Last verified: 28 September 2026
BB-1 — Explicit value exchange
Sovern is not a gratis consumer SaaS with unpaid broad tiers. Coordination always carries explicit value exchange — the substrate surfaces that exchange honestly.
The BB-1 invariant
Sovern's coordination substrate makes value-exchange a first-class primitive. There is no unpaid access tier that grants coordination without consideration; there is no perpetual gratis offer that conceals later commercialization. Every coordination act carries a value exchange — the substrate provides primitives for naming, measuring, and (when policy permits) deferring or waiving collection of that exchange.
This page exists because conventional software-as-a-service marketing often relies on vocabulary—tiers, plans, trials, and adoption-without-payment storylines—that assumes relationships Sovern does not model. A BLOCKING CI guard (listed under Rule 22 in AGENTS.md and in docs/compliance/COMPLIANCE_GUARDS.md) blocks a closed set of literal phrases in user-visible surfaces.
Collection policy statuses
When a value-exchange is invoiced, the org-admin (or substrate operator, with appropriate attestation) chooses one of these statuses for each line item. The status governs whether the exchange is collected immediately, deferred to a later moment, discounted, or waived entirely.
collected — Collected
Gross price collected at period close per pricing-flow output.
deferred — Deferred
Collection deferred to a future date (e.g., trial period); requires `collect_at` timestamp.
discounted — Discounted
Discount applied as a percentage of gross; requires `percentage` numeric value.
waived — Waived
Charge waived (e.g., personal space for individual; partnership allocation). When applied out-of-normal-policy, requires `attestation_id`.
See also
• AGENTS.md Rule 22 — no hardcoded pricing; commercial terms live in runtime configuration.
• /trust/value-exchange/ — auto-disclosed value-exchange axes, compensation models, and pricing-flow templates.
• /trust/payment-providers/ — the closed payment-provider registry; bank-transfer is the sovereign-default v1 provider.