Symbiotic Democracy - Technical Architecture

Here’s a reference technical architecture for Symbiotic Democracy, translated directly from the conceptual layers into buildable systems. It’s vendor-neutral, standards-first, and designed so communities can self-host or use managed nodes and still interoperate.

0) Design goals

  • Distributed-by-default: many autonomous community nodes, no single point of failure.

  • Interoperable: shared schemas/protocols; communities can fork yet still “speak” to the network.

  • Traceable & trustworthy: signed provenance, auditable ledgers, explainable decisions.

  • LLM/SLM-ready: clean IA, metadata, and retrieval contracts for safe AI use.

1) Layered architecture (maps 1:1 to your governance layers)

A) Protocol Layer (the glue)

What: Open standards that every component speaks.
Specs:

  • OCS (Open Community Schema): JSON-LD/Schema.org aligned models for Community, SubCommunity, Member, Role, Proposal, Deliberation, Vote, Decision, Charter, Event, Dispute, Contribution, Resource, Treasury, Transaction, BrandEngagement, DataLicense.

  • ID & Auth: DIDs + Verifiable Credentials (bridge to OIDC for legacy apps).

  • Consent/Licensing: ODRL policies on every object (who can use what, purpose limits).

  • Events: CloudEvents envelopes for proposals/votes/ledger writes.

  • Messaging: DIDComm (secure p2p) + ActivityPub/Matrix interop where social/chat is needed.

B) Data Layer

  • Community Registry & Namespace: persistent URIs (e.g., ocn://sports/cycling/road/fixed-gear/night-riders-london) with versioning and deprecation rules.

  • Community Knowledge Graph (CKG): RDF/Property graph + text/object store; SPARQL + GraphQL APIs; vector index for RAG.

  • Object storage: charters, attachments (IPFS/S3 with content hashes).

  • Audit log: append-only, signed, tamper-evident.

C) Core Services Layer

  1. Identity & Access Service (IAS): DID resolver, VC issuance/verification, role & ABAC/CapAuth (capability tokens).

  2. Membership & Profile Service: intentions, skills, trust signals, privacy controls.

  3. Governance Engine: proposal -> deliberation -> vote -> decision state machine; liquid-delegation graph; quorum/supermajority strategies; explainability logs.

  4. Contribution Ledger (event-sourced): signed attestations (work done, knowledge added, mentoring, mediation). Supports decay/boost rules, reputation derivation.

  5. Treasury & Payments: multi-sig wallets, escrow, programmable payouts; token/credit issuance (utility first), circuit breakers, KYC/AML hooks where required.

  6. Marketplace & Procurement: listings, RFPs, consortium formation, deliverables, satisfaction oracles to release escrow.

  7. Conflict Resolution: mediation workflows, restorative outcomes; binding arbitration anchored in community charter.

  8. Knowledge Commons Service: wiki/versioning, peer review, citation graphs; “promote from chat” to canonical pages.

  9. Brand/Sponsor Portal: application intake, alignment checks, public transparency profiles, sponsorship/competition primitives.

  10. Analytics & Impact: regenerative metrics, wellbeing/trust indices, contribution coverage ratio; exportable public dashboards.

D) Integration Layer

  • Connectors (MCP-style): Discord/Matrix, Notion/Confluence, GitHub/GitLab, Google/Microsoft, n8n/Zapier, Stripe/PayPal, chain bridges.

  • Event Bus: NATS/Kafka for cross-service events; outbox pattern for reliability.

  • ETL/CDC: sync legacy data into OCS entities; schema registry with migrations.

E) Application Layer

  • Member app (web/mobile): join communities, vote, contribute, earn/redeem, marketplace, events.

  • Steward console: proposals, moderation, treasury ops, dispute panels, brand reviews.

  • Civic Co-Pilot (LLM/SLM): grounded in CKG + provenance; “what’s the rule?”, “explain this decision”, “draft proposal”.

  • Federated search: domain → community → niche; facet on jurisdiction, privacy class, decision status.

F) Infrastructure Layer

  • Deployment: each community may run its own node (K8s or serverless) or use a managed multi-tenant cluster.

  • Resilience: geo-replicated storage, regular snapshots, verifiable backups, disaster recovery runbooks.

  • Observability: OpenTelemetry, structured logs, audit trails, conformance tests.

2) Entity model (OCS core objects & key fields)

  • Community: @id, name, parent, jurisdiction, charterURI, governanceModel, privacyClass, provenance, metrics.

  • Member: DID, roles, credentials, contribution summary, consent policies.

  • Proposal: topic, rationale, alternatives, impactAssessment, links, state.

  • Vote: voter DID or delegate, method, timestamp, weight, signature.

