The project's three legal boundaries, gathered in one place because they are so often read into each other: what is not an offer, what belongs to whom, and who stands behind this document.

This page sits after the self-check part and after the invitation, following a rule of the whole document: check first, invite second — and once you have invited, state the boundaries plainly. The three sections below are not appendix material for a tidy file; each one blocks a misreading that has been seen in the wild.

Boundary	Which misreading it blocks	Label
Not an investment offer	"own it together" read as "buy a share"	A published principle, verifiable in each period's genesis file
Code and name are separate	"open source" read as "anyone may call their product 9Chain"	Code licence: PROPOSED · trademark: RUNNING
Two different legal entities	"there is an entity holding the name" read as "there is an entity operating the network"	Holding the name: RUNNING · operating: LEFT BLANK

Diagram

flowchart TB R["You read 'own it together'"] --> A{"What does it mean?"} A -->|"CORRECT"| B["One human · one share · one vote<br/>no amount of money buys more"] A -.->|"WRONG, and whoever says it is defrauding you"| C["Buy a portion · early access · profit share"] B --> D["The name does have an owner<br/>— and that is what gives<br/>'an impersonator is a fraudster' its meaning"]

Figure 35 — One phrase, two readings, only one of them correct.

This is not an investment offer

It must be said plainly, because the words own together are easily read as a sales pitch.

No selling, no listing, no price support, no promise of returns. These four are the project's published principles and a verifiable fact of every period run so far — and under the constitution, the only way such a thing could change is a public on-chain vote, never an offer in a private message. Ownership in this document means one real human, one share, one vote — something no amount of money buys more of, and something you do not lose by arriving late.

The direct consequence, worth remembering: anyone offering to sell you a share, a portion, or early access in this project's name is defrauding you — even if they use the right name, the right logo, and the right words from this document.

The code and the name do not belong together

Having said own together, this half must be said too, because it is the most easily misunderstood point remaining.

The code will be released under the open Apache-2.0 licence: anyone may read it, use it, modify it, and build their own version — including a competing one. The label on that sentence is PROPOSED, not RUNNING: a licence only takes effect once there is a repository to apply it to, and the repository is still a closed door. The name does not travel with the code. "9Chain", "LOVE9" and the associated marks are held by Krao Holdings, and are not part of that licence. In short: you may say your product is built on 9Chain; you may not say it is 9Chain, nor let anyone believe you speak for the project.

Placing this right beside the invitation is deliberate. An invitation to co-own a network is not an invitation to own a name — and the place where those two get confused is exactly where the sales pitches above come from. A name with a clear owner is what gives the sentence "an impersonator is a fraudster" any meaning; if the name had no owner, nobody could impersonate anyone, and nobody could protect you either.

This is a boundary about the right to use a name, not about decision rights. What the community can vote on remains exactly as this document states — and the rule that everything belongs to the community to decide together sits in the constitutional text itself; even the holder of the name cannot take it down.

Who stands behind this, and what belongs to whom

A document that asks readers to verify everything, without saying who wrote it, is asking in one direction only. So here it is in full, including the unflattering part.

There are two different legal entities here, and this document used to let them blur together:

	What it is	Status
The entity holding the name	Krao Holdings — holds the 9Chain and LOVE9 marks. This is what gives the sentence "an impersonator is a fraudster" any meaning	RUNNING — it exists, and it holds the name
The entity that will operate the network once it touches real assets	The party carrying licences and legal accountability to each jurisdiction's regulator	LEFT BLANK — not settled, and it determines the entire licensing regime

These are not the same thing. That the name has an owner does not mean the network has an operating entity; and that the operating entity is still blank does not mean the name is unowned.

The people are not named in this version. The founding group is not listed here, and that choice has a price: a project that sells nothing carries no legal duty to publish identities, but it carries another duty — it invites strangers to build something meant to last centuries. So the honest measure of separated key custody is not "are there three key groups" but: how many key holders do not depend on this project for their income. Same organisation, same city, same interests, and three key groups are still one group of people. That is a gate not yet passed, and it belongs on the same list as the three doors below.

In short: these three boundaries are not there to defend the project, but to give you ground to stand on when someone speaks to you in the project's name and says otherwise — a name with an owner, a licence with a scope, and an entity not yet settled that says so plainly.