Software may preserve a claim or enforce a rule, but it cannot manufacture legal title, public consent, corporate shares or regulatory authorization. The BTG governance model is built around that separation: technical evidence is useful only within the authority that makes the action lawful.
GOVERNANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Cryptographic integrity can demonstrate that bytes or an event commitment have not changed; it cannot prove that a person possessed the contractual authority to sell the underlying records. Governing agreements, intellectual-property assignments, data-protection laws, Indigenous governance and any relevant sector restrictions determine whether an asset can be commercialized.
Researchers assess technical performance. Rights holders and legal reviewers establish usage authority. Corporate directors approve lawful issuer actions. Finance reconciles actual cash and taxes. Registrars maintain authoritative holdings. Regulators and authorized market operators determine regulated-market permissions. No private software platform can replace these independent decision-makers merely by recording an approval event.
Data minimization, limited purpose, confidentiality and meaningful withdrawal processes matter before a source is accepted. Sensitive source records should not become publicly searchable to make an investment instrument visible. Collective information about Indigenous peoples and territories requires community-governed authority; ordinary individual consent is not necessarily sufficient.
RIGHTS AND OVERSIGHT
A dataset may be subject to employee agreements, copyright, confidentiality, patent law, private-sector privacy statutes, public-record obligations and third-party licence terms. The party requesting use must show authority to grant precisely that use. A technical identifier, signature or API key confirms only facts within its scope, and none can cure a missing assignment or forbidden redistribution.
ENTITY records evidence of origin, contributing sources, limitations, expiration and documented entitlement claims. A Rights Passport exposes the permitted activity in plain language. When claims conflict or their validity is unresolved, the transaction must be held or limited rather than treating possession of a file as proof of ownership.
Indigenous data sovereignty cannot be reduced to a checkbox. Information concerning peoples, territories or traditional knowledge may be governed through collective law, agreements and institutions, and the proper decision may be not to enter any commercial marketplace. Likewise a city or university may lack authority to provide a privately requested dataset even when its staff can technically export it.
Public partnerships must follow normal procurement, records, privacy and conflict rules. Research collaboration is not automatic public endorsement of an exchange model, and a private relationship with an official is not a license to bypass the institution’s decision-making processes.
NIKI or another automated worker can recommend retaining a tested version, launching a qualified research job or preparing an asset record. ADAM checks authenticated authority, current entity state, permitted purpose, version and replay risk before any protected change proceeds. High-risk decisions can remain subject to professional or human review.
This separation matters when requests involve confidential data, irreversible deletion, commercial grants, contributor payments or securities-related actions. An AI-generated interpretation may help prepare a case, but it is not a signed contract, independent audit or lawful market permission.
Economic participation requires an agreement defining the source right and the return, if any. An agreed share of actual income should be calculated from reconciled receipts, respecting fees, taxes, withholding, refunds and reserves. One upstream contribution should not generate multiple identical claims merely because it appears through several software components.
Customers also need inspectable restrictions and dispute processes. If a licence expires, future actions should be denied while preserving historical records where lawful. If a source proves defective or disputed, records should show a correction and affected downstream references rather than rewriting the history as though the problem never existed.
A rights catalogue can describe prospective commercial offers without becoming a securities exchange. A lawful issuer needs corporate and offering documentation; a regulated trading venue requires the appropriate operator, intermediary, investor and settlement arrangements. Financial custody belongs with authorized financial actors, not with a screenshot of a wallet balance.
The public standard is explicit: proposed rights, internal engineering tests, third-party assessments, issued securities, executed trades and bank settlement are different states. Every publication should disclose which state has actually been reached.
What the records must establish
| Source authority | Documented title, lawful purpose and controller |
|---|---|
| Policy enforcement | Authenticated, scoped and revocable decisions |
| Contributor economics | Signed contract and reconciled eligible receipt |
| Data protection | Minimization, jurisdiction, retention and collective governance |
| Capital markets | Issuer, investor, custody and operator legal requirements |
