Polycentric Governance System

As opposed to a monocentric system governed by one group, Telcoin Platform governance is a polycentric, decentralized regime that empowers numerous, democratic decision-making units (governance organizations) with considerable autonomy (independence) to make and enforce rules within their own circumscribed domain of authority.

Definitional Clarity: Polycentric Governance Systems

Background

Polycentricity can be illustrated more precisely at the extremes, ranging from a fully monocentric regime, such as in various types of dictatorships where a single center has ultimate authority over all decisions made for some group, to polycentric regimes, which are systems in which the involved actors are able to organize not one, but multiple decision making units.

Polycentric Governance

In a polycentric governance system, each unit exercises considerable independence(autonomy) to make and enforce rules within a circumscribed domain of authority for a specified geographic area. Some units are general-purpose governments while others may be highly specialized; units are stationed at different areas (e.g. globally, regionally, state level, local); some units are larger, medium, or smaller sized; and units vary by function ranging from provisioning to distribution to production to conflict resolution.

Polycentric Governance Systems

A polycentric arrangement can be considered a system when the decision-making centers (1) take each other into account in competitive and cooperative arrangements and (2) have recourse to conflict resolution mechanisms.

Telcoin Platform Governance: Organizations Summary

Telcoin Platform governance includes all of the following types of organizations:

• Plural Community Interest Groups: Sub-groups of the broader Miner community with shared rights and interests in the Platform. Each group represents distinct segments of the larger community, each possessing distinct interests, power, and role in the production and governance of the Telcoin Platform.
  • Miner Groups: Stakers, Developers, Liquidity Miners, and Validators each constitute their own Miner Group and are each empowered with the authority to elect Council Members onto every Miner Council to represent their functionally-distinct interests. Collectively, Miner Groups share full power and control over and within the Telcoin Platform governance system.
  • Miner Assembly: The four Miner Groups may collaborate to form an Assembly and alter any aspect of the governance system.
• Policy-making Organizations: Miner Councils, made up of Council Members selected by the four Miner Groups, are diverse set of collective-choice policy-making organizations with authority to make and enforce rules over and duties towards specific jurisdictional domains of the platform, including global, local, and cross-jurisdictional organizations.
  • Global Councils: Global decision-making units with general purpose, nested jurisdictional authority over and duties towards Platform-wide components, governance infrastructure, communication and information systems, Telcoin Network, and the TEL Treasury.
    • Platform Council (8 members: balanced representation)
      • Description: Global, general-purpose governance organization with authority over and duties towards platform-wide policies and, in cooperation with the Treasury Council, Governance Infrastructure, the TEL Treasury, and Telcoin Network.
    • Treasury Council (4 members: balanced representation)
      • Description: Global governance organization with shared authority and duties towards voting for proposals involving the TEL Treasury and Telcoin Network.
  • Local councils: Local decision-making units with authority to determine, monitor, and enforce harvesting rules within networks and are responsible for providing for the construction and maintenance of network-level components.
    • TAN Council (6 members: stakers and developers each select 2; liquidity miners and validators each select 1)
      • Description: Local governance organization with authority over and duties toward TAN operational rules, system health and social well-being.
    • TELx Council (6 members: liquidity miners select 3; other miners each select 1)
      • Description: Local governance organization with authority over and duties towards TELx operational rules, system health and social well-being.
  • Special-purpose councils: Councils that cross jurisdictions of the Platform to perform specialized functions.
    • Compliance Council (4 members: balanced representation)
      • Description: Special-purpose, cross jurisdictional governance organization with authority to veto all Miner Council proposals, to authorize new participants into positions, compliance, legal, organizational, and conflict resolution policies and administration.
• Legal Organizations: Entities with legal personhood that serve a function within Telcoin governance.
  • Telcoin Association: Telcoin Platform governance is organized constitutionally under the Telcoin Association, a Swiss Verein Association legal structure domiciled in the Canton of Ticino in the City of Lugano with a scientific, non-profit purpose.
• Administration and Production units: Organizations that perform specialized, operational functions at the financing and direction of the Telcoin Association.
  • Telcoin Autonomous Ops, Ltd (TAO): The TAO is the operational arm for the Telcoin Association. The TAO’s purpose is to be a special-purpose, multi-functional producer, administrator of collective goods and services on behalf of the Telcoin Association.

Elements of Telcoin governance, a functional polycentric system

• Cooperation: Individual Miners, Miner Groups, and Miner Councils must take each other into account in competitive relationships and cooperate to realize shared aspirations, such as achieving a quorum in elections and council deliberation processes over improvements to the system.
  • Between Councils and Groups: On each formal proposal, Council Members from every Miner Group must cooperate to make decisions in spite of their functionally-distinct interests.
  • Between Competitors: Individual participants within each miner type naturally compete in their efforts to harvest issuance and fees, despite this competition, these miners must cooperate to elect representatives that serve their shared interests in securing their shared rights to the flow of TEL issuance.
• Conflict Resolution: The Compliance Council is responsible for administering and developing systems for conflict resolution between Miners, Miner Councils, and other actors on the Platform.
  • Compliance Council: In order to ensure inevitable conflicts between Miners, Council Members, and any combination therein are resolved swiftly at the lowest cost possible, a special-purpose, cross-jurisdictional Miner Council, the Compliance Council, is empowered to create and operate within conflict resolution systems in order to mediate disputes and resolve conflicts.

Why Polycentricity?

Because there are advantages to polycentric systems, especially when organizing communal regimes for governing complex, interactive, common-pool resource systems with numerous stakeholders involved, like the Telcoin Platform.

• Adaptive Capacity: Polycentric governance systems have been characterized as complex-adaptive systems, and their capacity for adaption has been linked to the notion that they facilitate parallel efforts to experiment with different ideas and rule combinations which, when combined with information transmission and learning, can lead to institutional innovation to cope with change.
• Institutional Fit: First, the existence of multiple, overlapping decision-making centers operating with some degree of autonomy helps make possible the production of place-specific institutions that are better tailored to a particular context or problem. Moreover, given the complexity of resource systems like the Telcoin Platform, it is unlikely that any single decision-making center possesses the range of knowledge necessary for the production of good institutional fit.
• Mitigation of Risk through Redundancy: The existence of redundant or back-up teams of decision makers experimenting with different rule combinations may significantly reduce the risk of policy failure for an entire region, thereby increasing the stability or resilience of a resource system.