The Grid
Economic Grid is designed as an institution rather than an application: an open protocol, a set of accountability institutions, and a founding operator that competes on the same rules as everyone else. Its architecture has twelve components in six planes, held together by one record of mandates and obligations.
01Three layers
Each layer has a different owner and a different job. Keeping them apart is what lets competitors, states and large firms trust the whole.
The shared grammar: how outcomes, mandates, obligations, evidence and settlement instructions are described and exchanged. It belongs to a foundation that no single company — including the founding operator — can control alone.
The parties that make commitments credible: independent verifiers, liability anchors, agent mutuals, estate holders and an obligation-clearing function. Most have long precedents — inspection, mutual insurance, run-off, clearing houses — applied to a new kind of activity.
A company that offers the default interface, the outcome compiler, obligation clearing, certification and a capital farm through licensed partners — and that has to keep winning against other providers on the same protocol. Its strength should come from what remains scarce, not from owning the network.
02Architecture
Select any component to see its function, its inputs and outputs, and the components it depends on. Every component reads and writes the same mandate and obligation record.
Plane 6Institutional
Plane 5Value & accountability
Plane 4Execution & evidence
Plane 3Markets
Plane 2Intent & authority
Plane 1Knowledge
Mandate & obligation spine — crosses every plane
01Knowledge
Represents participants, capabilities, assets, demand, spare capacity, constraints and track records — with provenance for every claim.
02Intent & authority
Turns an outcome request into a mandate graph with priced, insured and verifiable options, proves the non-expansion invariants and produces a plain-language consequence preview.
03Intent & authority
Identifies persons, entities, agents and machines; issues and checks mandate credentials; records which counterparties and jurisdictions accept which credentials.
04Markets
Lists synthetic actors, human services and machines with their capabilities, prices, performance records and cover.
05Markets
Runs requests for quotes, auctions and bilateral negotiation inside mandate bounds, and forms contracts that reference the mandate.
06Markets
Composes multi-party bundles, critical paths and redundancy, chooses a legal container, and binds cover and capital before any commitment.
07Execution & evidence
Connects software agents, people, robots and factories through adapters and streams milestone events.
08Execution & evidence
Collects tamper-evident evidence, routes checks to independent verifiers and decides acceptance or dispute. No performer certifies its own material work.
09Value & accountability
Settles conditionally across payment rails, nets obligations, manages liquidity and currency, and hosts the capital farm through licensed partners.
10Value & accountability
Allocates liability per mandate, binds cover, holds collateral, sets accountability margin and runs the dispute ladder.
11Institutional
Compiles local law into mandate constraints and performs identity, sanctions, tax and consumer checks at the right points, through locally licensed regional operators.
12Institutional
Sets protocol rules through a foundation, secures keys and agents, monitors the system and contains failures with scoped safe modes.
Oversees every other component: rules, certification, monitoring and emergency containment.
Compiles local law into mandate constraints and performs identity, sanctions, tax and consumer checks at the right points, through locally licensed regional operators.
Inputs: National law and licences; Jurisdiction profiles.
Outputs: Legal constraints in every mandate; Tax withholding instructions; Licensed regional operation.
Depends on: 12 Governance, security, observability & emergency controls.
Proposed componentSets protocol rules through a foundation, secures keys and agents, monitors the system and contains failures with scoped safe modes.
Inputs: Telemetry; Incident reports; Foundation decisions.
Outputs: Protocol versions; Certifications; Circuit breakers and incident registry.
Depends on: Oversees every other component.
Proposed componentSettles conditionally across payment rails, nets obligations, manages liquidity and currency, and hosts the capital farm through licensed partners.
Inputs: Acceptance decisions; Escrow instructions; Capital mandates.
Outputs: Final payments; Holdbacks; Funding for mandates.
Depends on: 08 Evidence & verification · 10 Liability, cover, collateral & disputes · 11 Jurisdictional institutions & compliance.
Proposed componentAllocates liability per mandate, binds cover, holds collateral, sets accountability margin and runs the dispute ladder.
Inputs: Mandates; Exposure data; Evidence.
Outputs: Bound cover; Margin requirements; Dispute outcomes.
Depends on: 08 Evidence & verification · 09 Payments, settlement, treasury & capital · 11 Jurisdictional institutions & compliance.
Proposed componentConnects software agents, people, robots and factories through adapters and streams milestone events.
Inputs: Contracts; Execution mandates.
Outputs: Work performed; Milestone events; Evidence signed at source.
Depends on: 03 Identity, authorization & recognition · 06 Assembly of temporary networks.
Proposed componentCollects tamper-evident evidence, routes checks to independent verifiers and decides acceptance or dispute. No performer certifies its own material work.
Inputs: Milestone events; Documents and sensor data; Inspection results.
Outputs: Acceptance decisions; Disputes; Track-record attestations.
Depends on: 03 Identity, authorization & recognition · 04 Agents & capability markets · 07 Execution.
Proposed componentLists synthetic actors, human services and machines with their capabilities, prices, performance records and cover.
Inputs: Certified agent listings; Capacity offers; Track records.
Outputs: Candidate performers for each mandate.
