Contracts

Contract infrastructure for verified humans. Both parties are identified through government ID — this makes digital contracts legally enforceable under IT Act 2000 (India), ESIGN Act (US), and eIDAS (EU).

What the Platform Provides

1. Template library — Jurisdiction-aware, lawyer-reviewed contract templates. Community-contributed and continuously improved. Covers common use cases (see below).
2. Digital signing — Legally enforceable under IT Act 2000 Section 5 (India), US ESIGN Act, EU eIDAS. Both parties are verified real humans. Signatures are timestamped and immutable.
3. Immutable storage — Signed contracts cannot be altered post-signing. Cryptographically timestamped. Both parties retain access forever.
4. Payment tracking — Records that payments happened per contract terms. The platform does not process or hold money — it records that Party A confirmed receipt of ₹X from Party B on date Y.
5. Reminders — Payment due dates, contract expiry, renewal notices, milestone deadlines.
6. Dispute resolution — Mediation infrastructure (see below). Does not replace legal rights.

Platform scope

The platform verifies identity, witnesses the agreement, and stores the document.

Payments move through existing rails (UPI, bank transfer). Contract enforcement is the legal system's job. The platform is not a party to any contract, does not provide legal advice, and does not perform due diligence on either party.

Use Cases

Freelancer Agreements

Verified client hires a verified freelancer. Scope, deliverables, payment terms, IP ownership — all in a signed contract. No ghosting (you're a real person with a reputation), no payment disputes without a trail.

Example: A designer takes on a branding project. Contract specifies: 3 deliverables, ₹15,000 total, 50% upfront + 50% on approval. Both parties sign. Platform tracks payment confirmations.

Rental Agreements

Verified landlord and verified tenant. Monthly rent, deposit, maintenance responsibilities, notice period — digitally signed, stored immutably, legally enforceable.

Why this matters: Sign from your phone in 5 minutes. Both parties verified. Immutable record if disputes arise. No notary visit, no physical paperwork.

Example: Tenant signs a 11-month rental agreement. Platform sends monthly payment reminders. Both parties have an immutable record if disputes arise.

Loan Agreements (P2P)

One verified person lends money to another. Interest rate, repayment schedule, default terms — all in a signed contract. The platform records payments as they happen.

Example: A friend lends ₹50,000 at 8% annual interest, repayable in 12 monthly installments. Both sign. Platform sends repayment reminders and records each payment confirmation.

Note: P2P lending regulations vary by jurisdiction. The platform provides the contract infrastructure. Compliance with local lending regulations (RBI guidelines in India, FCA in UK) is the responsibility of the parties. Templates include jurisdiction-specific disclosures where required.

Partnership Agreements

Two or more verified people starting a business together. Roles, equity split, decision-making authority, exit terms, dispute resolution — all defined upfront.

Example: Three friends start a delivery service. Partnership agreement defines: equal equity, unanimous decisions above ₹1 lakh, any partner can exit with 90 days notice at book value.

Service Agreements

Hiring a plumber, a tutor, a caterer, a photographer. Scope, timeline, payment, quality expectations — signed by both verified parties.

Example: Hiring a photographer for a wedding. Contract specifies deliverables (300 edited photos, 60-second highlight reel), timeline (2 weeks post-event), and payment (₹25,000, 50% advance).

NDAs and Confidentiality

Verified parties signing non-disclosure agreements for consulting, freelance, or business discussions. Enforceable because both parties are identified.

Co-Ownership Agreements

Multiple people buying something together — property, equipment, vehicles. Ownership shares, usage rights, maintenance responsibilities, exit mechanism.

Employment Contracts

Small businesses hiring employees. Salary, role, notice period, non-compete (where enforceable), benefits. Particularly useful for businesses that can't afford HR departments.

How It Works (Any Contract Type)

1. Party A selects a template (or starts from blank)
2. Both parties negotiate terms on-platform (chat, document collaboration)
3. Final terms are locked — both parties review
4. Both parties sign digitally (verified identity = legally valid signature)
5. Contract is stored immutably — both parties can access anytime
6. Platform sends reminders per contract terms (payment dates, milestones, expiry)
7. If disputes arise → mediation infrastructure available

Template Lifecycle

Dispute Resolution (Structured ODR + Human Mediation)

Structured Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) infrastructure — guided negotiation, evidence submission, and escalation paths that resolve disputes without courts while preserving legal enforceability.

