Frequently asked questions

The Desirable Properties Challenge is a global community effort—launched by Vint Cerf's September 2024 question—to define what qualities a new Coordination Layerabove today's Web should possess before it becomes everyday infrastructure.

The challenge invites people everywhere to refine, debate, test, and improve living drafts of the Desirable Properties using Meta-Layer tools. See the Challenge timeline for milestones and the Kickoff meeting for how it began.

The Meta-Layer is a community-governed coordination layer above today's Web—a shared digital atmosphere that sustains context, presence, memory, and meaning without replacing existing content.

It enables people and agents to meet, interact, and collaborate with greater trust, consent, and context. Read the full framing on About.

Desirable Properties are shared design criteria that describe what must be true for the Meta-Layer to function—trust, agency, safety, accountability, contextual integrity, collective intelligence, and human flourishing—without prescribing how they must be built.

The current working draft lists 23 canonical DPs in Version 0.77. The set is not assumed complete. Browse the DPs.

DPs describe outcomes and conditions—the “what” humanity wants the Meta-Layer to enable. Technical specifications, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), and ML-RFCs follow once those outcomes are clear enough to guide implementation.

Multiple implementations, governance models, and technical approaches can coexist while remaining aligned around shared outcomes. See Participate for how Version 1.0 becomes the foundation for substrate work.

Version 0.77 is the current open working draft—developed through AI-assisted synthesis, two Calls for Input, and community stewardship. It is open for public review now.

Version 1.0 is the community-synthesized foundation targeted for editorial completion in early September 2026, ahead of the September 16 book and monument launch.

The Desirable Properties Challenge is stewarded by the Meta-Layer Initiative and its community. The challenge site (desirableproperties.org) is the participation hub; the Interface Governance Hub (Gov Hub) hosts draft documents, patches, and workgroup governance; and the book reader supports chapter-level Discuss, Patch, and Insert.

People make decisions. AI tools like Hermes help organize conversation—they do not replace community judgment.

No. You can read and comment on chapters, use Discuss / Patch / Insert on the book, submit text patches on the Interface Governance Hub, propose candidate DPs, join a workgroup, or spend ten minutes with the DP Community AI to integrate existing ideas.

Thoughtful critique, examples, and lived experience are as valuable as implementation expertise. See all the ways to contribute.

A practical path for newcomers:

1. Read the framing on About.
2. Browse the 23 DPs and pick one chapter that interests you.
3. Open the book and try Discuss, Patch, or Insert on a passage—or patch the same draft on Gov Hub.
4. Optional: use the DP Community AI or join a workgroup when you want deeper involvement.

Three paths, depending on how much time you have:

• Integrate your ideas (~10 min) – use the DP Community AI to compare your notes, papers, or projects with current DPs. Open Hermes →
• Review the Desirable Properties (~1–3 hours) – read chapters on the book and contribute via Discuss, Patch, or Insert; or submit passage-level patches on the Interface Governance Hub. Participate →
• Join a workgroup (~2–10+ hours) – help synthesize community feedback into Version 1.0 for one or more DPs. Browse workgroups →

On book.desirableproperties.org, all three modes start from selected text in a chapter:

On the book reader, open a chapter and select text on the page. Use the Canopi widget (open it via the Go Meta… tab, bottom-right of the viewer):

• Discuss – an anchored reply that adds discussion without changing the chapter text.
• Patch – propose replacing the selected passage with your revised text.
• Insert – propose new text that goes above the selection; the anchor passage stays unchanged.

Each mode opens the Discuss composer with the anchor attached. Hover a Patch or Insert pill in the feed to preview the change.

On the Interface Governance Hub (Gov Hub), Patchmeans something slightly different: open an ML-Draft, select a passage, and submit a formal text revision for community review—without using the book's Discuss / Patch / Insert widget. Both channels feed the same editorial process. Patch drafts on Gov Hub →

Yes. Select text in a chapter and choose Patch to propose replacing the passage, or Insert to propose new text above it. Use Discuss when you want to comment without changing the text.

Open Canopi via the Go Meta… tab on the book viewer. For formal draft revisions outside the book widget, use the Interface Governance Hub patch flow.

Hermes is the DP Community AI. It helps clarify what Desirable Properties mean, surface tensions, compare your ideas with existing DPs, identify gaps, and draft suggested patches—preparing your thinking for community discussion.

Sign in to chat at desirableproperties.org/agent. Your conversations are saved in the sidebar. Hermes assists; people and workgroups make decisions.

Submit a candidate DP on the Interface Governance Hub. The DP Discovery workgroup triages community submissions, runs open calls for emerging challenges, and shepherds promising candidates toward Challenge inclusion.

Submit a candidate DP → · Missing something? on the home page

Two coordinated Calls for Input shaped the current draft—first through People Centered Internet, Bridgit.io, and aligned partners; then through a broader public call whose submissions were preserved as Bitcoin Ordinal inscriptions.

Historical submissions remain at app.themetalayer.org and on the On-Chain page. Active stewardship continues here and on Gov Hub.

Use the Support page for challenge questions, workgroup help, technical issues, and content clarification. You can attach screenshots and include context about the page you were on.

