Roadmap of the Transitional Period

The Earthlings people is constituted by the adoption of the Declaration. Full decentralization is an aim, not a starting point. We are building decentralization openly, and anyone can observe the process.

This document describes the transitional period: from founding to full autonomy of governance. It sets down the principles, stages, and oversight mechanisms that secure accountability at every step.

The key principle. Every people begins with a group of founders. The question is not who begins - the question is how the functions performed by the founders pass to elected structures and to code, while decisions belong to the people from the adoption of the Declaration.

• drafting and publication of the Declaration;
• creation of the identity verification system;
• deployment of the passport registry contract on a public network;
• deployment of the public voting channel and the treasury wallet;
• creation of the digital platform for coordination;
• creation of the system of Cells;
• preparation of the basic documentation;
• registration of a legal instrument for external engagement (April 2026).

• the founding period (the document "The Founding Period"): accepting proposals on the whole corpus, identity verification of participants in the founding, and the vote on the adoption of the Declaration;
• if the Declaration is adopted, from that day: beginning the signing of the Declaration and the issuance of passports, attracting the first few thousand participants;
• forming working groups by field;
• electing the Core Nodes and the Emergency Multisig;
• forming the Independent Council;
• beginning a practice of substantive voting.

• regular substantive votes on the principle of "one person, one vote";
• an independent audit of the governance smart contracts;
• the Assembly's practice on all the matters the Charter assigns to it;
• handover of control over the treasury to the community.

• the Assembly's decisions are carried out without the founders' participation;
• the founders retain neither keys nor any of the functions they performed in place of unelected structures;
• the technical infrastructure does not depend on particular people;
• the mechanisms of protection against capture have been tested in practice;
• the people functions autonomously.

The following functions are performed during the transitional stage and later pass to the Assembly and to the elected structures:

• operational decisions on developing the infrastructure;
• management of financial resources with public reporting;
• coordination of technical development;
• external communications.

These functions are temporary. The Charter enters into force with the adoption of the Declaration (Charter, Article 38); until then there is no DAO Assembly, no Core Nodes, no Emergency Multisig, and no Independent Council, and the only discretionary power of the founding period with regard to the texts is the decision of the author of the Declaration to include proposals in the text (the document "The Founding Period"). After the Declaration is adopted and until the corresponding structures are elected, their functions - technical support of the infrastructure and operational response - are performed by the founders procedurally and under their own responsibility (Charter, Article 39); these functions confer no right to take decisions on behalf of the people: the disposal of funds and everything else is decided by the Assembly. The completion of the structure-formation stage is recorded by a decision of the Assembly and is a criterion for moving between phases (Charter, Article 39).

• repeal or limit the principles of Part I of the Declaration, or change its text other than openly: every edit is visible line by line in the open registry, from 22 November 2026 the text is changed only by including proposals under the procedure of the founding period (the document "The Founding Period"), and after the Declaration is adopted it is changed only by the Assembly;
• deprive participants of status, belonging, or the right to vote; before the Declaration is adopted, against the holder's will, the temporary document of a participant in the founding is burned under the procedure set out in the document "The Founding Period" (Part 2, section 5);
• take decisions contrary to the values of the people;
• use the community's resources for personal ends;
• block the process of decentralization. These are prohibitions, not a technical impossibility: until the contract owner's rights and the treasury keys are transferred to a multisignature, issuing and burning registry entries are technically available to a single key, and treasury transactions to a single signature (the document "Where We Are Now").

• reports - financial information and progress, openly available, no less than once every 90 days from the date the Charter enters into force (Charter, Article 39), with a list of unmet conditions and the reasons; until then, the state of the infrastructure and the places where you have to trust us are described in the document "Where We Are Now";
• openness of decisions - decisions taken and the grounds for them are recorded and available for independent verification;
• feedback - any participant may ask a question and receive an answer.

• the personal funds of the author of the Declaration - the current source; no external funds have been raised;
• the contribution on entry - one-time;
• voluntary donations and grants - subject to the conditions set by the Treasury: publication of the source, the absence of conditions contrary to the people's principles, and the absence of any influence over decisions;
• partnerships - cooperation with projects sharing the people's values.

Development and maintenance of infrastructure; legal support; operating costs; community development and communications; the reserve fund.

Reports are published no less than once every 90 days from the date the Charter enters into force and include: total receipts by source; the distribution of expenditure by category; the balance of funds and reserves; planned expenditure for the next period.

Reproducibility. The registry of passports lives on a distributed network, not on our servers: if, after the Declaration is adopted, its implementation becomes impossible as a result of a seizure of governance, the shutdown of infrastructure, or other circumstances, confirmed earthlings will be able to continue the people in existence on a different technical or organizational basis, relying on the same registry (Declaration, Article 11). The list of what is open and what is closed, with the reasons, is in the document Where We Are Now.

Modularity. Components are replaceable without rebuilding the whole system.

No single point of failure. This is an aim: critical systems should be duplicated, and today that is not yet the case.

• an appreciable number of participants, spread across countries, has been reached;
• the governance smart contracts have passed an independent audit;
• the voting mechanisms have been successfully tested in real practice;
• the Core Nodes and the Emergency Multisig are elected, and the Independent Council is formed;
• the signatories of the treasury multisignature are elected or the treasury keys are placed under the control of the Assembly.