Resolution layers, in order:

1. Structured negotiation (automated) — The platform guides both parties through a structured process: gather each side's statement, identify points of agreement/disagreement, suggest resolution ranges based on similar past cases (anonymized precedent database). Many disputes resolve here because the structure forces clarity. No human mediator needed.

2. Assisted mediation — If negotiation fails, elected mediators step in with full case context already organized. The system surfaces relevant precedent, contract terms, and payment history — mediators focus on judgment, not information gathering. Fast, accessible, free for the first attempt.

3. Legal system — The agreement is a signed contract, enforceable in court. Either party can go to court at any time — platform mediation doesn't waive legal rights.

ODR Flow

Why structured ODR:

At scale (thousands of disputes/month), unstructured mediation doesn't work — mediators burn out, response times grow, quality varies. Structured ODR (the model used by eBay and Modria/Tyler Technologies) resolves 80%+ of disputes at layer 1 without human intervention.

What the system does:

• Collects structured statements from both parties (guided questions, not freeform)
• Identifies contract terms relevant to the dispute
• Surfaces anonymized outcomes from similar past disputes ("in 73% of similar cases, the resolution was...")
• Suggests settlement ranges both parties can accept/reject
• Escalates to human mediator only when structured negotiation fails
• Tracks mediator quality (resolution rate, satisfaction, time-to-resolution)

What the system does NOT do:

• Make binding decisions (humans decide, always)
• Replace legal rights (court is always available)
• Use AI to "judge" who is right (it organizes information, not adjudicate)

The goal is to resolve most disputes without courts (which are slow, expensive, and inaccessible to most people). But legal enforceability is never taken off the table.

Revenue Model

Fees are set at actual infrastructure cost + small margin. All fees are public, comparable across jurisdictions, and adjustable by governance vote.

Platform scope

The platform provides contract infrastructure. It is agnostic to contract type — freelancer agreements, rental contracts, loans, service agreements all use the same signing and storage system.

What the platform does not do:

• Does not solicit, recommend, or match parties for any type of deal
• Does not pool capital or hold funds
• Does not vet, perform due diligence, or guarantee outcomes
• Does not operate a marketplace for financial positions

Verified people decide what contracts to sign. The platform provides the infrastructure — templates, signing, storage, dispute resolution.

Cross-border contracts

Cross-border contracts involving money (business funding, loans) are subject to foreign exchange laws (FEMA in India, Capital Markets Act in Kenya, FATF guidelines globally).

The rule: Cross-border financial contracts are facilitated only for registered entities in sectors where both countries' laws permit the transaction.

Domestic contracts have no such restriction — a rental agreement, service contract, or revenue share between people in the same country uses the same infrastructure regardless of entity registration.

The platform starts domestic-only for financial contracts. Cross-border activates country-pair by country-pair, only where local law permits.

Legal Basis

Digital contracts signed by verified parties are legally enforceable under:

• India: IT Act 2000 Section 5 (electronic signatures valid), Indian Contract Act 1872 (capacity, consent, consideration)
• US: ESIGN Act, UETA (electronic signatures equivalent to physical)
• EU: eIDAS Regulation (electronic identification and trust services)
• Most jurisdictions: Have equivalent electronic signature legislation

The platform's verified identity layer provides stronger authentication than most e-signature services (which often accept email-only verification). Every signatory is a government-ID-verified unique human.

What's NOT Built Yet

Contract infrastructure is Phase 2 — it requires:

• Verified identity layer (Milestone 2)
• Lawyer-reviewed templates per jurisdiction
• Digital signing infrastructure
• Immutable storage
• Payment tracking integrations

It does not ship with the MVP. The MVP (discussion + reviews) builds the community and trust. Contracts activate when the identity layer is solid and templates are ready.

Template System

How Template Creators Get Paid

Lawyers and domain experts create contract templates. They earn per usage — every time someone signs a contract using their template, the creator gets paid.

Payment model:

• Creator sets their per-use fee (within platform guidelines based on complexity tier)
• Fee is included in the contract creation cost paid by users
• Platform takes a small operational cut (covers hosting, signing infrastructure, storage)
• Creator earns for the lifetime of the template (as long as it remains listed and current)

Credential requirements:

• Verified identity (same platform system as everyone)
• Demonstrable legal qualification (bar membership, law degree, or equivalent domain expertise)
• Jurisdiction declaration (which jurisdictions this template covers)
• No anonymous template creation

Template Liability

Three parties, clear responsibilities:

Platform's duty: Disclaimers on every template ("this is infrastructure, not legal advice"), version tracking, notification if a flaw is discovered, maintenance reserve for orphaned templates.

