What Governments Can Build¶

The building blocks and initiatives above modernize what governments already do. The same foundations make possible what only a software-defined government can do. We invite governments to try these services, and each would start as a supervised pilot under the country’s own law.

Participation by Verified Citizens¶

Verified, private digital voting (Voting) would make it cheap enough to ask citizens often: on local budgets, on draft laws, or on how a new park is used. It can also try new forms of participation. Petitions could count signatures from verified residents, including those who sign at a staffed office.

Universal Basic Income and Automatic Benefits¶

A universal basic income needs two things that have been hard to provide at national scale: certainty that each eligible person receives exactly one payment, and a channel that reaches everyone at a very low cost per payment. Identity credentials provide the first without a central list that exposes who receives what, and sovereign money with the distribution service provides the second. The same tools allow benefits that pay themselves: when an eligibility fact is attested, such as a registered birth, a job loss, or a harvest destroyed in a recorded flood, the payment can be offered or made without an application.

Programmable Fiscal Policy¶

Programmable money gives fiscal policy new instruments. A stimulus can be paid as money that must be spent at local businesses within a set period, and its effect can be measured while it is being spent. Value-added tax could be settled at the moment of payment instead of through quarterly returns, and refunds could arrive in seconds. Each rule runs only from templates that the central bank has approved, under fiscal rules that the treasury sets (Digital Currency & Stablecoin Infrastructure).

Citizen Shares in National Wealth¶

Tokenization lets a state give its citizens a direct, verifiable stake in national assets. Revenue from natural resources or a sovereign wealth fund could be paid as a dividend to every verified resident, as Alaska has paid an oil dividend to its residents since 1982, and citizens could hold small, transferable shares in public infrastructure projects, with the registry remaining the source of title (Real-World Asset Tokenization).

Agentic Government¶

With identity, consent, and records connected, Sign AI could also work for residents: agentic AI that acts on a resident’s behalf, with their consent, instead of waiting for them to apply. An AI agent could renew a license before it expires, gather the documents for a business permit from several agencies, or report a change of address to every agency that needs it, asking the resident to approve each step. Laws could be published as machine-readable rules that AI and smart contracts apply the same way everywhere, and a proposed rule could be tested against real, de-identified cases before it is passed. Officials would still make every decision that affects a person’s rights.