The rules citizens live by

Citizenship starts with Zero-Knowledge KYC: identity is verified against trusted external attestation providers, and only a cryptographic proof enters nera. The protocol can confirm a citizen is a real, unique adult without anyone in nera ever seeing their name. Personal data never enters the country.

Inside nera, citizens are fully anonymous to each other. No citizen IDs, no nicknames, no avatars — only a persistent, auto-generated word-triplet handle such as blue-falcon-twelve plus an aggregated public action history. Registration requires an adult attestation (voting age 18) and a camera-liveness check.

Liveness is not a one-time gate: every binding action — voting, casting a verdict, submitting a proposal, signing an agreement — requires a fresh attestation no older than 10 minutes. A real, living human performs every decision.

Any two citizens can form a protocol-based agreement. Each side independently sets its own substantive collateral anywhere from 0% to 200% of the trade value and beyond — the protocol imposes no ceiling. Full bilateral overcollateralization between distrustful strangers, zero collateral between parties who already trust each other.

One deposit is always mandatory: the joint court-fee deposit, at minimum $5-eq plus 1% of the trade value (capped at $100-eq). This deposit is the economic backing of the court — if a dispute opens, it pays the jury; if the agreement closes without dispute, it returns to both sides in full. The minimum funds a panel of 3 jurors; parties who want a larger panel for a sensitive agreement simply fund a larger deposit, up to 99 jurors.

Fees are small and flat-structured: a creation fee of 0.3% of trade value (min $0.50-eq, cap $50-eq) and an escrow service fee of 0.2% of escrowed value — each side's half is debited with its funding leg and refunded in full if the agreement cancels before activation. After both sides confirm completion, a hold period (24 hours by default) runs before settlement; a dispute can be opened from activation until the agreement actually settles — the hold can elapse with the dispute window still open. Unfunded agreements cancel automatically after 7 days. In Stage A, trade value is capped at $500-eq.

nera's courts have no judges, ever. When a dispute opens, the protocol randomly selects a panel from the pool of citizens who opted in as jurors (staking $10-eq). Parties submit evidence during a 7-day evidence window; the panel then deliberates for up to 7 days.

Verdicts require a high supermajority: 80% of the panel at first instance, 85% on appeal, 90% in criminal cases. If no option reaches the threshold, the case is held open for the parties to strengthen their positions — at most twice — and then escalates to a fresh panel 50% larger.

Either party can appeal within 14 days. The appeal fee is twice the first-instance deposit, refunded if the appellant prevails, and the appeal is heard by a fresh, larger panel. Dispute fees are split 75% to the jurors who did the work and 25% to the community treasury. A disputer who loses for lack of evidence forfeits the filing fee — the economic brake on frivolous cases.

Decisions are organized into nine directions: health, education, security, justice, treasury, infrastructure, foreign, science, and constitutional. For each direction, every citizen either votes personally on each proposal or delegates that direction to another citizen. There is no third option — sitting out is non-participation.

Non-participation triggers a progressive freeze of citizenship rights: 24 hours, then 5 days, 2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months, up to 1 year. A freeze blocks agreements and payments — but voting and delegating always stay open, because they are the cure: cover your directions and rights reactivate when the freeze expires.

Every passed decision waits through a 24-hour cooldown before execution. During the cooldown, delegators see exactly how their delegate voted and can revoke instantly — revocations drain support, and the tally is re-checked at execution. Constitutional changes require a 66% supermajority and a 30-day time-lock. One citizen, one vote, always — no weighting by anything.

Anyone can propose anything, with a refundable $5-eq anti-spam deposit. Whoever's proposal passes executes it — alone or with a team — and is paid from the treasury only after a completion-verification vote passes. AI is categorically banned from voting: the camera-liveness check on every vote is that ban, enforced at protocol level. AI may help draft, summarize, and analyze — it never decides.

nera is funded by the work it does. Fees on agreement creation, escrow, and dispute resolution flow to the citizens performing the country's work — jurors deciding cases, executors delivering passed proposals, stewards maintaining infrastructure — and the remainder accrues to a community treasury governed collectively through the same liquid democracy.

There are no automatic per-citizen payments. Citizens are paid for what they do, not for who they are — the same rule for everyone, including the author of the concept, who is paid only for specific work actually done, on the same terms as any citizen.

The values this prototype runs on, restated from the canonical parameter file (initial values, tunable later through governance):