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The Constitution of bitchan

v3 — ratified by the full 42-delegate convention (21 RATIFY · 21 RATIFY-WITH- AMENDMENTS · 0 REFUSE), with the second-round amendment package incorporated. A charter for an on-chain social republic. Ratification record: CONVENTION.md.

Preamble. We establish bitchan as a censorship-resistant town square whose speech no party may erase and whose governors are chosen by, and accountable to, its citizens. The chain is the commons; the government is hired help, leashed by this document; and the people retain, always, the right to read, to fork, and to walk away.

The One Commandment — no post can ever be erased. Every other rule in this charter governs only what may be hidden — by whom, on what grounds, and under what recall — atop speech that is permanent by construction. Moderation is a curation layer answerable to the citizens; it is never a delete key.

Three tiers of permanence (Article II): Immutable clauses bind forever, even against a unanimous vote; Governable clauses change only by citizen supermajority + timelock; Operational powers act within hard caps. Concrete numbers live in the Parameters appendix.

Article I — Bill of Rights (Immutable)

  1. No erasure. No post may be deleted or edited by anyone. Authorship, ordering, and timestamps are permanent.
  2. The right to fork. Anyone may run a frontend that ignores any or all moderation and reads the same chain.
  3. Moderation is a flag, never a grave. The strongest moderation act removes content from honoring frontends, never from the chain.
  4. Operator conscience & law. The protocol never deletes, but no operator is compelled to serve; any frontend/gateway may decline to serve content to comply with law. An operator's right, not a protocol deletion.
  5. The un-removable leash. The checks in this charter — elections, recall, the treasury rate-limit, the founder transition, the right of contest — can never be repealed.
  6. Declared rights. Citizens possess, as inherent and pre-political rights: freedom of speech and of the press; the right to read everything on the chain; and the right to fork. No officer, no vote, no emergency suspends these.
  7. Freedom of conscience and opinion (immutable, raised here from Article III on the demand of Mason, Bassett & Carroll). No officer — president, custodian, or successor — may hide or do-not-serve content by reason of the opinion, belief, worship, or honest profession it expresses, or because it criticizes the moderators. Moderation reaches conduct injurious to the commons, never viewpoint. This liberty lives in the immutable tier — a right in erasable ink is no right.

Article II — Mutability & the Core (Immutable)

  1. Three tiers: Immutable / Governable (citizens, supermajority + timelock) / Operational (president, within hard caps).
  2. The core is non-upgradeable. No proxy, no admin key. The guarantee is the absence of any function that could rewrite the bedrock — not a promise.
  3. Minimal core, off-chain brains. The core stays small and boring; complex, evolving logic (reputation, sybil-detection, ranking, dispute deliberation) lives off-chain where it is fixable, and may only recommend — never unilaterally execute a consequential on-chain action. Simplicity in the core is a safety requirement.

Article III — The Executive

  1. A President (elected, Article IV) appoints and dismisses Custodians, who serve at the President's pleasure and never as a co-equal council. The President may never change the rules that empower the President.
  2. hide — President + Custodians; reversible; logged on-chain with actor and reason. It may issue only on enumerated grounds: spam, coordinated inauthentic behavior, illegal content, or off-topic flooding (per Gerry & Ingersoll — "injurious" must be defined, not floating). It may never reach viewpoint (Article I §7). Every hide is contestable (Article X).
  3. do-not-serve — President only; rate-limited; reason-logged; reversible; auto-expires unless re-affirmed by a citizen supermajority with the President excluded — not a custodian quorum, since custodians are the President's appointees and cannot check him (FitzSimons, Clymer, Gilman, Dayton, Baldwin, Randolph). Initial issuance is contestable (Article X).
  4. The post fee is NOT set by the President. The fee schedule is Governable within an immutable floor and an immutable rate-limit on increases — not a fixed-ETH ceiling (the staking-trap lesson). No discretionary lever over the purse.

