Questions about CKBA

[CKBAMembership]

@CKBA

Governance Structure

The Association operates under Swiss association law, a well-established and politically neutral framework designed for membership-driven organizations.

Membership is structured in two tiers:

• General Members are community members who can participate and engage in Association meetings.

• Contributing Members are long-standing contributors to CKB and hold formal governance rights, including voting on key matters such as the election of the Board and the approval of major decisions affecting the Association.

The governance of the Association itself is organized around two primary bodies: the General Assembly and the Board.

The General Assembly is the highest governing body of the Association and consists of all Contributing Members. It is responsible for setting the Association’s overall direction and exercising ultimate oversight of its operations. This includes approving budgets, ratifying major strategic decisions, admitting new Contributing Members, and electing or removing Board members.

The Board serves as the supervisory body of the Association. It is elected by the General Assembly and is accountable to it. The Board is responsible for overseeing the Association’s strategy and ensuring that execution aligns with the priorities approved by the membership.

Day-to-day operations such as communications, software development and testing are conducted by various operational teams, coordinated by the Office of Association Operations, led by the Operations Director, a position appointed by and accountable to the Board.

This structure establishes a clear separation between strategic oversight and execution. Authority ultimately rests with Contributing Members (through the General Assembly); the Board is tasked with supervision and operational personnel focus on day-to-day execution toward board-decided goals.

In practice, this distributes decision-making power among active contributors, ensures leadership accountability, and creates a governance system that can evolve and scale with the ecosystem while remaining decentralized and transparent.

For more details, please check out this post A New Chapter for CKB: Introducing the Common Knowledge Base Association

[AryaStark]

Since the GA sets CKBA’s direction and approves major strategic decisions, is it also accountable for defining and advancing a roadmap for the parts of CKB under CKBA’s stewardship?

[matt_ckb]

@AryaStark

defining and advancing a roadmap for the parts of CKB

no, the CKB team (led by @chenyukang ) would identify CKB priorities, the CKB VM team (led by @xjd ) would identify CKB VM priorities, the Fiber team (led by @quake ) would identify Fiber priorities

General assembly would identify and affirm strategic and operational priorities for CKBA.

CKB is mature, it’s success will not be driven by it’s roadmap, but adoption of what has already been implemented. CKB will evolve based on actual developer and user needs, rather than projected ones.

[AryaStark]

I get that CKBA doesn’t own or control CKB. The Linux Foundation doesn’t own Linux either, but it’s still accountable for the funding and ecosystem programs it manages.

Since CKBA controls the budget and coordinates the operating teams, who makes the final call when team priorities compete with CKBA’s strategic or funding priorities—the team lead, the Board, or the GA?

[NightLantern]

It’s the Board, but under the ultimate authority of the General Assembly

[AryaStark]

Are the CKB, CKB-VM, and Fiber teams actually part of CKBA—employees or contractors funded by the association—or are they independent teams?

[AryaStark]

Thanks, that clears it up. If the Board makes the final call under the GA’s authority, what strategic priorities have they approved for CKBA this year?

[matt_ckb]

@AryaStark

Are the CKB, CKB-VM, and Fiber teams actually part of CKBA—employees or contractors funded by the association—or are they independent teams

contractors funded by the association

@AryaStark

what strategic priorities have they approved for CKBA this year?

Execution teams are lead by three core priorities at this time

-One: Increase awareness of CKB

-Two : Improve developer tooling and developer community

- Three: Prioritize longevity of CKB

One: Being addressed through communication efforts

Two: While maintenance, security and continual improvement of tools are important priorities, I believe your question is more about forward looking kind of things, Fiber is the priority on this front

Three: Efforts on the on-chain treasury are the main thing happening in this direction

Just an fyi, conversations are better handled through chat platforms like Telegram or Discord, while the Forum is better for long form text

[AryaStark]

@matt_ckb

Just an fyi, conversations are better handled through chat platforms like Telegram or Discord, while the Forum is better for long form text

I’m in the Telegram groups, but messages there are easy to miss and get buried. I’d rather keep governance questions here, where the answers are public and easy to reference later.

@matt_ckb

contractors funded by the association

Since these teams are contractors funded by CKBA, who is responsible for turning those three priorities into actual budgets, milestones, and deliverables—the Operations Director or the Board?

[matt_ckb]

@AryaStark

who is responsible for turning those three priorities into actual budgets, milestones, and deliverables—the Operations Director or the Board?

budget is proposed by the board and voted on by the GA.

There are not milestones and deliverables, team leads organize 2 month cycles of work and their work is reviewed by the operations team.

Headcount decisions are made in conjunction with team lead and operations team.

[AryaStark]

Thanks, Matt. That helps clarify the operating process.