How money flows: three peers, and one we are building.

Building a product rather than a consultancy takes twenty years to compound, so the shift has to start now. The free public product wins the first council partner, and that partner wins every one after it through peer recommendation. Tiered revenue, free for civic use and paid for professional users, transfers most directly to our conditions data and Rule Review Queue. No equity. Social investment or philanthropy only, which the governance structure is what makes possible.

The three per cent partner contribution is the most portable mechanism here: companies building on a conditions library return a fraction of related revenue. Decidim has proved it works at scale, and it rests on trust rather than enforceability, which is the part we would improve by writing the obligation into the licence. The anchor city matters more than reach. Barcelona funds Decidim's salaries. Seoul is our equivalent, and that relationship needs to be structural rather than grant-cycle dependent. 500 instances with 45 paying members is a warning about what reach alone delivers.

The governance architecture, a private limited company with purpose in the articles and a mission guardian holding veto, is directly replicable, and worth studying closely for London where a trust structure is available. B2C revenue covers operations and stops short of platform technology. Treat that as a structural law and design for it from the start. Brand trust is a real asset here: councils and IKEA choose the recognised name over white-label, and our equivalent is the credibility built through Korea, London and Melbourne. Philanthropic grants, with long timelines and no dilution, remain the best capital for civic tech platforms.

Confirmed. DML KR holds the core IP, protocol, permissioning logic and brand. Every operating company pays a licence and stewardship fee, which means revenue reaches the protocol layer without charging citizens.

Confirmed. The revenue sequence runs B2G subscription, B2C transaction fee, B2B data services, module settlement, surplus sharing. DML KR's fee sits at layer 3, above module settlement.

Added this round. A certification licence sits alongside the protocol licence: anyone claiming conformance to the civic standard pays, including systems that never run our code. This is the only revenue line that scales past our own deployments.

Still open. The operating agreements with Seoul, London and Melbourne need to state clearly where conditions output generated through city operation sits. Our position places the record in the commons and the derived standard with DML KR, and that needs testing against procurement law.

Still open. London may structure as a trust. The licence fee for a non-commercial entity needs its own design: same rate, concessionary rate, or another form of contribution back to the protocol.

Still open. The B2B data service depends on Inha University's living lab output, and ownership of that output determines whether the policy intelligence stream is achievable.