Safeguards
Safeguards are optional, non-normative modules designed to protect communities against known high-risk failure modes that repeatedly cause collapse, capture, or irreversible harm.
Unlike core RCOS layers, safeguards are not required for compliance. They are adopted intentionally when a community recognizes that a specific risk domain applies to its context.
Safeguards exist because some failures:
- occur infrequently but catastrophically,
- cross multiple layers of the system,
- cannot be repaired once triggered,
- are often underestimated until it is too late.
What Safeguards Are
Safeguards are:
- Optional add-ons to RCOS Core
- Explicit and documented
- Defensive by design
- Focused on constraint, not optimization
- Activated through formal adoption
Safeguards typically:
- Introduce additional constraints
- Require new or modified artifacts
- Tighten exit, transfer, or authority rules
- Reduce flexibility in exchange for resilience
What Safeguards Are Not
Safeguards are not:
- Mandatory moral positions
- Cultural or ideological prescriptions
- Substitutes for governance or conflict processes
- Informal norms or “understood rules”
If a safeguard is not explicitly adopted, it MUST NOT be assumed to apply.
When Safeguards Are Appropriate
A safeguard is appropriate when:
- A failure would be irreversible (e.g. loss of land, legal capture)
- The impact spans multiple layers (governance, economy, membership)
- Exit would become impossible or punitive
- Power or assets could silently concentrate
- External legal or financial systems interact with the community
Examples of Safeguard Domains
Common safeguard domains include:
- Land and commons anti-privatization
- Founder or investor power constraints
- External capital and debt limitations
- Child safety and safeguarding
- Emergency power containment
- Succession and dissolution protection
Relationship to Artifacts
Safeguards are not artifacts themselves.
However, when adopted, a safeguard MAY:
- Require new artifacts
- Modify existing artifacts
- Add constraints to Layer 0 invariants
- Introduce additional test cases for compliance
These derived artifacts are only required while the safeguard is active.
Design Principle
Safeguards exist to answer one question clearly:
“What is so dangerous here that we must limit ourselves in advance?”
They trade optionality for survivability.
Communities are encouraged to adopt safeguards early rather than retroactively, as most safeguards lose effectiveness once a failure mode has already begun.