Governance

Immutable purpose

The Carrot Foundation exists to build a circular, low-carbon economy. This purpose is recorded in public Foundation records and is binding under the Foundation's statutes: ordinary governance decisions, leadership transitions, and ecosystem changes cannot override it. The rules, methodology frameworks (MvFs), and operational governance of the Carrot Network are expected to remain aligned with this commitment.

Stewardship model

The Foundation acts as steward of the Carrot Network — not as its owner. Ownership implies discretion over the asset; stewardship implies obligation to the mission. The Foundation Council can evolve how the ecosystem operates, but ordinary governance cannot override the purpose the ecosystem exists to serve.

This is the current trust model: a named accountable institution stewards the network today, and that stewardship is constrained by purpose, public records, versioned rules, and auditable system design.

Governance by architecture

Carrot's governance model is designed so accountability does not depend only on trust in current leadership or private system access. Public-value governance cannot rest on values language alone: the network uses Foundation stewardship, public records, versioned rules, inspectable methodology logic, digital MRV (dMRV) evidence, independent assurance, traceable credit data, and published reward mechanics so decisions and outcomes can be reviewed after the fact.

This does not replace institutional governance or independent review. It makes governance more accountable by making Foundation-led decisions, methodology changes, verification outputs, assurance evidence, credit records, and reward mechanics reviewable against the rules that produced them.

How the ecosystem is governed today

The Carrot Foundation is responsible for governance of the network and protocol layer — including standard direction, registry stewardship, methodology compliance, protocol development, operational continuity, and resource allocation.

Participants, integrators, methodology contributors, auditors, and applications operate within the network under their own roles and responsibilities. Their participation informs the ecosystem, but it does not make governance a promise of current decentralized control.

Decisions are made by the Foundation Council, composed of founding members and advisors with experience in product, technology, operations, environment, legal, and finance. This structure provides a clear accountable body during the current stage of development, while allowing evidence, feedback, and domain expertise from the ecosystem to shape governance decisions.

The Foundation's authority remains bounded by the public purpose and by the inspectable rules, evidence records, and assurance processes that other parties can review.

Current decision responsibilities

Progressive community participation

As the ecosystem matures and the participant base grows, the Foundation will progressively expand participation mechanisms. This is a participation path, not a claim that control has already moved away from the Foundation. The goal is to move from structured input toward defined responsibilities for qualified contributors, without reducing evidence quality or auditability.

This transition follows three phases:

Engagement

Open, structured participation in discussions, feedback, documentation review, and technical alignment. Contributors build shared vocabulary and evaluation standards with the existing ecosystem community.

Consultative

The community produces structured technical analyses and recommendations that support Foundation-led curation and lifecycle decisions. This includes identification of auditability gaps and recommendations for improving methodology frameworks and verification applications.

Deliberative

Qualified contributors may take on defined governance responsibilities only when the relevant roles, eligibility criteria, records, and safeguards are documented. This phase should be introduced only with enough evidence quality, auditability, and continuity protections to preserve trust in the network.

The criteria for participation levels and responsibilities will be documented before they are relied on for governance.

Integrity safeguards

Even as community participation grows, the Carrot Foundation maintains a fallback stewardship role to preserve transparency, reliability, and process continuity. This includes:

• Preservation and versioning of governance and methodology records so changes can be reviewed
• Evidence packages that remain intact and queryable regardless of who makes the decision
• Public credit and reward records that remain independently reviewable
• Response mechanisms for integrity risks

Governance evolution and evidence integrity move together. Changes to decision-making processes do not reduce the auditability of outcomes — decisions, methodology changes, and verification results remain explainable and auditable.

Compliance and auditability

Regardless of the governance structure, the Carrot Network is designed to make the basis for credit outcomes inspectable:

• The verification code (MvA) is open source (LGPL-3.0) and publicly inspectable
• Public, final on-chain records, including MassIDs, Certificates, credit tokens, and retirement receipts, are recorded on public blockchain infrastructure
• Rule execution and verification outputs remain inspectable through the Carrot Explorer and evidence records
• Independent assurance remains available through third-party verification of facilities, frameworks, dMRV evidence, and assurance processes

Transparency does not depend on today's governance structure alone — it is built into the architecture of the system.