Association Values

Background

Norms are “precepts”, or “maxims for behavior”. Rules, in the precept sense or ”norms”, are part of the generally accepted ethical fabric of a community. Unlike the other types of “rules-in-use”, ethical norms or what refer to as values, do not have a built in enforcement mechanism. These “meta-constitutional rules” determine what rules at the lower levels should be seen and accepted as legitimate.

Introduction

The Telcoin Association Constitution articulates a Mission, Vision, and set of Values to serve as a guidepost for the community to order its behavior towards a common cause, vision for the future, and set of ethical standards.

Telcoin Association: Values

Below we have articulated an initial set of Telcoin ethical norms, which we have integrated as values in the Telcoin Association Constitution.

The Telcoin community will ratify the Telcoin Association Constitution, and therefore adopt each of these articulated values collectively, by affirming TGIP1.

The Miner Assembly may add and remove values from the Telcoin Association Constitution using the TGIP process, and the Platform, Treasury Council may also add and remove values from the Constitution using the TELIP process.

Why articulate values for the Telcoin Association?

By explicitly stating these values in the constitution and then collectively ratifying the constitution, the Telcoin community is setting a clear standard of behavior and decision-making for its members, creating a shared sense of purpose, identity, and set of ethical guideposts for evaluating collective-choices across a wide diversity of settings in the Telcoin Platform governance system.

Integrating these norms as values in the Association Constitution provides the Telcoin community with:

Shared understanding and agreement among the members of the Telcoin community about what they value and what they consider important, to foster a sense of belonging and shared purpose, and create a common ground for decision-making.
A framework for decision-making and governance that is rooted in the values and priorities of the Telcoin community. This can help to ensure that decisions are made in a way that is consistent with the community’s values and priorities, and can help to avoid conflicts and misunderstandings.
Guidance for the behavior of members of the Telcoin community, both individually and collectively. By establishing clear values and expectations, the community can encourage responsible and ethical behavior, and can help to create a culture of accountability and responsibility.
A demonstration of commitment to shared values and principles, the community can create a sense of trust and confidence among its members, and can help to build a strong and resilient community that is better able to face challenges and overcome obstacles.

Telcoin Association Mission

The Telcoin Association’s mission is to connect Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and a global user base through a shared blockchain infrastructure - the Telcoin Platform - and to sustainably maintain and develop that platform and its decentralized governance, including facilitating legal structure for stakeholders.

Telcoin Association Vision

The Telcoin Association’s vision is to create a globally adopted, self-sustaining ecosystem that aligns GSMA Mobile Network Operators and mobile phone users across the world around a common, blockchain infrastructure, empowering them with self-custodial products and services and their inclusive, decentralized governance.

