What is engraved permanently

Almost every number in this document can be changed by vote. This part is about the part that cannot — and the most notable thing about it is how unusually short it is.

A constitution holding only three blocks and one rule is likely the shortest in the industry. That is a choice with a price, and this document states both sides: in exchange for the comfort of a line nobody can edit, the project takes on something larger — those who come later are not bound by those who came first — and the price is that all the weight falls on the voting mechanism.

Figure 33 — Three blocks and one rule. The meta-rule is what keeps every remaining box changeable — it engraves the right to change, not a number.

The only thing engraved permanently: three blocks and one rule

The project's constitution — formally the LOVE Paper, initial version V0.0 — may be the shortest constitutional text in the industry: it keeps only three memorial blocks and one rule.

The three blocks: Block 1 engraves Genesis 1:1 in the original Hebrew — heaven and earth, before humankind. Block Adam — the first human: the first block whose time passes 09:09:09 Jerusalem time on 09/09/2026; it deliberately names no block number, because block numbers depend on network rhythm while time does not, and the date is a rule of the founding period rather than part of the constitutional text. The hour is anchored to Jerusalem rather than to a convenient time zone, because what is engraved in the first block is Genesis in the original Hebrew — the announced hour must be consistent with the thing engraved. A technical consequence worth remembering: because the moment is set in Jerusalem time, its universal time drifts with the seasons; anyone adding the offset by hand will be an hour out for half the year. Block Eva — the second human, and the first "we": the block immediately after Block Adam. That order is itself a sentence: first heaven and earth, then a human being, then we.

Why that text, and what the project does NOT claim. Block 1 engraves a sentence roughly three thousand years old, read by many different traditions — that is why it was chosen: not because the project follows any faith, but because a ledger meant to live for centuries needs a reference point older than every existing technology. It is engraved as an artefact with a date, the way one lays a foundation stone, not as a profession of belief.

Four things stated plainly, so nobody has to guess. 9Chain has no religion, represents no religion, and neither favours nor excludes anyone for their beliefs. No rule of the network derives from the content of those three blocks — they are referenced by no consensus, issuance or governance mechanism; remove their content and every formula in this document still runs unchanged. The names Adam and Eva are used here to mean the first human and the second human, the point where a ledger turns from I into we; anyone reading another meaning into them will get no argument from this document, only a statement of the meaning it uses. And the project's name borrows from no faith — the reasoning behind the number nine is in Taking part, and the doors still owed, and it is a way of checking ledgers, not a sacred symbol.

One further consequence must be stated in full, because it touches operators rather than readers: the engraving is immutable, so anyone running a node of this network holds and re-serves that content. In some jurisdictions, storing and distributing religious content is separately regulated — and engraved text cannot be taken down. Operators in those places should check their own obligations before running a node. The project states this constraint rather than leaving others to discover it later.

One rule, and it is the entire remainder of the constitution: everything else about 9Chain — every number, every rule, every share — belongs to the whole community to decide together, for as long as the network lives.

These three blocks are engraved again every time a network is born, and only the engraving on the official network is permanent — every one on a test network is a rehearsal. The project is building two technical branches in parallel and the official network will follow the branch the community chooses, so the final engraving sits on that branch; see The two-branch strategy.

The constitution's content is frozen by a hash published before engraving, so anyone can hash it again and reconcile the on-chain text with the published one.

A consequence few anticipate, and it cuts both ways. Because engraved text is immutable, changing a sentence in the constitution does not change what was already engraved. The version on a period's chain is always the version as of that period's birth; new wording only reaches the chain at the next rebuild. So when text and engraving differ, the correct reading is: the text says what the project intends to engrave, the engraving says what the project has engraved. That gap is not itself a fault — it is the price of immutability, and one more reason only the engraving on the official network is final. To find out whether the two differ, do not ask: read the on-chain text and hash it again.

The nine documents engraved in the first block

The part above says what the constitution intends to engrave. This part says what the chain has engraved — and, more usefully, how you check that yourself without trusting this document.

In the first block, the chain writes nine documents. Each has a name and a body; the chain stores both, and the hash of the body is something anyone can recompute.

That split down the middle is the most worthwhile thing on this page. The first six are the constitution: they do not change by a single character across rebuilds, so their hashes are as durable as the text itself. The last three are the economic record of one specific period: each time the network is rebuilt the figures are engraved again, so their hashes change with it. That is why this document does not print those three: publishing a number that will change within days only gives a reader something to check against wrongly.

Check it yourself: three steps, no permission needed

⚠️ Step 2 is the only place this goes wrong, and it goes wrong silently. One full stop, one byte-order mark, or one extra blank line at the end produces an entirely different hash — not slightly different, completely different. If your result disagrees, suspect your own normalisation before you suspect the chain.

The three economic documents' hashes are read straight from the chain of the running period. For the six constitutional documents, this page prints the hashes here so you can check without trusting any third party:

genesis_inscription      7e89adee122f26790f748375e3ea6769cb386b20d695206c2e2c65e57e0f9615
dedication               19f90a317851933e88fb288949a44b18f87103b2d7947b80d557f05d425a236c
dedication_eva           747ebe59ab6a152e962a2c3f215f46a8a30a82265210cb4fd6ee4bd31ffc97df
love_paper_en            8cee72ba268f4f5fb0a55d77dd52313bcdfb8ff3afed3165686140e2a0339835
love_paper_version       8aed642bf5118b9d3c859bd4be35ecac75b6e873cce34e7b6f554b06f75550d7
love_paper_prev_sha256   cb52483fe9cd7804e0b3447d3ab3bf4b3c0cbeb21c1f5e3f7ee1ed139c302426

Four things easily misread, said plainly once

One — only the English version is engraved. The Vietnamese version of the constitution exists for cross-checking and has no force on the chain. Where the two read differently, the engraved one is correct.

Two — Block Adam and Block Eva do not exist yet. What sits on the chain is their dedication text, engraved as documents in the first block. The blocks themselves are defined by time — the first block past the mark on 09/09/2026 in Jerusalem time, and the block immediately after it — so they appear only when that moment arrives.

Three — no document can be added after the first block. The module holding these documents has no command to add one; the list closes the moment the chain is born. Engraving another text means waiting for the next rebuild, with the text finished before that hour. This is a hard technical constraint, not a negotiable choice.

Four — the number of documents is a settled figure, and one is missing from it. The project has decided to engrave an English translation of the opening sentence, so that it can be read without knowing Hebrew. That text has not been produced, so the list stands at nine rather than ten. The translation chosen is one in the public domain — a detail that sounds small but is mandatory: permanently engraving a text still under copyright into a public chain cannot be undone.

In short: this constitution engraves no number. What is permanently engraved is three memorial blocks and one rule; everything else — total supply, the allocation, how it is received — is decided by the community together. And what separates that from a promise is that you can check it in the three steps above: read the nine documents, rehash the six durable ones, and reconcile the other three against the chain of the running period. Any document calling one of the project's numbers unchangeable forever — including this one, in versions anchored earlier — misstates the current constitution.

In this part

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