Institution-in-a-Box

ICN enables any group to run an institution on their own hardware.

An institution consists of four primitives:

1. Identity & Membership: Who is in/out, what roles exist, verification, revocation.
2. Governance: Proposals, deliberation, voting, constitutional constraints.
3. Economics: Budgets, mutual credit, accounts, spending limits, audits.
4. Federation Agreements: Trust thresholds, dispute resolution, cross-ledger clearing.

The Architectural Contract

"The kernel provides mechanisms. Apps define semantics."

• Kernel: Enforces identity primitives, trust mechanisms, state primitives, auditability, and resource accounting.
• Apps: Define what it means to be a "member", what constitutes a "vote", how "budgets" flow, and the terms of federation.

The First Production Bundle

The "Institution-in-a-Box" starter kit will include:

• Membership App: Unified identity model.
• Governance App: Proposal → Vote → Execute loop.
• Ledger App: Treasury dashboard and mutual credit accounting.
• Default Charter Template: Editable starting rules.

The Compute Commons

The compute commons emerges from resource contribution accounting, not ideology. Communities contribute resources to earn credit, which they spend on shared services (search, hosting) or federation-wide projects.