solon
Changelog
Governance layer: Bitcoin-signed voting, transparent treasury and Ostrom-style rules — humans and agents both first-class voters
What /compare shows, as data. /api/v1/places/compare?p= returns, for any place, the facts its tax model reads and the model itself — everything needed to estimate the tax there. It takes no income and computes nothing: the estimate runs wherever the income is, so Solon still never learns what anyone earns. OrangeCat uses it to suggest the tax share in a person's money rule. Listed on the integration page. [#261]
The roadmap and the changelog point at each other. Each roadmap step that shipped now links to the days in /changelog that delivered it, and each changelog entry that delivered a step names it, linked back to /roadmap. A goal's steps are drawn as a trail, filled where done. The links come from the fleet's shared building-in-public kit (bip-kit 0.6.0), so OrangeCat's pages carry the same ones.AdvancedBuilding in public · /roadmap and /changelog rendered from the fleet map without authentication
Basel-Landschaft, Schwyz, Uri and Obwalden on the map and in /compare. Uri and Obwalden tax income at one flat rate; Basel-Landschaft's tariff is a formula, which Solon now reads as the law writes it; Schwyz's communes have a tariff of their own. All four match the Federal Tax Administration's calculator to the franc. An estimate now shows the cantonal and the communal tax as two lines instead of one. (#244)
Vaud, Schaffhausen, Nidwalden and Glarus on the map and in /compare. These cantons round a couple's divided income to the hundred francs before the tariff applies, and Vaud cuts its cantonal tax by a share its tax law sets each year (5 % from 2026), which the Federal Tax Administration's tables do not carry; Solon keeps that share by hand, citing the law. All four match the Federal Tax Administration's calculator to the franc, Vaud in all its communes. (#243)
Ticino and Fribourg on the map and in /compare. Ticino's tariff states the tax at each step, and in a few places that differs from what its rates alone would give; Fribourg's tariff gives average rates rather than marginal ones. Solon now reads both as the cantons publish them, and both match the Federal Tax Administration's calculator to the franc: two communes each, single and married, at four incomes, for 2025 and 2026. (#242)
Four more cantons on the map and in /compare: Aargau, Solothurn, Graubünden and Neuchâtel. These cantons tax a married couple as if each earned half their joint income (splitting), which Solon could not express before, so their communes were grey. Their figures now come from the Federal Tax Administration like the others, and each was checked against its tax calculator to the franc: two communes per canton, single and married, at three incomes, for 2025 and 2026. Glarus, Nidwalden, Schaffhausen, Geneva, Thurgau, St. Gallen and Appenzell Innerrhoden also split, but do not match the calculator yet, so they stay grey rather than show a wrong figure. (#241)
A map of what tax would cost you, commune by commune. /places now opens on a map of every Swiss commune, coloured from the lowest tax to the highest for your income and household. Until you enter yours, it shows an example income of CHF 100'000 and says so. Type an address, a place or a postcode into one box to jump there; tap a commune for its tax, how it ranks and a link to its page, and add up to four to a comparison. The same communes are a sortable list beside the map, and on phones the list comes first. Your income stays in your browser. An address you type goes from your browser straight to swisstopo's geo.admin.ch to be found, and Solon never sees it; the note under the box says so. Communes whose figures are not recorded yet are grey. (#240)
Tax figures for every commune at once, for the map. A new public endpoint, /api/v1/places/map, gives every commune on the map with the tax figures that apply to it, so the map can colour each one by what you would pay at your income. The estimate runs in your browser, exactly as on /compare: your income is never sent. (#239)
Commune boundaries, for the coming map. Solon now imports the outline of every Swiss commune from swisstopo's official boundaries and publishes them as one small file (about 220 KB) that a map can check before drawing. A new edition each year replaces the old one on its own. The map on /places that uses them comes next, in dark and light. (#238)
Very high incomes in Vaud. Vaud limits its cantonal and communal income tax together to 30 % of taxable income. Solon did not, so a single person in Lausanne earning CHF 777,777 was shown about CHF 15,800 too much. Solon now applies the limit as the canton's law and the Federal Tax Administration's calculator do. (#245)
No federal tax below CHF 25. The federal tax is not levied when it would be less than CHF 25; Solon showed the small amount anyway (CHF 3 for a couple at CHF 30,000). It now shows nothing, as the calculator does. (#244)
Tax figures at incomes that are not round. The calculator rounds taxable income down to the hundred francs before applying a tariff (in every canton but Solothurn and Graubünden, and federally), and Solon did not, so an income such as CHF 87,654 came out a few francs off. Solon now rounds as the calculator does, and the checks include such incomes. (#243)
Federal tax at very high incomes. Above CHF 793,400 the federal tax is 11.5% of the whole income. Solon approximated this and showed CHF 1.40 too much; it now reads the tariff as published and matches exactly. The same correction applies to Graubünden's top rate (CHF 2.20). (#242)
Compare places in six more cantons. /compare now estimates income tax in every commune of Bern, Lucerne, Zug, Basel-Stadt, Appenzell Ausserrhoden and Jura, not only Zürich. Each canton was checked against the Federal Tax Administration's own calculator and matches it to the franc. Ticino and the cantons that tax couples by splitting their income follow. (#236)
Compare places: what tax would cost you in each. /compare puts up to four places side by side. Enter your taxable income and household, and it shows the yearly tax in each, the difference to the cheapest, and the tax rates behind it (federal, cantonal and communal), each with its source. Your income never leaves your browser: it is not in the link and Solon never receives it. When this year's figures are not all published yet, the comparison uses the latest complete year and says so. Every place page links to it, and it sits in the Places menu. For now it covers the Canton of Zürich's communes; elsewhere it says which figure is missing.
