III. Why Cultural Infrastructure Requires Sovereignty

The Nature of What We're Building

Nonterritorial is not an application. It is an infrastructure—permanent systems for art to circulate across generations. This distinction demands sovereignty for three reasons:

1. Anti-Speculation Must Be Architectural

On general-purpose chains, preventing speculation requires blocking behaviours that the infrastructure assumes as default. You write code that says "transfers disabled" on a platform designed to enable transfers. This works, but it's adversarial—your application fighting its host.

On a sovereign chain, non-transferability can be architectural. The consensus layer itself can be designed around circulation rather than exchange. Trading isn't disabled; it's simply not part of what the chain does. The infrastructure embodies the value rather than enforcing it through exception.

2. Cultural Permanence Exceeds Platform Lifecycles

Ethereum is 10 years old. Polygon is 7. These are young technologies. Cultural infrastructure must think in longer timeframes—decades, potentially centuries.

A sovereign chain's permanence depends only on its community's commitment to maintain it. There are no upstream dependencies that might deprecate, pivot, or fail. The infrastructure's longevity aligns with its purpose: as long as art needs to circulate, the network that enables circulation can persist.

3. Governance Must Serve Cultural Values

General-purpose chains govern according to general-purpose priorities: security, scalability, ecosystem growth. These are valid priorities, but they're not cultural priorities.

A sovereign chain can embed cultural values in its governance structure. Decisions can weight artistic integrity alongside technical efficiency. Protocol upgrades can prioritize accessibility alongside security.

The governance model serves the mission rather than accommodating it.