Ayra: Charter, Purpose, and Principles

Ayra Charter

The following sections (Purpose and Principles) collectively represent our initial proposals for the Ayra Charter.

Ayra Purpose Statement

The purpose of the Ayra Association is to drive the growth of safe, secure, interoperable, and sustainable digital trust ecosystems that connect and enrich our world.

To achieve this, Ayra will:

• Establish a neutral nonprofit organization that follows our Guiding Principles to represent, serve, and advocate for the shared interests of all people, organizations, and ecosystems within the network.

• Establish and govern a layer of digital public infrastructure that interconnects digital trust ecosystems, enabling parties to form authentic, private, and secure digital relationships that encourage the growth and value of the decentralized data economy.

Ayra Guiding Principles

To achieve this purpose, Ayra operates by a set of guiding principles:

Transparent by Default	Ayra shall follow transparent processes whenever possible, communicating the “who”, "when", "why" of how decisions are reached, in order to engender trust both among members and with the larger community.
Equitable Participation	Ayra shall be open to all parties who have a direct stake in its mission; it shall give equitable representation to all such stakeholders; and it shall not give preference to any single stakeholder or group of stakeholders.
Nonprofit	Ayra will be a nonprofit that will provide services to our members and the broader community. It will however be self-sustaining through registrations, memberships, and other services and funding mechanisms.
Non-competitive	The purpose of Ayra is to solve problems and provide infrastructure that no member can adequately or fairly provide alone. If a member or a group of members can provide a function consistent with the policies of the Ayra GF as or more efficiently and effectively as Ayra, that function should be left to the members.
Inclusive & Diverse	Membership will be open to representatives for public authorities, private sector companies, and individuals across the globe; it will foster inclusivity and seek to serve a highly diverse membership of individuals and organizations of all sizes, geographies, industries, and use cases.
Independent & neutral	As an organization and as an infrastructure, Ayra shall serve as a neutral, independent party that serves all members equally and shows favour towards none.
Respects ecosystem sovereignty	Ayra shall not interfere with the internal governance or operations of participating digital trust ecosystems; they are sovereign over their own governance and operations.
Ensures individual sovereignty	Design, governance, and operation of Ayra Infrastructure shall ensure that individuals are first-class peers with all other stakeholders and that their rights to security, privacy, portability, and agency over their personal data and digital assets are protected.
Protects security and privacy	The design and operation of Ayra infrastructure shall protect and promote the security and privacy of member data in all Ayra-enabled interactions.
Decentralized	Ayra shall facilitate direct peer-to-peer relationships between members and enable the private permissioned exchange of verifiable data only between justifiable parties.
Agile and chaordic	As a governing body, Ayra Association shall be as lean, simple, and decentralized as possible—following Dee Hock’s principles for chaordic organizations.
Cross-ecosystem	Aya Association shall define policies and procedures to assist with inter-ecosystem disputes & accountability (“international waters”).
Standards-based	Ayra infrastructure will be based on open standards and conformance profiles for maximum interoperability. See the Open Stand Principles.