§ 06 · The working group
The protocol, in the open.
Ephernity is stewarded by a small working group anchored at GINF Systems Kft. and Decent Edge, with contributions from independent researchers. The spec is the artefact; the hosting is one realisation of it.
§ 06.01
The name.
Ephernity is a portmanteau of ephemeral and eternity. The point is the spectrum between the two — that a single primitive can serve a millisecond and a millennium without giving up the proof structure that holds the millisecond together.
The companion implementation uses the product name Epher Compute Chain, served at epher.cc. The protocol is one thing; an operator is another. Either may exist without the other, and other implementations are explicitly welcome.
§ 06.01b
Open spec, closed product.
The protocol described on this site is open: data formats, hash chain, signature schemes, tier semantics, anchoring rules, and the deterministic contract dialect interface are all published as RFCs under CC BY-SA 4.0. A third party with these documents alone can build a conforming verifier or an alternative implementation.
The first production implementation — Epher Compute Chain, operated by GINF Systems Kft. — is a closed-source commercial product. Its mesh formation, runtime internals, billing pipeline, and per-host licensing are not published. Anything that crosses the wire, however, is governed by the open spec, and any conforming verifier accepts its output.
Interfaces are disclosed; implementations are not. The boundary is intentional.
§ 06.02
Governance.
The working group operates by rough consensus and running code. Changes to the protocol enter as RFCs, are discussed in public, and are merged when there is no sustained objection and at least two independent implementations have shipped the proposed change.
The protocol is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Implementations may be licensed as their authors see fit; the reference Go implementation is Apache 2.0.
The working group has deliberately not constituted a foundation, a DAO, or a token-holding entity. The reasons are practical and not ideological: foundations cost lawyers, DAOs cost engineers, and tokens cost the people who use the protocol. If at some future point a more formal stewardship structure becomes necessary, the question will be raised in the open.
§ 06.03
Contributing.
Read the RFC suite, file an issue, propose an amendment, or build an alternate implementation. The simplest contribution — and often the most valuable — is verification: take the wire format, build a verifier, and report what is unclear in the spec.
§ 06.04
Steward.
Initial stewardship rests with GINF Systems Kft., an EU-domiciled company that funds the reference implementation and operates the first deployment. The relationship is intentionally arms-length: the protocol is the artefact, GINF is one of its sponsors, and the goal is for other independent operators to ship verifying implementations.