This document describes the procedure for entering and for changing status. Where they diverge, the Charter applies; where the Charter diverges from the Declaration, the Declaration applies.
1. What is needed to enter
Age - 18 years or over.
Consent - acceptance of the Earthlings Declaration.
Identity verification - confirmation that you are a living human being and that there is only one of you.
A one-time contribution - the equivalent of 79 USD.
No other conditions exist. Nationality, race, religion, sex, social position, citizenship, and place of residence have no bearing on the possibility of entering.
If you cannot make the contribution, another person makes it for you. This is covered in section 9. Nothing has to be proven or explained. The contribution does not buy belonging to the people: belonging arises by signing the Declaration, and the contribution covers the cost of verification and of issuing the passport.
2. Six steps
1. Reading. Read the Declaration, the Terms of Use, and the Privacy Policy. All the documents are open before entry and require nothing in return for reading them.
2. Registration. Email, country of residence, and a pseudonym or name of your choosing.
3. Signing the Declaration. Confirmation of agreement with the people's principles. It is this act that creates belonging.
4. Identity verification. A face scan and a check against an identity document.
5. Paying the contribution. By cryptocurrency (ETH, USDT, USDC). Payment by bank card is in development. If you have no money, there is a second button in the same place - "I need the contribution"; it asks nothing and leads to the open queue (section 9).
6. Receiving the passport. A non-transferable digital passport is issued automatically to your address and confirms your status as a participant.
What happens to your biometrics. The original images and scans of documents are not retained after verification. What exactly remains and why is in the Biometric Verification Policy.
3. What you receive
You cannot be expelled. No procedure for expulsion from the Earthlings people exists under any circumstances or for any majority. Belonging ends only by your own decision.
Your vote cannot be taken away for how you think and how you vote. Not for your views, not for how you voted, not for disagreement with decisions, and not as a general measure of liability. The single exception is a proven attack on the voting mechanism itself; the procedure and periods are laid down by the Charter, Article 22 bis.
Your vote equals any other. It depends neither on money, nor on reputation, nor on length of participation, nor on the number of units of account in your wallet.
You can leave at any time - by yourself, without giving reasons, and no one can prevent it, the founder included.
You take part directly - submitting proposals and voting on every question, not once every few years.
4. What the passport does not give
This is important to know before paying, not after.
it gives no visa rights and has no bearing on crossing borders;
it does not replace the documents of your state and is not an identity document;
it has no force in the state institutions of any country;
it does not affect citizenship, taxes, or jurisdiction - all of that stays as it was;
it gives no income and is not a financial investment.
Inside the people the passport gives everything: an equal vote, participation in decisions, inalienable belonging. Beyond it, the people's legal cognizability is only accumulating - through practice, time, and the number of participants.
5. What is expected of you
to observe the principles of the Declaration;
to treat other participants with respect;
to take part in votes in good faith;
to be transparent in delivering projects and to account for the use of common funds.
These are duties, not conditions for keeping your status: breaching them entails neither expulsion nor loss of the vote. Measures for gross breaches concern only participation in Cells (the small working groups), the right to submit proposals, and access to services (Charter, Article 22).
6. Change of status
Active. Full access to every possibility.
Suspended. A pause by your own decision. The passport is retained, the right to vote is suspended by you yourself, units of account remain in your wallet, and access to information is retained. The maximum period is 12 months. Resumption is by a statement through your personal account, and repeat identity verification is not required.
Inactive. Assigned automatically if you have taken no action for 12 months and have not replied to an enquiry. The passport is retained, the right to vote is retained in full and may be exercised at any time; your vote simply stops counting towards the quorum, so as not to raise the quorum requirement for everyone else. On your first action the status is restored automatically.
Exit. A statement through your personal account, then a pause of 72 hours by default - protection against an impulsive decision, which you are entitled to waive. Then you burn the passport with your own key: the server does not store your keys and can neither prevent your exit nor carry it out for you. The exit takes effect from the moment of burning.
Return. You can return at any time by going through the standard procedure again - identity verification and the contribution covering its cost. A previously burned passport is no obstacle to returning.
7. When a passport is burned against your will
As a general rule you alone burn your passport. The Charter (Article 21) establishes two and only two exceptions, and this list cannot be extended.
1. Annulment of an invalid issuance. It applies where it is established that more than one valid passport has been issued to one person, or that verification was passed using falsified data or another person's identity.
This is not a measure of liability for conduct and not expulsion from the people: what is established is only that the issuance never lawfully took place. The procedure protects you at every step - notice, a period for objection, an opinion of the Independent Council, a secret ballot with a higher majority, a right of appeal; the periods and thresholds are laid down by the Charter, Article 21. If the obstacle to lawful issuance is removed, you are entitled to undergo verification again on general terms.
2. Technical reissue. At your own request on loss of access to your wallet or on migration of the contract. The passport is burned and immediately issued anew; membership is not interrupted, and no vote is required.
No other grounds exist. The death of the holder is not among them: belonging ends of itself, without anyone's decision, and the passport remains in the registry. The people has no access to death records worldwide, and such a ground would rest on information there is no way to verify.
8. About the contribution
It is one-time: after you receive the passport there are no annual or monthly payments. It goes into the common treasury and is allocated in the shares published in the document Treasury.
Units of account you have received for your contribution remain your property and are neither confiscated nor annulled on exit.
There is no exemption from the contribution. There is something else: the contribution for you is made by someone else.
What this looks like for you. At the payment step, next to the "pay" button, there is a second one - "I need the contribution". It asks neither your country, nor your income, nor your reason: you do not have to prove anything or say anything about yourself. One press, and you are in the open queue.
Only a number and a date are visible in the queue. No name, no country, no reason. The queue must not become a shop window of the needy.
When the queue reaches you, the passport is issued by itself and you receive an email. The passport is then exactly like everyone else's: the registry does not record who made the contribution for it, and it is impossible to tell from it who paid for themselves and who was paid for by another person. There are no first-class and second-class passports in this people.
You will have to wait. What we promise is not instant entry but that money will not become a wall forever: it makes entry slower, not closed.
What this looks like for the person paying. Any person - earthling or not - sees how many people are in the queue and may pay for one, for five, or for as many as they wish. Payment goes by the same method and to the same address as paying for oneself.
A particular person cannot be chosen: payment is made for whoever is at the head of the queue. This is deliberate. As soon as one can choose exactly whom to pay for, a patron appears, and dependence behind them; in a people where everyone is equal there is no place for that. The payer does not know whom they paid for. The person paid for does not know who paid.
How many people are in the queue and how many have already been paid for is publicly visible. The payer's name is published if they wish; anonymous payment is also possible.
Why it is done this way rather than through an exemption. An exemption requires a person to declare their poverty and requires us to verify it. There is nothing to verify it with across the whole world, and we do not want to make a person prove need in order to enter a people that speaks of dignity. Here no one declares anything about themselves: a person says not "I am poor" but "I need the contribution", and what decides next is not their words but someone else's readiness to pay.
The contribution is always paid in full. The same sum reaches the treasury for every passport, and no one gets in cheaper than anyone else.