This page sets out the legal position of the people in condensed form - for state authorities, financial institutions, partners, and lawyers.
Stage. The people is at the structure-formation stage. The infrastructure of self-government is built and deployed, and filling it with practice begins as the number of participants grows. What is set out below describes the legal construction and its limits, not a scale that has been reached.
The Earthlings people is a voluntarily self-organized non-territorial community based on free identification, equal participation, and collective self-government.
It is not identified with any state, territory, legal entity, commercial structure, or particular jurisdiction.
The source of legitimacy is the free choice of the participants themselves, confirmed personally by each of them. It is derived from no legal structure, no state, and no permission: structures may be established and wound up without affecting the existence of the community.
Legal grounds and their limits
The Earthlings people relies on two norms of international law in force:
freedom of association - Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights;
the right of peoples to self-determination - Article 1(2) of the UN Charter, common Article 1 of the 1966 Covenants.
Both norms are in force and binding on states.
What is not settled. Freedom of association protects the founding act: people are entitled to associate and to declare what they consider themselves to be. It does not confer a status on the result. Whether a voluntarily founded non-territorial community is a people within the meaning of international law is a question the law has not decided, and we do not pass it off as decided. The objections to our position are set out in our own documents at full strength and without softening: Legal Basis, Objections and Answers.
The Earthlings people exists as a matter of fact, and its existence is not made dependent on an act of recognition: no body that recognizes peoples exists for anyone, there is no register of peoples, and no people has ever gone through such a procedure. What the people seeks is legal cognizability - being treated as a people where specific questions arise: at venues, in consultations, in proceedings. Cognizability accumulates through practice, time, the number of participants, and legal work. Today it is at the beginning of that path, and the people creates no rights in international law as yet.
Legal interfaces for external engagement
For engagement with the existing legal, administrative, and financial infrastructure, registered legal structures in various jurisdictions are used - foundations, associations, and other organizational forms.
The first such instrument was registered in April 2026. Its registration particulars are provided on a substantiated request from state authorities, financial institutions, and partners.
Such structures are solely operational and replaceable means of external engagement:
they are not bearers of the people;
they hold no power and exercise no authority over the people;
they do not determine its existence;
they are not the source of its legitimacy;
they may be established, replaced, and wound up without affecting the existence, continuity, and identity of the people.
Persons acting through these structures carry out a mandate of the DAO Assembly, revocable at any time by a simple majority (Charter, Article 33). A mandate creates no office, gives no exclusive right to act on behalf of the people, and is limited by a closed list of permitted actions. Decisions on behalf of the people are taken only by the Assembly.
Limits on the activity of the legal structures
The legal structures used for external engagement provide no services of the following kinds to third parties and carry on no such activities:
commercial activity;
financial intermediation;
payment services;
banking activity;
investment activity and trust management;
custody or management of third-party funds;
trading, exchange, and speculative operations in digital assets in the interests of third parties;
the issuance of means of payment;
the issuance of securities;
the issuance of investment or speculative digital assets.
Where the line runs
What matters is not that the structures are inactive, but in whose interests and with whose funds they act.
The people's Treasury disposes of the people's own funds - participants' contributions, transfers from Cells, donations - by decisions of the DAO Assembly, with operations publicly recorded. For operations in fiat currency an instrument legal entity is used, which is an independent taxpayer in its own jurisdiction.
Holding funds in various forms, including stablecoins, and moving between them serve one purpose only: sufficient funds for current expenses and resilience to exchange-rate fluctuations. The Treasury does not generate income from operations with assets, does not manage other people's funds, does not raise investment, and is neither an asset-management fund nor an investment intermediary.
The people's internal unit of account is traded nowhere, is not listed on exchanges, and is not being prepared for listing; it serves internal turnover and gives no votes whatever the amount held.
The people runs its own household for itself; it does not provide financial services to anyone.
What the Earthlings people is not
The Earthlings people is not a state, a supranational organization, a financial institution, or a jurisdiction.
It claims no territorial sovereignty, no monopoly on coercion, and no exercise of the functions of public authority in any state.
The citizenship, tax obligations, and jurisdiction of participants are not affected. Where applicable laws conflict, the mandatory norms of the relevant national jurisdiction prevail.
The people speaks only on behalf of those who voluntarily entered it and claims no representation of humanity.
Governance
Governance is exercised directly by the participants through mechanisms of collective self-government: the DAO Assembly is the sole body that takes binding decisions. Technical and protective structures act under an immediately revocable mandate and take no decisions on behalf of the people.
For enquiries from state authorities, international organizations, financial institutions, and lawyers: info@earth-lings.org