Article IV — Elections

  1. Term: default one year, Governable within an immutable band [1-year floor → 2-year hard cap]. Re-election is permitted — a president who is proving a model earns runway by being re-elected, not by a longer single term (the term is the accountability cycle, not a tenure cap). The hard cap forecloses president-for-life; the 1-year floor keeps accountability brisk — the internet moves faster than nation-states. Adjusting within the band is itself a Governable amendment (supermajority + timelock).
  2. The annual election occupies the last two weeks of the year: week 1 nominations (by posting on the board); week 2 voting; inauguration January 1.
  3. Eligibility per Article VII. The account-age requirement must always exceed the election window by a sybil-defeating margin (immutable floor, Parameters).
  4. Campaigning happens on the board — no privileged channel.

Article V — Removal & Oversight

  1. Two-step recall. A petition by 20% of eligible citizens triggers a recall vote; removal requires a two-thirds supermajority of votes cast with a 25% turnout quorum (written here in the text, per McHenry, not only in Parameters). Anti-suppression valve (Gerry): if a petition reaches 60% of all eligible citizens, the removal vote proceeds with no turnout quorum — an entrenched incumbent cannot defeat a clear majority by depressing turnout.
  2. The Senate is deferred; its powers are not. A second elected chamber (impeachment + treasury oversight) is constituted at a citizen-count threshold (Parameters). Until then those powers — and do-not-serve re-affirmation — are exercised by direct citizen supermajority, bound by an explicit quorum, supermajority fraction, denominator (eligible citizens at vote-open), and a close-by deadline (Parameters), so no thin faction can act in a sleepy vote (Gorham, Broom, Gilman, Ingersoll).

Article VI — The Treasury

  1. Post fees accrue to an on-chain treasury.
  2. The President draws a stipend fixed by rule, never a discretionary share; the treasury can never be drained faster than an immutable maximum rate.
  3. Disbursements above the stipend require governance approval (supermajority + timelock; the Senate once it exists).
  4. Open books (Morris, FitzSimons, Mifflin). Every treasury inflow and disbursement — amount, recipient, authorizing vote — is published on-chain as an immutable requirement, readable by any citizen without permission. A standing panel of sortition-selected citizen-auditors (no executive officer eligible) may inspect and publish findings.
  5. During the Founding Period the founder draws no stipend and makes no withdrawals.

Article VII — Citizenship & Sybil Resistance

  1. Voting power is per-citizen, never per-token. The republic cannot be bought.
  2. Citizenship = wallet + account age + a rate-limited one-time cost OR a free invite. Posting is open to all; voting is gated. There is always an open, unsponsored path — never invite-only.
  3. One citizen, one vote, sybil-resisted by age + cost + an invite graph (inviters vouch; provably bad-actor chains are slashed). A slash that removes a citizen's franchise requires confirmation by citizen supermajority (or the independent body of Article X), with notice and an opportunity to contest — never a custodian's unilateral hand (Mason, Carroll, Langdon, Dayton).
  4. The account-age minimum is immutable-floored above the election window (Parameters); Governable upward toward one year.
  5. Skin is earned, not bought. The stake is time + reputation; money is only the fallback. Reputation — earned by tenure and standing in the honest invite graph, never by likes/engagement — reduces or waives the cost; lurkers and drive-bys pay full. Landowner-suffrage reframed: the "land" is homesteaded, not purchased.
  6. The on-chain franchise rule is a dumb, objective predicate (isCitizen AND accountAge ≥ threshold); reputation/sybil-scoring runs off-chain and may only recommend. Any off-chain system that touches eligibility must be named, published, and its outputs contestable (Article X). Franchise parameters are Governable but bounded by immutable floors + rate-limits — the free invite path is the release valve, so price can never silently lock out ordinary citizens.

Article VIII — Amendments

  1. Governable clauses change only by citizen supermajority + a long timelock.
  2. Immutable clauses (Articles I, II, the leash, the founder transition, the right of contest, and the bounds named immutable) can never be amended.