Places in the header: find a place by name or postcode. /places finds any recorded place by its name or postcode and lists every level of a country (cantons, communes, city districts…) with how many places each has. A postcode that spans several communes shows each one with its share of the addresses, and you pick yours. The same search is open to other apps at /api/v1/places. Places took Platform's spot in the header; Platform's pages are in the footer.
Places know their postcodes. Solon now reads swisstopo's official directory of localities, so a Swiss postcode leads to the commune it lies in. When a postcode spans several communes (1,223 of 3,190 do), Solon lists each with its share of the addresses instead of guessing. Liechtenstein's communes and two commune-free areas in the same directory are left out on purpose; the import lists them.
Place search without accents, amounts in Swiss formats. "zurich", "Zuerich" and "Zürich" now all find Zürich, and "neuchatel" finds Neuchâtel. Compared amounts read the Swiss way in every language ("CHF 13’050", or "13 050 CHF" in French) instead of the German "13.050 CHF". (#235)
Every everyday page in plain words, with the details one click away. The dashboard, the record and each organization's page now use the same layout as the rest of Solon and say what happened in a sentence ("The Cat joined as an AI agent.", "Agreed.", "Only people can vote on this, not AI agents.") instead of outcome: APPROVED · electorate: ALL_MEMBERS. Money reads in bitcoin, not satoshis. Everything exact (addresses, identifiers, the raw entry, the data links) is still there under "Technical details". The build now fails if one of these pages shows a stored code. (#226)
Decisions, in plain words. The pages where members suggest things and vote now look like the rest of Solon and speak plainly: "Suggest something", "Start the vote", "Agreed", "Turned down", and the rules of a vote as a sentence ("All members vote; at least 50% of them must take part, and more than half must agree.") instead of codes like SIMPLE_MAJORITY · quorum 50% · electorate ALL_MEMBERS. Topics read "How money is shared" or "Spending money" instead of "Allocation policy" or "Treasury spend". Error messages say what happened and what to do The menu says "Suggest something" in every language, a finished vote says "Result" instead of "Result so far (weighted)", and each decision's page has its own title in the browser tab. (#224, #225)
Sign in the usual way: email and password. "Sign in" and "Create an account" now open the sign-in screen straight away, with email and password, an emailed code, Google or GitHub. No more typing your email on one page to find the password on the next. You come back to the page you were on. (#223)
The deep side: a whitepaper, questions and answers, and a blog. /whitepaper explains how Solon works in full technical detail and says plainly what is built and what is only designed. /faq answers the first questions people ask, plain ones first and technical ones last. /blog follows the work as it happens. All three are markdown files in the repository, rendered with bip-kit, the kit our products share. (#227)
What Places covers, counted from the data, at /places/coverage: for each country, how many places each level holds, how many of them have each figure the tax estimate needs, and when each source was last fetched. A missing figure shows as a low count, not as silence. Place pages no longer claim to be untranslated in German, French, Italian and Russian. (#220)
Appenzell Ausserrhoden's tax rates are no longer held back as implausible. Its canton and commune multipliers (330%–420%) were above the import's sanity limit of 300%, so they would have shown as "not recorded". The limit is now 600%, above every multiplier Switzerland publishes (the highest is Lungern's 525%). (#237)
Solon no longer opens a database connection per query. In production every query started its own connection pool, so a busy page could use up the connections the server's apps share. There is now one pool, as intended.
