Orbital Interchange Foundation · OIF
A neutral foundation for the shared protocol.
- Tax designation
- 501(c)(6) (planned)
- Incorporation target
- Month 18 post-seed
- Governance
- Member-driven
- Scope
- Protocol only
Why a foundation
The protocol is not the company.
Wavestar Holdings operates the clearing engine, the operator terminal, the listings market, and the federated attestation network. Those are commercial products run by a regulated company. The protocol underneath them — the identity namespace, the attestation schema, the settlement envelope format — is shared infrastructure, and shared infrastructure should not be controlled by one company indefinitely.
Our template is the Linux Foundation, the IETF, and the Ethereum Foundation — three different legal shapes, one common institutional logic: the standards live in a neutral body, with membership-driven governance, so that every participant can depend on them without depending on the commercial fortunes of any single implementer.
The timing is deliberate. Forming the foundation too early is political theatre. Forming it too late entrenches concentration. We have targeted month 18 — shortly after the SEC ATS filing is under review and before ORCH enters full operation — as the right point to transfer the protocol stewardship out of Wavestar Holdings and into OIF.
Standards that matter live longer than the companies that ship them. That survival is worth designing for, on purpose, from day one.
What OIF governs
Scope — narrow and explicit.
- 01
The did:orbit: namespace
The W3C DID method extension for orbital entities. Schema, resolver behaviour, rotation rules. One registry, shared address space. - 02
The attestation schema
The canonical envelope for signed orbital facts — ephemeris, downlink delivery, propellant transfer, ISAM events. The schema lives in OIF; the implementation lives in Wavestar Attest. - 03
The settlement envelope format
The COSE-based envelope for cleared-trade records and the JCS canonicalisation rules for every hashable payload. Published as an open specification. - 04
The public reference implementations
OIF maintains the reference SDKs — TypeScript, Python, Rust, Go — under Apache 2.0. The foundation runs the release cadence and the interop test suite. Every compliant implementation can point at the reference. - 05
What OIF does not govern
OIF does not run the clearing engine, set clearing fees, admit members to Wavestar, or make any commercial decision. Those are Wavestar Holdings responsibilities. The separation of concerns is crisp. - 06
What OIF cannot become
OIF is explicitly not a regulatory body. It has no authority to grant or withhold licences, to designate market participants, or to issue binding operational rulings. Those are regulator and Wavestar Holdings responsibilities.
Membership
Four classes.
Membership classes
- Operator members
- Constellation operators, ground-station operators, hosted-payload providers, ISAM service providers
Full voting rights on protocol amendments. Annual dues scaled to operational footprint.
- Implementer members
- SDK maintainers, tooling vendors, consultancies shipping integrations
Full voting rights on interoperability and conformance matters. Annual dues scaled to organisation size.
- Academic and research members
- Universities, research institutes, standards bodies
Non-voting, participating. Dues waived. Formal invitations to working groups.
- Government and regulator observers
- Agency staff, national-lab observers
Non-voting, observer status. No dues. Clean separation between regulatory dialogue and protocol governance.
Governance
How decisions happen.
- 01
Member vote on protocol amendments
Material protocol changes require a two-thirds supermajority of voting members. Minor changes — bug fixes, clarifications, editorial — are handled by the technical steering committee under published delegation rules. - 02
Technical Steering Committee
Nine-seat committee elected by the membership. Two-year staggered terms. Operates transparently under an open charter, with public minutes and public issue tracking. - 03
Working groups
Topic-specific working groups chartered by the Technical Steering Committee. Open membership. Working-group output is published as OIF specifications subject to member ratification. - 04
Transparent funding
All material OIF financial disclosures are published annually, including the Form 990 filing once the organisation is tax-exempt. No dues rebates, no under-the-table sponsorship deals.
Formation timeline
The road to OIF.
- Months 0 – 9In progress
Protocol lives inside Wavestar Holdings
The did:orbit:, attestation, and settlement envelope specifications are drafted and stewarded by Wavestar Holdings. Reference implementations shipped under Apache 2.0 from the outset. - Months 9 – 15Planned
Interim standards committee
An interim committee is convened across operator partners, implementer partners, and cryptography advisors. Drafts the OIF charter, bylaws, membership classes, and voting rules. Outputs are public from the first meeting. - Month 18Planned
OIF incorporation
Orbital Interchange Foundation is incorporated as a 501(c)(6) membership body in the United States. Founding members seated. Interim committee dissolved in favour of the elected Technical Steering Committee. - Months 18 – 24Planned
Protocol handover
The did:orbit: namespace, the attestation schema, and the settlement envelope format are formally transferred to OIF under the charter. Reference implementations remain Apache 2.0 and migrate their governance repositories to the foundation. - Month 24+Planned
Operating cadence
OIF runs on a standard annual rhythm — member meeting, election cycle, specification release cadence, interoperability event. The institution becomes ordinary. Which, for a standards body, is the highest praise.
Interested in founding membership
The interim standards committee is the door in.
If your organisation will operate against the did:orbit: namespace — as an operator, an implementer, a researcher, or a regulator — the interim committee is where the founding-member conversation starts.