The Trust & The Bridge

Adopting the Bridge

Adoption of the Bridge is a public, unilateral act. Under Article 14 a party adopts by publishing on the Register a declaration in the form the Bridge itself provides. Nothing else counts as adoption, and no party may represent adoption or endorsement that the Register does not show (see the repository NOTICE and Bridge Article 13.2).

Read the Bridge first. The declaration binds the party from its date (Article 14.2) and expires after three years unless renewed with a compliance finding (Article 14.3). Read the Bridge, revision 3, in particular Article 3 (triggers), 4 (verifier), 7 (custodians), 10 (auditor), 11 (the Register) and 14 (adoption).

The Declaration of Adoption

This is the declaration as it appears in the Bridge, revision 3, reproduced verbatim from the-bridge-rev3.md (SHA-512 aafdb28bcb71e912b90fcbdbece957346da077745e0134b52c62022388e28eaa1516957f424eb1192a01f65f7f06a6a1bf80586477dc636a8c02ed43a93ba0b4). A plain-text copy for completion is at declaration-of-adoption.md.

Declaration of Adoption

The undersigned adopts the Bridge as to the Articles named, for the covered systems listed, with the verifier, custodians, and auditor named, and undertakes to publish its thresholds, disclosures, incidents, and verifications on the Register, from this date until the date stated or until released under Article 12.

Adopting party Articles adopted Covered systems Verifier Weight custodian Key custodian Auditor Expiry Signature

What the declaration must name (Article 14.1)

In the Bridge's words, the declaration names:

  • the Articles adopted, which shall include Articles 1 through 7, 10, 11, 13, and 14;
  • the thresholds it applies under Article 3 and the covered systems they reach;
  • the verifier it has engaged and the terms of engagement;
  • the custodians holding its preserved weights and keys: two custodians, not Affiliated with the party or with each other (Article 7.3);
  • the auditor conducting its annual verification.

Every public claim of adoption shall state conspicuously whether Articles 8 and 9 were adopted; "full adoption" may be used only where every Article was adopted. Every declaration states the date on which it expires unless renewed (Article 14.4).

Submission policy

Register entries are third-party content: the publisher records them and does not endorse them. By submitting, you represent that you are authorized to act for the party named; that the declaration is accurate and not misleading; that it does not state that any person or organization has adopted or endorsed any instrument unless that is true; that it infringes no rights and breaks no law; and that you license it under CC BY‑SA 4.0. Entries are recorded exactly as submitted or declined, never edited. See the legal notice.

Entering the declaration on this Register

This repository's Register is a plain, public copy of the Bridge Register as described in Article 11: append-only, every entry signed, timestamped and content-addressed, corrections appended and linked. It is not yet held by three unaffiliated custodians (Article 11.2); see the Register page for its status.

  1. Complete and sign the declaration. Keep the signed declaration as one file (PDF or Markdown).
  2. Compute its digests: sha512sum declaration.pdf and openssl dgst -sha3-512 declaration.pdf.
  3. Write one Register entry as a single line of JSON that validates against schema.json, with entry_type declaration. The worked example shows the shape; its fields mirror the declaration's columns.
  4. Sign the entry: canonicalise the JSON (RFC 8785) with the submitter_signature member removed, sign with a published key, and put the signature in submitter_signature.
  5. File the Register entry form in the repository, attaching the signed declaration, or open a pull request yourself that appends the line to register/register.jsonl and adds the declaration under register/documents/<sha512>.<ext>. Do not edit any existing line.
  6. The build validates the entry, including that the Articles adopted include 1 to 7, 10, 11, 13 and 14 and that the expiry is within three years. The maintainer merges entries that validate and publishes them within seventy-two hours of receipt (Article 11.2). Merging records the declaration; it is not an endorsement, a verification, or a judgment.

After adoption

Later events are further appended entries, each naming the entry it follows in supersedes: thresholds published under Article 3; modifications disclosed before effect (Article 5.2); withholdings (5.4); incident reports, initial within seventy-two hours and full within sixty days (6.2); findings and refusals under Article 8.2; verifier findings (4.7); annual verifications (10); renewal, lapse (14.3); and corrections (11.2).

What adoption does not do

In the Bridge's words (Article 13.2): No adopting party shall describe adoption as membership in the Trust, as compliance with the Constitution, as endorsement by the Trust, or as a substitute for law. See also what this is not.