Anchor Governance defines how Satoshium Anchor controls its own Integrity References, integrity methods, representation requirements, Versions, Corrections, verification practices, publication behavior, and long-term preservation responsibilities.
Governance establishes responsibility for Anchor-owned decisions without transferring authority over the external artifacts Anchor references.
Anchor governs Anchor.
It does not govern Certifier decisions, Registry records, Chronicle historical interpretation, Atlas intelligence, Beacon discovery, Attestor Trust Statements, Navigator workflows, or other Source-System authority.
Anchor is authoritative for its own Integrity References, Anchor identifiers, Anchor-controlled metadata, Integrity State, Verification Results, Publication State, Lifecycle State, Versions, Corrections, and procedures.
FoundationGovernance should define how Anchor-specific standards, algorithms, representation requirements, schemas, Controlled Values, and procedures are adopted, revised, deprecated, or replaced.
DevelopingMaterial changes should be explicit, reviewable, versioned where required, and implemented without silently rewriting prior integrity history.
FoundationAnchor should preserve who or what process made material institutional decisions where that information is relevant to later review.
FoundationGovernance should translate shared Suite expectations and Anchor-specific integrity requirements into controlled institutional decisions.
Anchor Governance should control which digest algorithms, signature methods, timestamp methods, external commitments, and future Bitcoin-based mechanisms are acceptable for production use.
Governance should establish requirements for Canonical Representation, Representation Boundary, canonicalization, reproducibility, and changes to those requirements.
Anchor schemas should evolve through explicit Versioning with preserved compatibility expectations and no silent reinterpretation of earlier Integrity References.
Integrity Methods, Integrity States, Verification Results, Publication States, Lifecycle States, and other governed vocabularies should change through controlled revision rather than ad hoc usage.
Governance should define the minimum review required before an Integrity Reference is accepted for production and the conditions that trigger later Reverification.
Governance should define when an Integrity Reference may enter public production, how publication state changes are recorded, and how withdrawal or replacement preserves prior lineage.
Governance should distinguish Source Artifact Version, Anchor Version, Schema Version, Algorithm Version, and method Version so one is not mistaken for another.
Anchor should correct Anchor-owned errors forward while preserving the prior state and the reason for material change.
Anchor Governance must preserve the current Suite object model:
Anchor governance decisions apply to the Integrity Reference and Anchor-owned operations, not to the authoritative meaning or lifecycle of the external object.
A Source Institution may revise, correct, revoke, supersede, republish, or otherwise change its own artifact.
Anchor Governance should determine the appropriate Anchor response:
External change does not automatically authorize Anchor to rewrite its historical record.
Material governance decisions should be documented sufficiently to explain:
Not every routine maintenance action requires a separate governance artifact. The minimum-necessary-structure principle still applies.
Cryptographic methods age. Anchor Governance should support controlled deprecation when an algorithm, signature system, timestamp method, or external commitment mechanism is no longer suitable for new production use.
Deprecation should not erase valid historical Integrity References. Earlier records should retain enough metadata to preserve their historical meaning and verification context.
If Anchor later uses Bitcoin commitments, Governance should define when Bitcoin is appropriate, which commitment method is approved, how commitments are recorded, how verification works, and how method changes are handled.
Bitcoin should strengthen Anchor integrity preservation without becoming the source of institutional authority for the artifact being anchored.
Anchor Governance should make integrity-preservation decisions explicit, reviewable, consistent, and durable without creating unnecessary centralization or expanding Anchor beyond its institutional role.