Depends on: 01 Global economic graph · 03 Identity, authorization & recognition · 10 Liability, cover, collateral & disputes · 12 Governance, security, observability & emergency controls.
Proposed componentRuns requests for quotes, auctions and bilateral negotiation inside mandate bounds, and forms contracts that reference the mandate.
Inputs: Mandates; Candidate performers; Standard terms.
Outputs: Contracts with mandate references; Obligations recorded on the ledger.
Depends on: 02 Outcome compiler · 03 Identity, authorization & recognition · 04 Agents & capability markets · 11 Jurisdictional institutions & compliance.
Proposed componentComposes multi-party bundles, critical paths and redundancy, chooses a legal container, and binds cover and capital before any commitment.
Inputs: Execution offer; Contracts; Cover and capital commitments.
Outputs: Assembled temporary enterprise; Obligation inventory.
Depends on: 05 Discovery, negotiation, pricing & contracting · 09 Payments, settlement, treasury & capital · 10 Liability, cover, collateral & disputes.
Proposed componentTurns an outcome request into a mandate graph with priced, insured and verifiable options, proves the non-expansion invariants and produces a plain-language consequence preview.
Inputs: Outcome request; Graph data; Prices and cover quotes.
Outputs: Execution offers; Mandate drafts with invariant proofs; Consequence preview.
Depends on: 01 Global economic graph · 05 Discovery, negotiation, pricing & contracting · 10 Liability, cover, collateral & disputes · 11 Jurisdictional institutions & compliance.
Proposed componentIdentifies persons, entities, agents and machines; issues and checks mandate credentials; records which counterparties and jurisdictions accept which credentials.
Inputs: Registry data and electronic IDs; Operator credentials; Signed mandates.
Outputs: Verified identities and tiers; Real-time mandate status; Recognition decisions.
Depends on: 11 Jurisdictional institutions & compliance · 12 Governance, security, observability & emergency controls.
Proposed componentRepresents participants, capabilities, assets, demand, spare capacity, constraints and track records — with provenance for every claim.
Inputs: Public registers and filings; Participant submissions; Verified attestations; Completed-obligation records.
Outputs: Discoverable capabilities and constraints; Eligibility data for mandates.
Depends on: 03 Identity, authorization & recognition · 08 Evidence & verification.
Proposed componentMandate & obligation spine — crosses every plane
03Information
Appearing in the grid is not the same as joining it, and joining is not the same as delegating authority. The architecture keeps these apart by design.
| Class | Source | Who sees it | What it permits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public | Lawfully accessible registers, websites, catalogs and filings | Anyone | Discovery only — never contracting on someone’s behalf |
| Verified | Attestations by accredited issuers: identity, licenses, certifications, track record | Anyone, or by selective disclosure | Eligibility for mandates that require a verification tier |
| Authorized | Data and actions a participant grants to named counterparties under a specific mandate | Named counterparties, for named purposes | Transactions within that mandate’s scope |
| Private | A participant’s own data, keys, strategies and prices | The owner only | Nothing outside the owner’s control |
Indexing is not membership. Membership is not delegation.
04Control
There is no central database of the world’s economic activity. What must be shared is the grammar, not the data, the money or the decisions.
Protocol specifications and schemas, identifier resolution, trust lists of accredited issuers, verifiers and operators, cross-border settlement interoperability, an incident registry and protocol-level emergency signaling. Interoperability needs one grammar, and failures travel across borders.
Legal recognition, licensing, identity and business verification, consumer protection, data residency, tax, dispute forums, liability anchors and insurance pools, payment-rail connections and execution centers. Law, money and enforcement are territorial, so these sit with locally licensed operators.
Keys, mandates, private data, agents, prices, acceptance decisions, the choice of provider — and the right to leave. Authority and assets belong to their owners.
05The spine
Every plane reads and writes the obligation ledger: a replicated, append-only record of mandates, of obligations — who owes what to whom, by when, against what evidence — and of references to that evidence. It does not need to be a public blockchain. Regional operators run its nodes; content is encrypted by default; participants read their own records, counterparties read what their mandates allow, and supervisors have access under law.
It exists because obligations must survive the failure of any single agent, provider, operator or region. After an outage, settlement and verification resume from the ledger — not from the memory of whichever agents happened to be running.
| Dimension | Illustrative design target | What actually binds |
|---|---|---|
| Indexed profiles | 400 million | Data rights, freshness, provenance |
| Events | About 11,600 per second on average | Engineering — solvable |
| Escalations to people | 0.1–1% of mandates | Trained reviewers in every jurisdiction |
| Disputes | 0.5–2% of mandates | Dispute forums; evidence quality |
| Uncovered exposure | Capped by margin | Capital, cover and guarantee funds |
The 400 million figure is an order of magnitude taken from published estimates of small and medium-sized enterprises worldwide — an estimate, not a census.
06Today
Almost every component can be assembled from mechanisms that already exist or are being standardized. What does not yet exist is their composition into accountable, cross-vendor, cross-border delegation — and the institutions around it.
Building blocks, existing or emerging
What Economic Grid proposes to add
07Notation
Every diagram on this site uses the same notation, so a mandate, an agent or an obligation looks the same wherever it appears.