I’ve given this some more thought and had a fairly detailed conversation with AI, testing a number of different scenarios and looking at what might work without unnecessarily restricting the current bootstrap process while the community is still relatively small.
The proposal below is where the robot and I landed.
@Okz, thanks for the invitation to formalise the idea. I’d be very happy to hear thoughts from anyone in the community, particularly around any weaknesses, edge cases, or reasons why this approach may or may not work in practice.
Proposal: Managing Council and Core Contributor Overlap
1. Purpose
I think there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the discussion around overlap between the Tari Council and Core Contributors.
In the long term, I would like to see meaningful separation between the two groups. Core Contributors elect the Council, so if most Council members are also Core Contributors there is a legitimate risk of circular influence developing.
At the same time, Tari is still in a bootstrap stage. The active community is relatively small, and many of the people with the time, commitment and experience to qualify as Core Contributors are also exactly the people likely to make capable Council members.
Trying to completely separate the groups today could therefore create a different problem. We might exclude qualified people simply to satisfy an ideal governance structure that the current size of the community cannot yet support.
I do not think the answer is to prohibit overlap. I think the better approach is to accept some overlap while the community is small, measure it openly, and progressively reduce the governance influence created by dual membership as the community becomes large enough to support greater separation.
2. Existing safeguards already point in this direction
There are already mechanisms in the current proposals that appear intended to reduce concentrated influence as the Core Contributor program develops.
During the bootstrap period, Council members are given voting rights over Core Contributor nominations. Once the eleventh Core Contributor has been inducted, the Council loses that special voting right and future Core Contributor nominations are decided by existing Core Contributors.
The Community Charter also establishes that Core Contributors elect Council members, requires a Council member who is also a Core Contributor to recuse from voting on their own Council seat, and states that no single interest should dominate the Council.
I think these are good indications that the existing governance design already recognises the need for decentralisation and separation of influence over time.
However, I think this could be strengthened.
The current eleven CC threshold removes the Council’s special voting authority, but it does not remove the influence of Council members who are themselves Core Contributors. Those people continue to participate in Core Contributor nominations in their capacity as CCs, and they also participate in Council elections.
That creates a potential circular relationship that becomes more important if there is substantial overlap between the two groups.
3. The issue is governance overlap, not simply membership overlap
I do not think somebody being both a Council member and a Core Contributor is inherently a problem.
Council members are expected to contribute materially to Tari, and many may quite reasonably satisfy the requirements of the Core Contributor program. Council service itself is explicitly described as an active working role rather than an honorary position.
The concern is instead what happens when substantially the same group can influence membership of both bodies.
There are two directions to consider.
First, Core Contributors elect the Council.
Second, Core Contributors decide who becomes a future Core Contributor.
If a large proportion of Core Contributors are also Council members, the same people can therefore participate in selecting future Council members and expanding the electorate that will select future Councils.
Nobody needs to be acting in bad faith for that structure to gradually become self reinforcing.
The aim should therefore be:
Allow useful membership overlap, while progressively reducing concentrated governance power created by that overlap.
4. Total Core Contributor numbers are not enough
The number of Core Contributors alone is not necessarily a good measure of governance maturity.
Consider this example.
There are seven Council members.
There are eleven Core Contributors.
All seven Council members are also Core Contributors.
In that situation, seven of the eleven people deciding future Core Contributor nominations are sitting Council members.
The same seven people also represent a substantial majority of the electorate that selects future Council members.
However, immediately removing those seven people’s Council election votes would create another problem.
Only four independent Core Contributors would then be responsible for electing a Council of as many as seven people.
That does not strike me as particularly decentralised either.
For this reason, I do not think additional restrictions should automatically begin when the eleventh CC is inducted.
A better measure is the size of the independent Core Contributor electorate, meaning Core Contributors who are not currently sitting Council members.
For example:
11 CCs with 7 Council members overlapping means 4 independent CCs.
20 CCs with 7 Council members overlapping means 13 independent CCs.
30 CCs with 5 Council members overlapping means 25 independent CCs.
These are very different governance environments.
5. Proposed governance stages
I suggest thinking about the development of the system in three broad stages.
Stage One: Bootstrap
During the initial bootstrap period, significant overlap should be accepted.
Council members may become Core Contributors if they independently satisfy the requirements.
Dual role members retain normal nomination and voting rights.
The existing bootstrap provisions remain in place.
The immediate goal is to establish a functioning and credible Core Contributor body without artificially excluding qualified people.
Stage Two: Growing independent participation
Once there is a sufficiently large number of Core Contributors outside the Council, additional safeguards should begin.
I would suggest measuring this using independent CCs rather than total CC membership.
For discussion, a threshold of around ten independent Core Contributors might be a reasonable starting point, although the exact number should be debated.
At that point several changes could occur.
Council elections
Sitting Council members who are also Core Contributors would no longer vote in Council elections.
They would retain their CC status and all other normal contributor rights.
The purpose of this restriction would simply be to establish that, once a sufficiently broad independent electorate exists, sitting Council members should no longer substantially participate in choosing the future Council.