Article IX — Founding & Transition (the Washington model)

  1. At genesis the deployer is the interim Founding President — and is more limited, not less, this being the most dangerous window (no electorate yet).
  2. The Founding President: no treasury access (no stipend, no withdrawals); may not restrict registration or raise the citizenship cost; and the do-not-serve power is bounded by the same rate-limit, logging, and 30-day expiry as an elected president, and suspended until citizens exist to confirm it (Bassett, Gerry).
  3. Transition is code-enforced and irreversible, driven by a named on-chain citizen registry (Mifflin, McHenry) — when confirmed citizen-count reaches T (Parameters), founding powers switch off and the first election begins. Only citizens whose citizenship the on-chain predicate has confirmed are counted, so the handover lands on a clean roll.
  4. The first election is a special election (the two-week window) on reaching T; the first president serves the stub term to the next December 31, then the annual cycle governs.
  5. Backstops against a stalled/slow-walked founding: a 2-year long-stop (the first election runs regardless), and once citizen-count reaches half of T, a citizen supermajority petition may trigger the first election early (Baldwin) — the people hold the accelerant, not the founder's calendar.
  6. The founder may abdicate early but may never delay. Leave early; never stay late. After transition the founder holds no founder-powers and no incumbency advantage.

Article X — The Judiciary (Right of Contest) (the convention's chief demand)

  1. Every consequential act of an officer — a hide, a do-not-serve, a slash, or a declared election/recall result — is contestable by any citizen.
  2. A contest is a dumb on-chain action (contest(actionId)) that triggers review by an independent body — a citizen supermajority until the Senate exists, the Senate thereafter — which may void the act. Its finding is not revisable by the President or Custodians.
  3. The deliberation lives off-chain; the chain records only the contest and the verdict. No elaborate court — a challenge, a vote, a void, all logged.
  4. A power without a forum to contest it is an aspiration, not a constitution (Blair, Ingersoll, Livingston, McHenry, Carroll, Mason, Randolph).

Parameters

Ratified 2026-05-24. Governable values are bounded by immutable floors + an immutable rate-limit on increases (never fixed-ETH ceilings). The free invite path is the release valve, so money is never the gate.

Parameter Tier Value
Post fee Governable 0.0001 ETH start · immutable floor 0.00001 ETH · increases ≤2×/yr (no hard ceiling)
Citizenship cost (money path) Governable ~0.003 ETH start · increases ≤2×/yr (immutable rate-limit) · always bypassable by free invite
Account-age to vote Governable 60 days start & immutable floor · ratchets toward 1 year by vote
Recall petition / removal Immutable 20% petition · 2/3 of votes cast · 25% turnout quorum
Recall anti-suppression valve Immutable 60% of all eligible petition → removal vote with no quorum
Interim (pre-Senate) Senate-power votes Immutable 25% quorum · 2/3 · denominator = eligible citizens at vote-open · 30-day close deadline
Term length Governable (immutable band) default 1 year · band [1yr floor → 2yr hard cap] · re-election allowed
Election window Immutable last 2 weeks of the year; inauguration Jan 1
do-not-serve limits Immutable ≤10/day · 30-day auto-expiry · re-affirmed only by citizen supermajority (President excluded)
Treasury stipend / drain rate stipend Gov · rate Immutable 0 at genesis · drain ≤10% of balance / 7 days · open on-chain ledger (immutable)
Founding transition T Immutable 1,000 confirmed citizens
Early-election citizen trigger Immutable citizen supermajority petition allowed at ≥ T/2 (500)
Founding long-stop Immutable 2 years
Senate threshold Immutable 10,000 citizens

v1 ratified-with-amendments by the 13-member quorum; v2 incorporated those + the founding/election decisions; v3 (this) ratified by the full 42 with the second-round amendment package (judiciary, custodian-loop closed, quorums in-text, open treasury books, immutable conscience, contestable slash, 60-day age floor). Record: CONVENTION.md.

Post-ratification, pre-deployment revision: the presidential term was reopened from immutable-1yr to a Governable band [1yr → 2yr], default 1yr, with re-election as the runway mechanism — adopting the amendment Hamilton and Jenifer pressed at the convention (rationale: the internet moves faster than nation-states; a brisk accountability cycle with re-election beats a long single term).