• desirableproperties.org – the Challenge hub: timeline, DPs, workgroups, Hermes, badges, activity, and events.
• book.desirableproperties.org – the book reader. Read chapters and contribute via Discuss, Patch, and Insert (Canopi widget via Go Meta…).
• Interface Governance Hub (Gov Hub at hub.themetalayer.org) – draft documents, formal passage patches, workgroup membership, and layer governance.

The Layered Web: The Desirable Properties of a Meta-Layer is the formal title of the Desirable Properties book—a working draft published as ML-Drafts and evolving through community Discuss, Patch, Insert, and Gov Hub revisions.

Version 1.0 targets September 2026, with a permanent Ordinal edition as part of the Digital Monument. Browse on-chain →

The Interface Governance Hub (abbreviated Gov Hub) is the Meta-Layer's document tracker and governance surface. Read ML-Drafts, submit passage-level patches, join workgroups, and follow editorial process for the Desirable Properties layer.

Open Gov Hub →

The challenge site, book reader, and Interface Governance Hub share a single sign-in (Web3Auth with Google). After you authenticate, you may be redirected to Gov Hub to complete a join, nominate, or handoff flow—or returned to the page you started from.

Your session works across these surfaces so you do not need separate accounts.

Yes. staging.desirableproperties.org previews challenge-site changes before production deploy. It uses dev Gov Hub (dev.hub.themetalayer.org) and staging book hosts, but it shares the same challenge-site database as production (DP_DATABASE_URL from .env.local).

Important: actions on staging— support tickets, signups, Hermes sessions, broadcasts, and other stored data—can affect your real account and appear on production. Treat staging as a shared platform, not an isolated sandbox.

Current phase: Workgroup formation (July 21–August 30, 2026). Formation of workgroups for each Desirable Property–recruiting coordinators, co-leads, and contributors to steward individual chapters through the next phase.

Key upcoming milestones include community review, workgroup synthesis toward Version 1.0, and the September 16 book and summit launch.

Workgroups target Version 1.0 synthesis in early September 2026. September 16, 2026 is the book and Digital Monument launch, coinciding with the Meta-Layer Summit.

RSVP for September 16 on Luma →

On September 16, 2024, Vint Cerf joined the Meta-Layer community to discuss what desirable properties a new coordination layer should possess—launching the challenge and suggesting Federated Strong Authentication as an initial property (DP1).

Read the kickoff summary →

Use the Events item in the site navigation and the Events index for series, pathways, and sessions—including the Meta-Layer Summit on Luma.

A Desirable Properties workgroup is a focused team that stewards one DP (or DP Discovery) through synthesis—reviewing comments, patches, and proposals, building rough consensus, and preparing recommended revisions for the editorial process toward Version 1.0.

Most collaboration is async. Browse workgroups →

Join when you want to contribute as a member—reviewing, discussing, drafting, or taking a flexible role like Recorder or Liaison.

Nominate when you want to propose yourself or someone else as Workgroup Coordinator. The layer admin reviews and approves nominations.

Join vs nominate →

The workgroups page has additional FAQs about choosing a group, time commitment, multiple memberships, and how coordinators are chosen.

Workgroup FAQ →

Each Desirable Property has a base badge. When you contribute to a specific DP, you can earn that property's badge—with optional role overlays (Member, Workgroup Coordinator, Patch Contributor, Steward, and others).

Minted badges can link to patches, discussions, workgroup docs, and other public evidence of your work. Browse badges →

No. Badges recognize contribution. They do not confer ownership, authority, or voting power by themselves. Governance follows the Interface Governance Hub and workgroup processes.

The Layered Web: The Desirable Properties of a Meta-Layeris inscribed as a BRC333 book on Bitcoin Ordinals—a permanent record of the community-developed Desirable Properties. The challenge site's On-Chain page indexes PCI emails, Call for Input submissions, and inscribed DP drafts.

Badge minting is tied to documented contribution—patches, workgroup participation, reviews, and similar public records. Claim and mint flows are rolling out with the Challenge; preview artwork and metadata on the badges ordinal project.

Preview badge mint → · Badges page →

Vint Cerf suggested Federated Strong Authentication as an intentionally foundational starting point. Trust is the condition upon which other coordination depends—without it, higher-order properties cannot function reliably.

Why begin with trust → · DP1 chapter →

AI systems are treated as cognitive amplifiers—extending perception and pattern recognition without displacing human judgment. AI participation is differentiated from human participation, subject to asymmetric constraints, and embedded within interface-level governance.

Hermes assists the DP Challenge; workgroup and editorial decisions remain human-led. AI & Human Agency pathway →

Collective intelligence does not emerge automatically from connection or scale. It requires persistent context, shared memory, and legible governance as baseline conditions—the environment the Meta-Layer is designed to support.

Read more on About →

Today's Web is often treated as a flat surface of pages and links, but it is better understood as layered. The Meta-Layer introduces context as infrastructure—shared context that persists above individual pages and platforms so trust, learning, and continuity can accumulate.

From a flat Web to a layered world →

No. DP chapters are published as ML-Drafts—works in progress meant to evolve through Discuss, Patch, Insert, critique, experimentation, and lived experience. Version 1.0 is a milestone, not the end of iteration.

The current 23 DPs are not assumed complete; DP Discovery continues to surface candidate properties. Help identify gaps →