  • Decision: outcome, rationale, references, appeals window, enactment tasks.

  • Contribution: contributor DID, type (work/knowledge/mentoring/governance/mediation), evidence URIs, attestations, weight.

  • Treasury: holdings, budgets, payout policies; Transaction with purpose, recipients, proofs.

  • Dispute: parties, context, process, resolution.

  • BrandEngagement: applicant, offer (value-in), obligations, community verdict, performance log.

  • DataLicense: dataset URI, permitted use, revocation rules, revenue splits.

All OCS objects carry: createdAt, lastUpdatedAt, provenance.signature, odrlPolicy, consent, hash.

3) API surface (human & machine)

  • GraphQL/REST for CRUD on OCS entities (with fine-grained ABAC).

  • SPARQL for cross-community semantic queries (“show all nutrition decisions citing X”).

  • Vector/RAG endpoints with strict provenance filters (no unlabeled sources).

  • Events/Webhooks for state transitions (proposal opened/closed, escrow released).

  • GovOps RPCs: propose(), delegate(), vote(), challenge(), mediate(), executeDecision().

  • Treasury RPCs: openEscrow(), disburse(), mintUtility(), redeem(), sweep().

  • Consent/Licensing: requestUse(), grant(), revoke(), reportUsage().

4) LLM/SLM integration (safe by design)

  • RAG over CKG with:

    • Document chunking + metadata (communityId, decisionState, confidence, privacyClass).

    • Provenance headers (hash, signer DID) enforced in answers.

    • Constitution files per community to steer behavior (values, red lines, moderation norms).

  • Agent connectors (MCP) expose read/write ops with scoped capabilities (least privilege).

  • Evaluation harness: red-team prompts, bias & safety audits, decision-trace tests.

5) Security, privacy, and trust

  • ABAC + capability tokens (ZCAP-LD) for every action; time-bound, revocable.

  • PII vault & data minimization; split knowledge graph (public/aggregated vs. private).

  • Differential privacy on psychographic aggregates; k-anonymity thresholds.

  • Anti-capture controls: rotating steward keys, multi-sig for treasury, separation of duties.

  • Speculation controls: utility-only tokens, issuance schedules, circuit breakers, clawbacks.

6) Federation topologies

  • Local node (micro-community) ↔ Community hub ↔ Federation gateway ↔ Domain registry ↔ National NCIA ↔ Global Commons.

  • Content addressing + signed indices mean a node can go offline without breaking global resolvability.

  • Forkability: any registry can be mirrored; URIs remain stable; governance history is portable.

7) Reference data flows (sequence sketches)

A) Member joins & contributes

  1. Wallet creates DID → VC issued after onboarding.

  2. Applies to subgroup → steward validates VC/criteria → role granted.

  3. Completes a task → contribution event (evidence+attestations) → ledger updates reputation → tokens credited.

B) Proposal to decision

  1. Author drafts proposal (alternatives, impact) → deliberation thread links to sources.

  2. Delegations lock; vote opens (supermajority) → result with rationale & enactment tasks.

  3. Decision indexed in CKG; Co-Pilot can explain lineage with signed citations.

C) Brand engagement

  1. Brand submits application (offer, alignment) → community review & vote.

  2. Competition launched; escrow funded; winners chosen by rules; payout via treasury.

  3. Transparency profile updates; performance metrics posted to CKG.

D) Data licensing (aggregated only)

  1. Community dataset described with ODRL policy.

  2. Brand requests license → terms auto-checked → payment → time-boxed access token.

  3. Usage reports logged; revenue split to treasury/subgroups/members by contribution weights.

8) Minimal viable build (12–16 weeks)

  • Week 0–2: OCS v0.1 in a schema registry; DID/VC + OIDC bridge; base URIs.

  • Week 3–6: Governance Engine (proposal/vote/decision), Contribution Ledger (event-sourced), Member app v0, Steward console v0.

  • Week 7–10: Treasury escrow + payouts; Marketplace MVP; Knowledge Commons (wiki with promote-from-chat).

  • Week 11–12: CKG + GraphQL/SPARQL + vector RAG; Co-Pilot alpha with provenance.

  • Week 13–16: Connectors (Discord/Notion/GitHub/Stripe), analytics dashboards, audit trails.

9) Migration from today’s tools

  • Ingestors: pull Discord threads, Notion pages, Google Docs, GitHub issues → normalize into OCS (Proposal, Contribution, WikiPage).

  • Backfill attestations with steward signatures to bootstrap reputation (clearly labeled as backfilled).

  • Progressive enhancement: communities can continue using their tools; Publisher syncs to the registry/CKG.

10) Example OCS object (JSON-LD, abridged)

SD-Tech, Symbiotic DemocracyFrancesca Tabor