What it makes

Whatever an institution runs on.

One factory, one standard. What it makes is not a product line but a range: the books, the money, the duties, the registers, the paperwork, the daily work and, now, the machines that act in an institution’s name.

Four places show it at work. Each is somewhere software of this standard was believed too expensive to provide, and each leaves proven parts behind for the next. They are examples of the range, not its edges.

IPractices

A ruled register: rows of fine dashes like entries, one row heavier, marked with a red-ochre tick at its left and ending in a small seal. — **Plate IV** The day the regulator asks: a list, and every entry on it checkable.

Duties, met and shown

For accountants, lawyers, real-estate agents and trust practices, and the firms that advise them.

Professional practices now carry duties that used to fall only on banks: knowing who their clients are, receiving disclosures safely, handling complaints on a clock, checking that a payment goes where it should. Most practices meet them with a policy in a binder and hope it is never tested.

Picture the day the regulator asks to see every client the practice verified last year, and how. In most firms that is a week of searching folders and inboxes. It should be a list, and every entry on it should be checkable.

The factory’s answer: each duty met as part of the work, and held as a record that the client, the regulator or a court can verify. A practice stops asserting that it complied. It shows it.

IIAgents

A boundary drawn like a signature: a large irregular closed curve, a filled point travelling inside it leaving a dashed trail, and a small red-ochre signature sitting on the line where the point was let out. — **Plate V** The mandate: an agent acts only inside a boundary a person drew.

Agents with a mandate

For organisations putting software agents to work where the consequences are real.

An organisation knows what each of its people may do, what they spent and who approved it. It should know the same about its agents: what an agent may do, how much it may spend, when a named person must approve, and a record of each act that an auditor can follow afterwards. When an agent renews a contract at two in the morning, someone should be able to see who allowed it to, and within what limit.

As agents begin to buy and sell for the organisations they serve, both sides of a transaction will want the same thing: one account of what was agreed, on what terms, and which person said yes.

IIIInstitutions

Two territories separated by a strait: the left one holds a dense field of small dots, the right one is nearly empty. A single red-ochre token crosses the water on a thin line; the dots stay where they are. — **Plate VI** Only the proof crosses. The knowledge stays where it belongs.

A core an institution can hold

For credit unions, community lenders and smaller institutions that hold other people’s money.

The systems at the heart of a financial institution are priced for the largest ones. Smaller institutions pay more than they can carry, or merge for want of an alternative, and with them go services their communities rely on, in the Pacific as much as anywhere.

The factory’s answer: a core whose every step of holding and moving value can be shown, at a cost such an institution can carry, and on terms that let it own its system rather than rent it. Its data, its rules and, in time, its keys stay its own. Only the proof ever needs to leave.

IVCommunities

A circle of small engraved marks, like members standing around a ruled page at the centre; one mark is red ochre, and one ruled line of the page carries the same mark. — **Plate VII** A community’s register: everyone can see it was done as the community’s rules say.

Registers a community keeps

For communities that govern themselves, and for the registrars and public bodies that serve them.

A self-governing community runs on its registers: who belongs, what was decided, what was shared and with whom. Those records should be verifiable, able to leave with the community, and held where the community decides. When members vote, or a distribution is made, every member should be able to see that it was done as the community’s rules say.

This work is done with a community, never ahead of one.

VAnd the next

The list does not close

Wherever work must answer for itself and the standard was out of reach, the same catalogue applies: a regulator’s register, a profession’s duty, a community’s membership, a market no vendor courted because trust cost too much. If your case is not on this page, that is no obstacle. What the catalogue lacks, the factory builds, proves and adds, and it is there for everyone after.

VIThroughout

A small sealed record at the centre of the plate, with three separate check marks, one in each of three corners around it, each drawn by a different hand; one is red ochre. — **Plate VIII** Checked by hands that are not ours: proof that does not depend on the company that made it.

Three things in everything it makes

Proof anyone can check

Checking a record never depends on trusting us. We intend an open way to verify these records that anyone can use without our systems and without asking us, held by an independent charitable foundation so that no single company can close it, including ours.

Sovereign by default

The data, the rules and, in time, the keys belong to whoever holds the duty. Only the proof needs to travel.

Better with every build

Each product leaves proven parts behind, so the next one costs less to make, and arrives already proven wherever it overlaps with what came before.

VIITalk to us

Rather talk first?

If your work needs this standard, write to us. There is no waiting list. A message gets a reply.

Where the factory starts, in what order, and how we intend to work with partners, is set out for people who apply.

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