Risk Tiering

Different contract types carry different risk. Review rigor scales accordingly:

Quality Control

Before listing:

• Peer review by qualified professionals (number depends on risk tier)
• Plain-language summary required (reviewed separately from legal text)
• Jurisdiction tagging with specific applicability declarations
• Mandatory fields validation rules defined by creator

Ongoing quality signals:

• Usage analytics — where users abandon filling in a template, which clauses get modified most often. Signals confusion or poor drafting. Visible to creator.
• Modification tracking — if 40%+ of users change the same clause, the template needs updating. Platform surfaces this to creator.
• Post-signing feedback — "Did this contract work as expected?" collected 6 months after signing. Low scores trigger peer re-review.

Maintenance requirements:

• Legal change monitoring — when a relevant law changes (new rent control act, IT Act amendment, RBI circular), affected templates are auto-flagged. Creator has 30 days to update or template is delisted.
• Sunset rule — templates expire after 2 years without re-certification. Laws change. A 2024 template shouldn't be used in 2027 without someone confirming it's still valid.
• Orphan protection — if a creator disappears (dies, delists, becomes unreachable), platform uses maintenance reserve (10-15% of template fees) to fund a replacement professional to patch or maintain the template. Affected users are notified.

Flaw Discovery Process

When a template issue is reported:

1. Template is flagged (visible to new users considering it)
2. Creator is notified — has 7 days to respond
3. Peer review panel assesses whether the flaw is real
4. If confirmed: template is delisted for new contracts, creator patches it, patched version goes through re-review
5. All users who signed contracts using the flawed version are notified with an explanation of the issue and its practical impact
6. Template only relisted after peer review confirms the fix

User Protection

Cooling-off period (high-risk contracts only):

• Lending, equity, cross-border: 48-hour window after signing where either party can withdraw without penalty
• Standard in consumer protection law (EU has 14 days for distance contracts)
• Prevents pressure-signing and impulse decisions on high-stakes agreements
• Low-risk contracts (service agreements, NDAs) have no cooling-off — parties need fast execution

Signing safeguards:

• Platform refuses to process if critical fields are blank or contradictory
• Contracts above ₹1 lakh require face scan re-confirmation before signing (prevents account compromise from creating binding obligations)
• Plain-language summary must be acknowledged ("I understand what this contract does") before signing high-risk templates

No self-dealing:

• Template creator cannot be a party to contracts using their own template (conflict of interest)
• Prevents creators from designing templates that favour one side and then being that side

Multi-Language Templates

• Templates can exist in multiple languages with legal equivalence declared by the creator
• Legal text must be human-translated by a qualified professional (not neural MT — legal precision matters)
• Platform's translation layer handles UI chrome around the template, but the contract text itself is professional translation only
• If parties sign in different languages, the governing language is declared in the template (standard international contract practice)

Versioning

• Every template is versioned (v1.0, v1.1, v2.0, etc.)
• Signed contracts reference the exact version used — immutable
• When a new version is published, existing contracts are unaffected
• Users of older versions are notified if a newer version fixes known issues
• Version history is public — anyone can see what changed and why

Open Questions

• Regulation at scale: The platform hosts templates and records contracts — it doesn't match, solicit, or recommend. P2P lending as a regulated activity (RBI NBFC-P2P, FCA authorization) is an ecosystem-level concern for third parties building on the ZK identity layer, not for the contract infrastructure itself. Same distinction as DocuSign hosting loan documents without being a lender. Worth monitoring, but likely not a platform risk.
• Fee structure: Exact per-use fees per complexity tier need market research. The principle (creator sets fee within guidelines, platform takes operational cut) is set; the specific ranges are not.
• Stamp duty: Where jurisdictions require stamp duty (state-dependent in India, varies globally), the platform integrates e-stamp procurement as part of the contract creation flow. Handled per-template, per-jurisdiction — template creators declare stamp duty requirements, platform facilitates payment through the relevant state portal. Cost passed to users. Not a platform-level design question — it's operational, handled case by case.
• Cross-border enforceability: Enabled piece by piece, country-pair by country-pair, as legal research confirms mutual recognition of e-signatures. Aspirational goal — domestic-first, cross-border when and where we can.

Lawyers in any jurisdiction can contribute templates. Paid per use, for as long as the template is active.