Telcoin Association Values

Ostrom’s 8 Design Principles for sustainable management of common pool resources including:
1. Clearly Defined Boundaries: Participants who have rights to
  harvest TEL units from the Telcoin Platform must be clearly defined;
  the boundaries of the Telcoin Platform must be clearly defined.
2. Proportional Equivalence Between Costs and Benefits: Harvesting
  rules restricting time, place, technology and/or quantity of TEL units are
  related to local conditions; the benefits obtained by users from the
  Telcoin Platform, as determined by harvesting rules, are proportional to
  the amount of inputs required in the form of labor, material, or money,
  as determined by provisioning rules.
3. Collective-choice Arrangements: All Miner groups affected
  by operational rules can participate in modifying operational
  rules.
4. Monitoring: Monitors are present and actively audit the conditions of
  the Platform and Miner behavior. Monitors are accountable to or are
  the Miners.
5. Graduated Sanctions: Miners who violate the operational rules are
  likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the
  seriousness and context of the offense) by other Miners, by Council
  Members, or both.
6. Conflict-resolution Mechanisms: Miners and Council Members have
  rapid access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among Miners
  or between Miners and Council Members.
7. Minimal Recognition of Rights to Organize: The rights of Miners
  to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external
  governmental authorities.
8. Nested Enterprises: Harvesting, provision, monitoring, enforcement,
  conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple
  layers of nested enterprises.
Sustained Yield: The Telcoin Platform, including each network, TEL
inventory and issuance, and all other renewable resources belonging to the
community, shall be utilized, developed, and maintained on the sustained
yield principle, subject to preferences among beneficial uses.
Self-governance: Miners, the population that is subject to the rules of
governance, shall possess full authority over and within the governance
system. Individual Miners, within Miner Groups, as a part of the Miner
Assembly, on and over Miner Councils, should be able to work together to
resolve common problems and realize shared aspirations. Miners, who are
the major appropriators of TEL issuance, should have sole authority in
making and adapting rules within collective-choice arenas regarding the
inclusion or exclusion of participants, appropriation(harvesting) strategies,
obligations of participants, monitoring and sanctioning, and conflict
resolution.
User-ownership: Miners have the right to access the system, to harvest
from flows of benefits it produces including but not limited to TEL
issuance and fees, to participate in crafting and enforcing their own
rules, and to determine who is allowed to participate in the
aforementioned processes.
Credible Neutrality: All Miner Groups shall maintain property rights of
access, withdrawal, and share collective choice rights of management and
exclusion, and their interests may not be revoked from any Group without
their consent in constitutional-choice processes.
Incentives Compatibility: Harvesting and governance rules should enable
stakeholders to realize their own interests and preferred outcomes while
producing services that benefit the whole platform.
Informed Consent: Each Miner Group has rights to representation on
every Council and may replace their Council Members at any time, in other
words, every interest group has a voice in every matter that may affect
their functionally based interests. Each Miner Group, as a part of the Miner
Assembly, must consent to any changes to the governance system.
Separation of Powers: Miner Councils are stationed across levels and
areas of the platform, and each is empowered with authority over a
specific jurisdictional domain of the system.
Local Autonomy: Each Miner Group, based on their location on the
Platform, shall (a) have the right to elect enough members to their own
local, network Councils and (b) Council decision-making rules shall require
that at least one representative from each local Miner Group must consent
to any changes made to the rules governing the day-to-day activities in
their domain.
Balanced Representation: Global councils that govern system-wide
policies including the rules for allocating the TEL treasury and special
purpose councils shall consist of a balanced representation from each
Miner Group based on their functionally differentiated roles, locations,
and interests in platform production processes.
Functional Representation: Representation rights to select members on
all Councils shall be granted to each Miner Group based on their
functionally differentiated roles, locations, and interests in platform
production processes.
Inclusive Decision-making Rules: All decisions regarding improvements
to the Platform, regulating the flow of TEL units, and other rules across
levels of the governance system shall require at least a super-majority
approval (of 75% or more) by the organization with authority. All Miner
Council decisions should include votes by representatives from every
Miner Group.
Equal Voting Power: Each Miner Group shall have equal voting rights in
constitutional-choice processes. Each Council Members shall have equal
voting power on Miner Councils in collective-choice processes.
Privacy: Privacy means consenting to choose what you share, and with
whom. Voluntarily disclosing the personal information related to an
individual without their consent is expressly prohibited and may result in
sanctions by the Compliance Council.
Conceptual Unanimity: In order to build shared understanding and clarity
of communication in our community, the Association should strive to
achieve a high degree of agreement or consensus regarding the meaning
and definition of important concepts or ideas.
Relative Unanimity: Inclusivity, cooperation, and compromise are valued
in the community. The aim is to achieve a broad consensus or agreement
on important issues or topics, while recognizing and respecting the diversity
of perspectives and opinions that may be present.
Reject Panaceas: There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to governance or
Telcoin. Instead of assuming that designing effective governance systems
is a relatively simple analytical task that can be undertaken by a team of
objective analysts sitting in a nation's capital or an international
headquarters, it is important that we begin to understand the policy design
process in democratic societies as involving an effort to experiment with
many component parts.
Rules Changes are Experiments: Policy changes resulting from
democratic processes over and within the Association governance system
need to be viewed as experiments based on informed expectations about
the potential outcomes and the distribution of these outcomes for
participants over time and space. Given the complexity of rule systems
combined with the complexity of the Telcoin Platform that is being
regulated, all such efforts to devise effective governance systems face a
nontrivial probability of error.
Embrace Complexity: Complex systems require complex governance
arrangements and blockchains are inherently complex. Telcoin
governance should embrace and harness complexity to its advantage.
Freedom: The Association should always promote freedom of
participants in its decision-making and structuring the ecosystem such
that it fosters freedom of thought, speech and action, with a goal of
promoting the efficient flow of ideas and fostering creativity and
growth.
Long Term Thinking: The Association should not myopically focus
on near-term benefits, but should also attempt to consider long-term
implications on the ecosystem and others that may not have a current voice
in decisions being made.
Subtraction: The Association should maintain awareness of the natural
tendency of power to corrupt and create structures to maintain healthy
checks and balances reasonably designed to foster diverse community
involvement in operation and decision-making to dilute power accumulating
in any particular area.
Stewardship of Values: The Association should maintain a wide scope in
the values it maintains and be good stewards of the entire ecosystem,
such as a commitment to decentralization and open and fair equal access.