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Governance

Covia follows a community-driven governance model that ensures transparent and collaborative evolution of the protocol while maintaining its core principles of openness, security, and interoperability.

The Covia protocol is designed to evolve through community governance:

  • Open Development: All protocol changes are proposed and discussed publicly
  • Community Voting: Protocol upgrades are decided through community consensus
  • Backward Compatibility: Changes maintain compatibility with existing implementations
  • Gradual Migration: Protocol updates support smooth transitions for all participants

The protocol continues to evolve based on real-world implementation experience, community feedback, and emerging requirements from the AI ecosystem.

Principles​

1. Open Participation​

  • Anyone can propose protocol improvements via COGs
  • All discussions are public and archived
  • Decisions are made through consensus-building
  • Clear path for new contributors

2. Technical Merit​

  • Changes evaluated based on technical soundness
  • Backward compatibility requirements
  • Security considerations paramount
  • Performance impact analysis

3. Decentralised Decision Making​

  • Multi-stakeholder governance
  • Distributed voting mechanisms
  • Prevention of capture by any single entity
  • Balance between stability and innovation

Governance Process​

COG proposals​

  1. Proposal Stage

    • Initial proposal submission
    • Community discussion and feedback
    • Appointment of editor / maintainer
    • Assignment of COG-XXX number

  2. Draft Stage

    • Technical specification development
    • Development of reference implementation
    • Development of test suite
    • Publication of draft documentation

  3. Review Stage

    • Formal technical review
    • Security analysis
    • Community impact assessment

  4. Acceptance Stage

    • Consensus gathering
    • Final specification
    • Implementation planning

  5. Implementation Stage

    • Reference implementation
    • Testing and validation
    • Deployment coordination

Working Groups​

Core Protocol​

  • Protocol specification maintenance
  • Security reviews
  • Performance optimization
  • Backward compatibility

Implementation​

  • Reference implementation
  • Testing frameworks
  • Integration tools
  • Developer documentation

Community​

  • User feedback collection
  • Education and outreach
  • Adoption support
  • Event coordination

Getting Involved​

  1. Join the discussion on GitHub
  2. Participate in working group meetings
  3. Submit or review Protocol Improvement Proposals
  4. Contribute to implementation and testing

Current Governance Status​

The protocol is currently in its initial phase with a focus on:

  • Establishing core specifications
  • Building reference implementations
  • Growing the contributor community
  • Developing governance processes

We welcome participation from individuals and organizations committed to advancing the future of federated AI orchestration.