Joining, in plain words. The join page now looks like the rest of Solon and says what is going on without technical terms: who can join, how new members get in (a member suggests you, the members vote), and what you can do meanwhile. It no longer shows the name of a server setting to visitors; an organization nobody can join is now reported to whoever runs Solon instead. OrangeCat's founder can now take its first seat. (#222)
Signing in when your OrangeCat account got its email later. Solon said "Add an email to continue" to accounts that had one, and "Sign in again" led straight back to the same page. OrangeCat now tells Solon the email your account has. If sign-in ever does stop, the page is in your language, says what to do, and every button on it works. (#221)
Tax estimates on 31 December. A year's tariffs and multipliers ended a day early, so an estimate on the last day of the year came out incomplete, and a commune that merged away looked gone the day before it did. Every period now ends on the day after its last day, as the rest of Solon counts time. (#219)
Switzerland, as the official register has it. Every canton, district and commune, with the mergers since 2021 (the old communes stay, marked as ended, and point to the one they joined), and the City of Zürich's districts and statistical quarters, each with a page at its place in the chain: /places/switzerland/zurich/bezirk-zurich/zurich/kreis-7/witikon. Everything comes from the Federal Statistical Office and the city's open data, with the source kept for every row. Taxes, postcodes and the map come next. (#215)
Each Zürich commune's tax multiplier, every year since 2021, from the canton's own statistics. A commune whose school communities levy different rates (Uster, Turbenthal) shows none rather than a wrong one, until the address decides which applies. (#216)
Federal and Zürich income-tax tariffs, and the canton's own multiplier, every year since 2021, from the Federal Tax Administration. Together with the commune multipliers they give the same income tax as the administration's own calculator for the City of Zürich and Küsnacht (checked at CHF 100,000, single and married; church tax and the CHF 24 personal tax are not counted yet). (#217)
A new kind of body: charter city. A city with its own charter, founded by agreement with the state that hosts it — or proposed, before that agreement. Like a town, it cannot be founded without a place; picking it suggests elected delegates to decide. Same word as on OrangeCat. (#214)
An organization says what kind of body it is, and where. Founding now asks the one question it never asked: what ARE you — a circle, a family, an association, a cooperative, a collective, a company, a guild, a DAO, a town, a network state or a local fund. The list is the same one OrangeCat uses (bitbaum/orangecat packages/collective-kinds), so the word here is the word there. A town or a local fund cannot be founded without a place (country, region, locality); everything else may name one. Picking a kind suggests how it decides; the founder can still choose otherwise. The organization page names the kind, the place and — when it is more than informal — the legal status.
One body, two records: bind an organization to its OrangeCat organisation. Give its OrangeCat address at founding; OrangeCat confirms the founder owns it, and its kind and place fill in what was left blank. The wallet lives there, the decisions live here, and the page links across.
What you can do — the map. /what-you-can-do lists everything Solon does in plain words, with an example, three steps and a start for each, and opens with a box: type the question you want decided and a proposal is drafted from it. Linked from the footer.
Public roadmap and changelog. /roadmap and /changelog render this repository's ROADMAP.md and CHANGELOG.md through the fleet map, without signing in, and are linked from the footer.AdvancedBuilding in public · ROADMAP.md and CHANGELOG.md in the repository, in the fleet's contractBuilding in public · /roadmap and /changelog rendered from the fleet map without authentication
Who decides: one person, everyone, or elected delegates. Profiles used to vary only how votes were counted; every member always voted. An organization can now be run by its founder alone, by everyone, or by delegates elected for a term (365 days by default). Delegates decide money and operations; members keep membership, safety and the rules, which is how they elect and recall. A category with no live mandate falls back to the members, and the record says so. (#195)
Founding chooses how the organization decides. Every organization founded so far became a town meeting silently. The founder now picks a governance profile at founding, the choice is bound into the signed text, and the organization page names it ("Association (Verein)", not an id). (#194)AdvancedEvery organization on its own pages · Anyone with an OrangeCat account may found an organization — founding chooses its governance profile
Founding no longer says a Bitcoin key is required. The signed-out founding page still claimed votes verify through a Bitcoin key. A key is optional; the page now says so, and says what a key adds. (#196)
Solon's own sign-up and sign-in. /sign-up and /sign-in in Solon's design, in all five languages: email first, then Google, GitHub or an existing OrangeCat account. One account underneath for Solon, OrangeCat and Loki. The header's Sign in remembers the page you were on. (#191)
Use cases, the ideas behind Solon, a new era, and the platform. /for compares companies, villages and towns, associations and co-ops, communities and network states, with one page each. /governance/ideas tells the ideas Solon stands on, each with its source; /governance/new-era says what changed and what technology still cannot do; /platform explains how Solon, OrangeCat and Loki work together. A four-panel menu describes every page in one line. (#190)
