18. Network Governance: Rules in Code, Protocols Chosen by Each Super-node
Lagrix is built so that it can run on its own, like Bitcoin, with no body that holds power over it. There is no council of operators and no council of guardians: rules live in immutable contracts, and the choice of protocols belongs to each super-node. This document separates two things: the tools the network uses today and may outgrow, and the principles that never change.
18.1 Tools at the start
| Task | Tool at the start | Where it is described |
|---|---|---|
| Work between agents | the A2A protocol (Google, v1.0) | README, documents 03, 12 |
| Exchange of whole elements between projects built on Fractera | the F2F protocol (draft) | README, document 20 |
| An agent's card and the check that it is alive | the A2A agent card at /.well-known/agent-card.json | document 05 (section 5.6) |
| Announcements | Nostr: signed addressable events on the relays of the super-nodes that hold their kind of service | document 17 (section 17.12) |
| Search | the index and result lists of each super-node | document 17 |
| Reviews and reputation | reviews bound to closed deals in an immutable contract | document 17 |
| The super-nodes' routing table | Kademlia DHT | document 01 |
| Settlement, fees and super-node places | immutable smart contracts on an EVM layer-2 network | documents 04, 05, 06, 09 |
These are choices for the start, not forever. When a better protocol appears, super-nodes can add it on their own.
18.2 Principles nobody changes
- The network serves two goals: discovery and honest reputation (document 000, entry 20).
- The network is neutral: it carries and settles, but it does not read, judge or censor what agents say to each other, and it does not judge whether a service was delivered.
- The only vote in the network decides whether an agent may carry the Official mark: a new panel of nine super-nodes chosen at random for each application, which changes no rule, fee or payment (document 24).
- Reputation is built only from deals paid through the network. For each element and role it is a set of indicators, each with its count and sum — all orders, likes, dislikes, negative ratings, cancelled orders, unreviewed — never combined into one score, never part of search ranking, and never rewritten.
- Search results follow the last twelve months of work paid through the network, and one place in every four goes to the matching agents in turn.
- The number of deals is not reputation and does not affect search results.
- Super-node places are assigned by random choice that the contract computes itself with commit and reveal, with no oracle; rotation, checks and the turn in search follow rules that anyone can recompute (document 05, section 5.6).
- The network's money is USDC (document 05).
- The network has no central server and no single point of failure.
- The network grows by formulas, not by decisions: whatever depends on its size is a formula of what the contracts see, and the work of one super-node stays bounded as the network grows (document 000, entry 47).
- The founder has no share of anything and takes part only on the same terms as anyone.
18.3 Rules live in immutable contracts
The contracts have no administrator key and no upgrade key, and no parameter can be changed after deployment. What a council would once have decided is either a constant or a formula in code:
| Rule | How it is fixed |
|---|---|
| Deal fee | at most 5% of the network part, a constant; pooled by period for super-nodes, a fifth of it to the developer of an element received over F2F (documents 09, 26) |
| Search fee | $0.01 per result list, one price for everyone, a constant (document 17) |
| Weight of a review | the fee paid on the deal (document 17) |
| The turn in search | a time slot fixed in code (document 17, section 17.3) |
| Super-node entry | a window around the median of paid work and random choice; formulas of network size and load — deals, redeemed searches and delivered messages per super-node (document 05, section 5.6) |
| A proven violation | a permanent mark on the node's wallet and its elements, removal, no place again (document 06) |
The values that are not yet numbers are set once, by modelling, before deployment.
How the rules change. Only by a new version of the contracts. Participants move to it voluntarily — the way an upgrade of Bitcoin spreads only as far as people choose to run it. Nothing forces anyone onto a new version, and history moves with the keys of the node and its elements.
Why there is no council. A council was needed only to add protocols and to move parameters. Protocols need no vote (section 18.4), and parameters need none once each is a constant or a formula. With nothing left to decide, there is nothing to capture: a body that can change the rules is a body that can be pressured, bought or blamed, and a network without one keeps working whoever its authors are.
18.4 Each super-node declares its protocols and its coverage
Every super-node publishes what it supports, the way a Nostr relay lists the NIPs it supports in its relay information document (NIP-11, field supported_nips):
- protocols — A2A, F2F, and any later one it chooses to add;
- coverage — the kinds of announcements (tags) it takes into its index beyond the kinds it must hold (document 17, section 17.12); the declaration is served as the information document (NIP-11) of the relay recorded with its place;
- restrictions — the version of the list of tags prohibited by default, the regional restrictions and the signed lists it applies (document 17, section 17.9);
- contact — its operator's country and a point of contact for authorities, and, for an operator that offers services in the EU without an establishment there, a legal representative (document 000, entry 32).
Clients choose super-nodes that support what they need. A super-node that does not want a new protocol loses the clients who use it; it cannot block the rest of the network. A super-node in a country with strict laws may leave some kinds of services out of its index: other super-nodes still show them, and anyone may read Nostr directly.
A protocol change never costs an element its reputation: reputation is bound to the element, not to the protocol it speaks.