• the Assembly has been taking decisions for no fewer than 12 consecutive months;
• no fewer than 100 decisions have been taken by vote;
• there are no unresolved critical security incidents;
• the technical infrastructure does not depend on particular people;
• the technical ability to burn passports has been transferred to a multisignature of elected structures or to the control of the Assembly, the rights of issuance and burning have been separated, and burning is carried out with a delay. The grounds for burning by someone other than the holder are limited to an exhaustive list in Article 21 of the Charter, and annulment of an invalid issuance - the only one of them applied against the holder's will - is a decision of the Assembly rather than an administrative act; the Charter enters into force with the adoption of the Declaration, and until the contract owner's rights are transferred, this restriction rests on procedure, not on code (the document "Where We Are Now"); what is transferred at this stage is technical execution;
• the Treasury keys have been transferred to a multisignature of elected signatories under the rules of Article 3 of the Charter or to the control of the Assembly: no one can dispose of funds single-handedly;
• the community has confirmed its readiness by a vote.

Each stage will lock in the decentralization achieved and will revoke some of the temporary powers. We deliberately refuse to give in to the temptation of "temporarily concentrating power for the sake of efficiency" - that is exactly how every transitional dictatorship has justified itself.

Once the Declaration is adopted, the principles of its Part I are not repealed or limited by anyone - not by the founders, not by a majority, not during the transition, and not after it; only their wording may change, and only so that no principle is narrowed and no guarantee to any person becomes weaker (Declaration, Article 11). Before adoption, proposals aimed at repealing or limiting them are not considered (the document "The Founding Period"), and every edit to the text is visible in the open registry. What is adjusted is the procedure and the infrastructure, not what all of it exists for.

The ultimate protection of the transition is the same as that of a mature people: voluntariness and a registry on a public network. If, after the Declaration is adopted, its implementation becomes impossible as a result of a seizure of governance, the shutdown of infrastructure, or other circumstances, confirmed earthlings will be able to continue the people in existence on a different technical or organizational basis, relying on the same registry, and the founders' consent is not required for this.

To be precise: not all of the system is reproducible. Passports and the records of them lie on a public network, the passport contract code is open, and the rules, thresholds, and procedures are described in these documents - following them, a new platform can be built against the same registry. But the record of signing the Declaration and the hashes by which a person's uniqueness is checked are kept not in the registry but on our servers, so a new platform will have to build its own identity verification (the document "Where We Are Now"). The code of the platform itself and of the identity verification system is closed, because they work with personal data (Charter, Article 30). The continuation of the people rests on the registry and on the published specification, not on the ability to copy our servers.

This turns transparency from a request for trust into a lever: a delay in decentralization becomes visible, and reports, public criteria, and the voice of the Assembly work against it; a delay is not a ground for continuing the people on a different basis. The continuation of the people is described in Article 11 of the Declaration under the heading "Lawful Continuation of the People".

The right to continue the people on an uncaptured basis does not mean that anyone who has built the same platform becomes Earthlings. A copy of the instrument carries over neither human beings, nor their choice, nor accumulated legitimacy - it carries over only the instrument. A lawful continuation is recognized not by possession of the infrastructure but by verifiable signs:

• a preserved core - a continuation leaves the unamendable foundations of the Declaration untouched; whoever changes the core by definition creates something else rather than continuing Earthlings;
• the will of confirmed individuals - the people goes where the majority freely moves: the majority of those confirmed earthlings who were able to express their will, "one person, one vote"; legitimacy is carried by human beings, not by servers and not by a repository;
• continuity of values and of procedure - the transition is open, verifiable, and accountable under the same rules that applied before it.

Therefore a capture cannot pass itself off as the people, nor can a split for the sake of splitting appropriate the people's name: a lawful continuation has signs that cannot be faked either by copying the code or by rebuilding the platform. The right to leave protects the people from two sides at once - from whoever captures the centre, and from whoever would give the name of the people to a copy that individuals did not follow.

The problem. The founders might not wish to hand over functions and keys.

The protection. Examined in section 07: the founders' power only narrows, the unamendable core is beyond their reach, and if, after the Declaration is adopted, its implementation becomes impossible, confirmed earthlings will be able to continue the people, relying on the same registry, without the founders' consent (Declaration, Article 11); even so, a self-proclaimed copy cannot appropriate the people's name. The gain from capture is not zero today: until the contract owner's rights are transferred to a multisignature, and while the treasury's signature threshold is one, whoever seizes these keys will be able to issue and burn entries in the same registry and dispose of the treasury (the document "Where We Are Now").

The problem. Vulnerabilities in smart contracts or in the infrastructure.

The protection. Staged deployment and backup mechanisms; an independent audit and a vulnerability search programme are planned before operations are expanded.

The problem. States or organizations may act against the project.

The protection. The architecture is being built so that there is no single point of attack; today such points exist, and we name them ourselves (the document "Where We Are Now"). The legal interfaces are replaceable and can be spread across jurisdictions. Transparency of activity reduces the grounds for persecution.

The problem. Participants might not take part in governance.

The protection. A low threshold for taking part in decisions - from the adoption of the Declaration: a right of initiative for everyone without collecting signatures, revocable delegation by area for those who do not want to look into every matter, and an inactive-status mechanism that does not raise the quorum for everyone else; in the platform this has not yet been fully implemented.

This document is not a promise. It is a plan we intend to carry out, and a set of commitments against which we can be checked.

A transitional period is unavoidable for any new formation. The question is how it is arranged. We have chosen the path of maximum transparency: we acknowledge the current limitations, set down the principles, publish the criteria, and report on progress.

Every earthling has the right:

• to demand an account of any decision taken during the transitional period;
• to ask questions and receive answers;
• to take part in discussing development;
• to point out discrepancies between words and actions.