Membership: Tiered Credentials and Domain Trust Anchors

Defining Structured Access, Role Eligibility, and Governance Scope Through Layered Credential Hierarchies

6.3.1 The Role of Tiered Membership in NSF DAOs

Not all DAO participants should have equal access, authority, or influence. NSF DAOs operate across critical risk domains—health, climate, finance, and disaster governance—where:

• Decision latency must be minimized

• Credential quality must be provable

• Risk of credential inflation or capture must be managed

• Multilateral compliance must be ensured

To address this, NSF introduces tiered membership, where every agent’s DAO role is governed by:

• Credential provenance

• Tier classification

• Domain-specific scope

• Revocability and delegation paths

Each tier is enforced via cryptographically verifiable credentials and integrated into clause execution, simulation validation, and vote weighting.

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6.3.2 Credential Tiers: Overview

Tier	Description	Typical Roles
Tier 0	Root governance; clause authorship or treaty body	Treaty Delegate, DAO Architect, Jurisdictional Signatory
Tier 1	Governance and institutional operators	Credential Issuer, Simulation Verifier, DAO Auditor
Tier 2	Operational agents in-field or agency-linked	Simulation Analyst, Disaster Coordinator, Public Health Officer
Tier 3	Public-facing observers and contributors	Citizen Witness, Public Research Partner, NGO Liaison

Tier definitions are DAO-specific, and may be inherited from higher-order treaties or clause families.

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6.3.3 Domain Trust Anchors

A Domain Trust Anchor is an entity (e.g., DAO, multilateral body, or sovereign registry) recognized by the NSF protocol to:

• Authorize Tier 1 and Tier 2 credential issuance

• Validate subordinate VC claims

• Establish delegation, appeal, and revocation policies

• Participate in clause-level execution bindings

Example:

"trust_anchor": {
  "id": "UNDRR-DAO",
  "domains": ["DisasterResponse", "EarlyWarning"],
  "recognized_by": ["UN Treaty System"],
  "valid_until": "2030-12-31"
}

Each trust anchor must maintain:

• Credential issuance logs

• Revocation registries

• Public audit oracles

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6.3.4 Membership Verification at Execution

Execution environments (TEEs, CACs, simulation oracles) validate:

• That a VC corresponds to a registered tier

• That its issuer is a recognized trust anchor

• That it has not been revoked

• That its role matches the action being requested

Clause logic may require:

if signer.hasVC("SimulationAuditorVC")  
and signer.tier >= 1  
and VC.issuer in trust_anchors("Simulation")  
then execute

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6.3.5 Tiered Privileges and Boundaries

Each tier grants:

Capability	Tier 0	Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3
Propose new clauses	✅	🔶 (with endorsement)	❌	❌
Vote in governance	✅	✅	🔶 (in domain scope)	❌
Issue credentials	✅	✅	❌	❌
Execute policy clauses	🔶	✅	✅	❌
Submit simulation outputs	🔶	✅	✅	❌
Trigger emergency override	✅	🔶	❌	❌

🔶 = Scoped / conditional

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6.3.6 Upgrading and Downgrading Tiers

Tier movement is governed by DAO policy and enforced via:

• Time-based progression rules

• Peer verification (e.g., 3 Tier 1s must endorse Tier 2 upgrade)

• Simulation or clause-bound outcomes (e.g., a successful forecast leads to promotion)

• Revocation or demotion upon misuse, inactivity, or appeals resolution

Credential oracles track tier lineage, issuer authority, and lifecycle events.

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6.3.7 Credential Bundling Across Tiers

Credential bundles may include mixed tiers:

"bundle": [
  "ForecastModelVC#Tier1",
  "DisasterOperatorVC#Tier2",
  "CitizenWitnessVC#Tier3"
]

Each clause must validate which tier levels are required for which logic paths. For instance, a simulation trigger may require at least one Tier 1 certifying credential and two Tier 2 confirmations.

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6.3.8 DAO Membership Oracles

Oracles for DAO access validate:

• Tier credential (valid, signed, unrevoked)

• Role match to clause, simulation, or proposal

• Geographic or domain jurisdiction

• Delegation or delegation expiry status

They return:

{
  "tier": 2,
  "authorized_for": ["[email protected]", "[email protected]"],
  "issuer": "UNDRR-DAO",
  "scope": "EGY"
}

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6.3.9 Tier Mapping Across Federated DAOs

In multilateral configurations:

• DAOs define tier equivalence mappings

• These mappings are logged, signed, and enforced during execution or vote validation

Example:

{
  "from_dao": "AFRICAN-Union-DAO",
  "to_dao": "WHO-GovDAO",
  "tier_equivalents": {
    "Tier 2": "Tier 1",
    "Tier 3": "Tier 2"
  }
}

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6.3.10 Tiered Membership as a Pillar of Machine-Led Governance

NSF's tiered credential system provides:

• Granular access control

• Verifiable authority boundaries

• Traceable trust escalation

• Jurisdictional accountability

• Governance resilience

It turns credentials from flat permission flags into domain-aware institutional identities, embedded directly in the clause and execution architecture of risk governance.