Roadmap of the Transitional Period

The Earthlings people is still in the making. Full decentralization is an aim, not a starting point. We are building it 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 mechanisms of control 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 of governance pass from the founders to the people.

• drafting and publishing the Declaration;
• building the identity verification system;
• launching the mechanism for signing the Declaration;
• issuing passports;
• building the digital platform for coordination;
• building the system of Cells;
• assembling the basic documentation;
• registering a legal instrument for external engagement (April 2026).

• attracting the first thousands of participants;
• launching the internal economy;
• forming working groups by field;
• electing the Core Nodes and the Emergency Multisig;
• forming the Independent Council;
• beginning a substantive practice of voting.

• regular substantive votes on the principle of one person, one vote;
• an independent audit of the governance smart contracts;
• a gradual widening of the Assembly's powers;
• handover of control over the treasury to the community.

• all key decisions are taken by the Assembly;
• the founders hold no special powers;
• the technical infrastructure does not depend on particular people;
• the mechanisms of protection against capture have been tested in practice;
• the people functions autonomously.

At the transitional stage, functions are performed that are subsequently handed over to the Assembly:

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

These powers are temporary and functional. The Charter (Article 39) expressly provides that until the corresponding structures are elected their functions are performed procedurally and under the responsibility of the founders, and that handing these functions over to the elected structures is a criterion for moving between phases.

• change the Declaration or its unamendable core;
• deprive participants of status, belonging, or the right to vote;
• take decisions contrary to the values of the people;
• use the community's resources for personal ends;
• block the process of decentralization.

• reports - financial information and progress, openly available, no less than once every 90 days, with a list of unmet conditions and the reasons;
• 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 founder's personal funds - the current source at the structure-formation stage; no external funds have been raised;
• membership contributions - the one-time contribution on entry;
• voluntary donations and grants - on the conditions laid down 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.

Published no less than once every 90 days and including: 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 the infrastructure stops or is captured, the community will build a new platform against the same registry. The list of what is open and what is closed, with the reasons, is in the document Where We Are Now.

Modularity. Components are replaced without rebuilding the whole system.

No single point of failure. Critical systems are duplicated.

• a visible membership 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 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 grounds for burning are already limited by Article 21 of the Charter to three exhaustive cases, and annulment of an invalid issuance is already a decision of the Assembly rather than an administrative act; what is transferred at this stage is technical execution;
• the Treasury keys have been transferred to a multisignature of elected Core Nodes 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 locks in the decentralization achieved and cancels part of the temporary powers. We deliberately refuse the temptation of "temporarily concentrating power for the sake of effectiveness" - that is exactly how every transitional dictatorship has justified itself.

By the design of the system, the unamendable foundations of the Declaration are not subject to change - not by the founders, not by a majority, not during the transition, and not after it. What is being tuned is the procedure and the infrastructure; what all of it exists for has been protected from any hand from the outset.

The ultimate protection of the transition is the same as that of a mature people: voluntariness and a registry that does not belong to us. If the transition is captured or stalled without objective reasons, participants do not depend on the founders' mercy - they leave and continue the people on an uncaptured basis.

For the sake of precision: 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 - that is enough to build a new platform against the same registry. 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 both visible and reversible by the community's own efforts. The same mechanism is described in Article 13 of the Declaration as the last resort for protecting the unamendable core.

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 people, 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 people - the people goes where the majority of confirmed participants freely move, "one person, one vote"; legitimacy is carried by people, not by servers and not by a repository;
• continuity of values and of procedure - the transition is open, verifiable, and accountable by the same rules that applied before it.

Neither can a capture therefore pass itself off as the people, nor can a split for the sake of splitting appropriate its 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 people did not follow.

The problem. The founders may not wish to hand over governance.

The protection. Examined in section 07: the founders' power only narrows, the unamendable core is beyond their reach, and the right to exit together with the registry makes capture reversible by the community's own efforts. The protection is structural, not reputational: abuse is not merely visible - it is reversible without the founders' consent, and a self-proclaimed copy cannot appropriate the people's name.

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. A decentralized architecture rules out a single point of attack. The legal interfaces are replaceable and can be spread across jurisdictions. Transparency of activity reduces the grounds for persecution.

The problem. Participants may not take part in governance.

The protection. A low threshold of entry into decisions: a right of initiative for everyone without collecting signatures, revocable delegation by area for those who do not want to go into everything, and an inactive-status mechanism that does not raise the quorum for everyone else.

This document is not a promise. It is a plan we intend to carry out, and 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 of the transitional period;
• to ask questions and receive answers;
• to take part in discussing development;
• to point out discrepancies between words and actions.