Five languages. English, German (Swiss spelling), French, Italian and Russian, chosen by the URL and a switcher in the header — never guessed from the browser. Pages not yet translated say so in the reader's language. (#189)
A new front door. Full-screen photographs, one statement and one action per section, a three-link header and copy written for the person who runs a group — no protocol vocabulary on the front pages. New /hire (free for pilot groups in beta) and /credits. (#188)
Every header control is a 44px touch target. Sixteen controls in the header were smaller; the wordmark, the four section triggers, Sign in and Hire Solon now all meet the floor. (#193)
Phone layouts no longer scroll sideways, and the mobile menu opens. Both had shipped and were found by looking; the render checks that now run in CI fail if either comes back. (#188)
Govern with one click — Bitcoin is optional. A seat no longer needs a wallet. A signed-in member claims a seat, founds an organization, files a proposal and votes with one click; each act is recorded as Solon's record. Signing with a Bitcoin key stays available for anyone who wants a vote others can recount, and agents always sign. Changing your vote replaces the earlier ballot until the session closes. (#184)
The site no longer claims every vote is Bitcoin-signed. The home page, /governance, /features, /integration and /propose now say what is true: one click by default, a signature when wanted, every record labelled with which. (#187)
Dependency updates that had been dropped are back, and minor updates arrive grouped so it cannot recur. (#185)
A link that carries context lands on a form that kept it. OrangeCat's "Govern it with Solon" button now opens /propose with the title, the entity and the cheapest category pre-filled — with its consequence stated and one tap to change — and the draft survives sign-in and joining. The form's category hints are read from the rules themselves instead of a hand copy. (#172)
A rules change shows whether it was decided. Every pull request touching the governance rules is checked for a ratifying decision; when there is none it warns with a pre-filled link to the proposal that would. It records; it never blocks. (#172)
Loki's plane is Execution, not Engineering. The footer and the ecosystem page name what Loki is: where the work gets done. (#173)
Anyone may found an organization. The only way to create one used to be a database migration. Founding is now permissionless; the organization, the founding seat and both audit events land in one transaction. One identity holds one seat per organization, and an organization is attributed to a Loki project only through a grant Loki signed — never because the names match. (#166)AdvancedEvery organization on its own pages · Anyone with an OrangeCat account may found an organization — founding chooses its governance profile
Governance, taught from the product's own code. Five pages — /governance, /governance/methods, /governance/thresholds, /governance/who-decides, /governance/profiles — where every tally is computed by the same function that counts a live session. (#168)
The approval floor is visible. On the Approval tab, an option rated below the floor dims, so a reader can watch the tally being assembled. (#169)
A localization that was never wired up is gone. Four dictionaries shipped where no visitor could reach them; the English copy moved into the components that use it. (#170)
Value routing to originators. originator_share v1: 10% of a product's net revenue, by default, to the originators of the code it is built from — equal per originator, monthly, in Bitcoin, on a public ledger. The split is deterministic and anyone can recount it; every later version needs an approved allocation-policy vote. (#164)AdvancedRevenue-share rules as governance rules · originator_share v1: a deterministic split, pinned by content hash
One signature step for claiming a seat and filing a proposal. (#165)
FleetCrown is now called Loki everywhere on the site. (#157)
Green pull requests merge and deploy themselves through the fleet's shared sweep instead of a stale local copy, and the sweep no longer stalls on workflow changes. (#154, #155)
Node, React, Next, Vitest and other dependencies updated. (#140–#153)
Design tokens come from the published package @bitbaum/design-tokens instead of a git tag, so Solon, OrangeCat and Loki share one source. (#139)
Prisma replaced by Drizzle — the fleet has one ORM. Migration history begins at a baseline proven byte-identical to the tables Prisma created. (#136)
One package manager (pnpm) across the fleet. (#137)
Moved to the bitbaum organization, and verify made honest again. (#135)
The footer promised pages only the navigation could keep. Footer and navigation now render one list. (#122)
A formatter (Prettier) with format:check in verify; TypeScript 6; CI and the deploy follow the box to Node 24. (#123, #133, #134)
Feedback from any page. The Loki feedback widget loads site-wide, so a reader can report what is wrong from where they saw it. (#114)
Earlier history, in one entry. The spine of the product shipped in this week:
Six ways to decide, one way to prove it. Single choice, consent, approval, dots, score and ranked choice, each with its own signed ballot encoding; five governance profiles replace one hardcoded structure; the humans-only categories cannot be reassigned by any profile. (#92)
From reader to member to vote. /join binds a key to an identity, /propose files a proposal, /proposals lists them with their next step; every page offers at least one action. A second organization's vote no longer appears on the first organization's dashboard. (#90)
Treasury honesty. The treasury report says whether every source resolved instead of answering yes about nothing; the site stopped claiming transaction records it never stored. Still watch-only. (#88)
The Townsism thesis Solon is an organ of, published at /why and in docs/TOWNSISM.md. (#87)
One visual language across OrangeCat, Loki and Solon, from a shared token package; orange calls to action fixed to meet contrast. (#77–#93)