Core Contributor admissions
Dual role members could continue participating in CC nomination discussions and voting, but they should not be capable of determining admission by themselves.
For example, if five affirmative votes remain necessary to induct a Core Contributor, at least three of those five votes could be required to come from Core Contributors who are not currently Council members.
This would prevent a Council majority that also holds CC status from independently determining who enters the electorate that will eventually select future Councils.
It would still allow their experience and judgment to remain part of the process.
Core Contributor nominations
Council members should still be able to identify and nominate excellent contributors.
However, once the maturity threshold has been reached, a Core Contributor nomination originating from a sitting Council member could require endorsement from at least one Core Contributor who is not currently serving on the Council.
For example:
A Council member nominates Alice as a Community CC.
One independent CC seconds or endorses the nomination.
The nomination then proceeds normally.
This provides an independent check without making the nomination process unnecessarily restrictive.
Stage Three: Mature governance
As the Core Contributor community becomes substantially larger, Tari could move toward stronger separation.
At this point I think it becomes reasonable to establish explicit decentralisation targets for overlap between the Council and the Core Contributor body.
One possible target would be that no more than 50 percent of Council members should simultaneously hold Core Contributor status.
Over time, the community could consider reducing that further if the number and diversity of active contributors makes doing so practical.
I would initially treat this as a governance target rather than an automatic eligibility restriction.
With a Council of only five to seven people, strict percentage limits become quite blunt. A 25 percent hard cap, for example, would generally mean only one Council member could also be a Core Contributor.
That may eventually be desirable, but I do not think we need to assume today that the future community will require that degree of separation.
6. Measure independent participation publicly
I think Tari should publish a small number of simple governance metrics.
For example:
Total number of Core Contributors.
Number of Core Contributors currently sitting on the Council.
Number of independent Core Contributors.
Percentage of the CC electorate independent of the Council.
Percentage of Council members who are also CCs.
This would allow decentralisation to be measured rather than debated purely through perception.
It would also make it easier to determine when the governance system has genuinely matured enough for stronger separation.
7. A possible guiding rule
Rather than trying to anticipate every possible governance configuration, I think there is a useful overarching principle that could guide these safeguards:
Once the governance maturity threshold has been reached, no decision to induct a Core Contributor or elect a Council member should be capable of being determined solely by people who currently hold membership in both bodies.
The detailed voting and nomination rules could then implement that principle.
This focuses on the underlying problem rather than treating dual membership itself as undesirable.
8. Why not simply prohibit overlap?
I do not think that would be appropriate, particularly during the current stage of Tari’s development.
The Charter expects Council candidates to have made sustained and verifiable contributions to Tari.
That naturally means there will be considerable overlap between people who make strong Council candidates and people who qualify as Core Contributors.
A rule preventing those people from being recognised in both capacities could therefore weaken one body simply to create artificial separation from the other.
The objective should instead be to separate governance influence, not necessarily the people doing the work.
9. Why not immediately remove voting rights from dual role members?
The seven Council members and eleven CCs example demonstrates the problem with doing this too early.
If seven dual role members immediately lost their Council election votes, four people would become responsible for selecting a Council of up to seven members.
Similarly, removing all dual role members from Core Contributor admission votes while the independent CC group remains very small could make it unnecessarily difficult to induct new contributors.
The transition therefore needs to depend upon meaningful independent participation rather than an arbitrary date or total membership figure.
10. Suggested review points
The existing eleven CC threshold can remain an important first milestone because it ends the Council’s special bootstrap voting rights over CC nominations.
Additional reviews could then be triggered by the number of independent Core Contributors.
For example:
At 11 total CCs, review the level of Council overlap and publish the first governance metrics.
At 10 independent CCs, consider activating Council election separation and independent requirements for CC admissions and nominations.
At 20 independent CCs, review whether a formal Council overlap target should apply.
At 30 independent CCs, review whether stronger separation is now practical.
These numbers are examples rather than numbers I feel strongly about.
I think establishing the principle and the mechanism is more important than deciding the exact thresholds immediately.
11. The overall objective
There are two governance risks we should try to avoid.
The first is allowing a relatively small group to repeatedly participate in nominating, admitting and electing one another until that structure becomes difficult for new voices to penetrate.
The second is imposing strict separation so early that Tari does not have enough qualified and committed people to operate the governance system effectively.
I think both concerns are legitimate.
The current proposals already contain safeguards that begin moving governance away from Council control as the Core Contributor program grows. I think the next step is to strengthen that principle by addressing the influence created when individuals hold membership in both groups.
During bootstrap, overlap should be accepted.
As independent participation grows, dual role members should progressively surrender some of the powers that allow either body to determine the composition of the other.
Eventually, the independent Core Contributor community should be large enough that the Council can be elected without sitting Council members participating in that election, and new Core Contributors cannot be admitted solely through the votes of people who also sit on the Council.
The principle I would ultimately propose is:
Do not prevent good contributors from participating in both groups. Instead, progressively separate the governance powers of the two groups once the community is large enough to support it.
