (e.g. on Ordinals), ensuring transparent provenance and long-term accessibility. This record is part of our commitment to accountability and trust.
• Application for Commenting: We envision building an RFC Application - a public platform where members and observers can read, comment, and track revisions to Drafts and RFCs. This may subsume the Desirable Properties app, creating a single space for civic deliberation.

We anticipate adopting many RFCs in the SIG's first two years, especially around Desirable Properties, terminology, substrate requirements, and governance. These RFCs will form the constitutional building blocks of the Meta-Layer and provide a strong foundation for the planned transition to the Meta-Layer Task Force.

3. Governance Modes: Rough Consensus vs. Formal Vote

• Rough Consensus: Most decisions (e.g., direction-setting, exploratory work) will be made through visible consensus signals ("humming," polls, comments, discussion).
• Formal Vote: Critical transitions (e.g., elevating a Draft to ML-RFC, elections, resource allocations) will require an affirmative vote. This may be implemented through a DAO platform for auditable legitimacy.
• This dual approach balances joyful communal labor with formal accountability mechanisms.

4. IETF-Inspired Cultural Anchors

We propose adopting/adapting these practices:

• Participation as individuals, not companies.
• Rough consensus & humming.
• Transparency by default.
• Joyful communal labor (hackathons, office hours).
• RFC-like recordkeeping.
• Reflection & iteration (timely contributions > perfection).
• Zones of autonomy for working groups.
• Living system ethos - treating the SIG as regenerative, not static.

5. Link to Desirable Properties

The SIG's work is guided by the 21 Desirable Properties of a Meta-Layer. Governance practices outlined here are not separate - they are how we will live out those properties in practice (e.g., inclusiveness, accountability, accessibility).

6. Teaching & Transparency

This SIG is not only building civic infrastructure; it is also teaching the world how to start a living, global organization. By openly archiving Drafts, documenting consensus, and experimenting with DAO-enabled voting, we model a new kind of regenerative organizational design.

As DAOs were once prototypes for decentralized governance, the Meta-Layer SIG may serve as a model for transparent, people-centered governance in the interface era.

7. Two-Year Sunset

The Meta-Layer Infrastructure SIG is designed as a two-year initiative. During this period, we expect to produce and adopt a significant body of RFCs covering governance, terminology, Desirable Properties, and substrate requirements. At the end of two years, the SIG will transition into the Meta-Layer Task Force, carrying forward this corpus of RFCs as its foundation.

8. Open Questions for Input

• How should we classify ML-RFCs and define their statuses (e.g., draft, active, obsolete, informational), so participants know how they can be used and referenced, similar to IETF's system?
• What criteria should we use to promote Drafts into ML-RFCs and to approve ML-RFCs? The IETF has a very intensive process for promoting a draft to RFC, which is probably too strict for our current needs. We are not developing detailed technical protocols at this stage, but rather foundational aspects of governance and terminology. These should remain adaptable, and can be modified through the same process in the future. Therefore, we should avoid feeling locked-in the way protocol standards might require.
• How should the ML Draft workflow work at the moment before we create custom tooling?
• How should DAO voting be implemented if at all - lightweight or binding only for key decisions?
• What other IETF cultural practices should we adopt/adapt for our context?
• How should the RFC Application evolve (standalone or integrated with Desirable Properties app)?

9. References & Related Work

This Draft is informed by research into the IETF's long-lived, regenerative governance systems. Two reports in particular provide important context:

• Exploring the Remarkable Regenerative Patterns and Practices of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - a study of the Internet Engineering Task Force's organizational practices, culture, and regenerative dynamics.
• The IETF: Organization, Rough Consensus, RFC Process, and Decentralized Meta-Layers - a companion research report exploring IETF processes, participation, and governance lessons as well as the extent to which the IETF addresses the meta-layer.

Also here is the IETF Administrative policies and procedures page.