The Treasury of the Mohawk Nation of Grand River
The Grand River dollar
One Grand River dollar is one Canadian dollar — always. Every one is backed in full by a Canadian dollar held in the Nation’s account, and anyone can check that it is, every day. It keeps the Nation’s money working in the Nation’s own economy: paid to its members, spent at its businesses, and proven at every step.
One Canadian dollarAlways, at every moment. It does not float and it is not priced.
Backed in fullA Canadian dollar held in the Nation’s account for every Grand River dollar owed.
Not an investmentIt pays no return and cannot rise in value. Its worth is that it is always a dollar.
Owed to members nowGR$573.00
ReconciliationNot yet published
On the Stellar networkNot yet issued
How it works
- A member pays Canadian dollars in; the same number of Grand River dollars is credited to their account, and the Canadian dollars are held in the Nation’s account.
- Members pay each other, and the Nation’s businesses, in Grand River dollars — by phone, by QR code, or at the Secretariat.
- Every night, the day’s payments are sealed: each one’s fingerprint goes into a Merkle tree, and its root onto the Nation’s Ledger, anchored in Bitcoin. Any member can prove their payment is in it, from their own phone.
- The Treasury reconciles: what is owed to members, what the Nation’s account holds, and the amount on Stellar must agree. The result is published, every day.
- A member who wants Canadian dollars back is paid at par, from the reserve.
What it is not. The Grand River dollar is not an investment. It pays no return and cannot rise in value; it is not offered for speculation; and it is not sold to anyone as a way to make money. Its worth is its stability: a dollar that is always a dollar, kept in the Nation’s own economy.
Its particulars — the asset, the accounts, the keys
Its particulars
| Name | Grand River dollar |
|---|---|
| Sign | GR$ |
| Value | One Canadian dollar, at all times |
| Backing | In full: a Canadian dollar held in the Nation’s account for every Grand River dollar owed |
| Redemption | At par, in Canadian dollars, through the Secretariat |
| Minor unit | 2 decimal places (the cent), as for the Canadian dollar in ISO 4217 |
| Return | None. It pays no interest and cannot rise in value |
| On Stellar | Asset code NTN (credit_alphanum12), 7 decimal places on the network |
| Issuer account | GCFM3VNKG7GY4FS7BCDSS7U6UJK2276VJOHSKWSOY5DUC6FS3AGHXSCR |
| Distribution account | GAJDJNEOUNB34RKBQUAHICFCHAWHZ7QG2YW6BYMSKJVXOO4CKFEXZ57C |
| Network | The public Stellar network |
| The issuer’s key | Kept offline; two officers’ signatures needed to create or retire any Grand River dollar |
The standards it follows
| Stellar SEP-1 (stellar.toml) | Identifies the issuer and the asset, published at /.well-known/stellar.toml |
|---|---|
| ERC-20 interface | Its name, symbol, decimals and total in the ERC-20 form, for wallets and auditors (read only) |
| Ed25519 (RFC 8032) | Every Stellar signature, and the issuer’s two-of-many signing |
| RFC 6962 Merkle trees | The nightly seal of every payment, its root on the Nation’s Ledger |
| OpenTimestamps | The Ledger anchored daily in the Bitcoin blockchain |
| ISO 4217 | Amounts in two decimal places, as the Canadian dollar |
| IPSAS | The Treasury’s accounting |
| FATF Recommendations | Knowing the customer; reporting the suspicious; record-keeping |
| EU MiCA, for e-money tokens | The benchmark it meets: backed one to one, redeemable at par, reserves published |
| IADI Core Principles | The benchmark for deposit protection, the next step |
The notes
The Grand River dollar is kept in an account and paid by phone, by code, or at the Secretariat. It is also struck as paper, in six notes — each the same height, growing in length with its value, each in its own colour, and each with a raised bar at its edge for every step up the series, so a note can be told by touch.
GR$1One dollar · The river130.0 × 69.85 mm · 1 bar
GR$5Five dollars · The Tract136.0 × 69.85 mm · 2 bars
GR$10Ten dollars · The Chapel142.0 × 69.85 mm · 3 bars
GR$20Twenty dollars · The Mill148.0 × 69.85 mm · 4 bars
GR$50Fifty dollars · The Council154.0 × 69.85 mm · 5 bars
GR$100One hundred dollars · The Proclamation160.0 × 69.85 mm · 6 bars
A copy of a note is worth nothing
A note of the Nation is the record, not the paper. Every note is struck in the Register before it is printed, signed with the Nation’s key, sealed with a number under a panel that must be broken to read, and anchored in the Bitcoin blockchain the same day. It is redeemed once: present it again, or present a copy of it, and the Register says when and where the first was presented. A photograph cannot be redeemed, because a photograph cannot show what is under the panel.
Anyone may check a note by its number, without an account, and nothing is kept of the asking.
What is outstanding — every note struck, and what became of it
Every note the Nation has struck, and what has become of it. Published daily, so that the Nation’s books can be checked by anyone — which is what makes a currency trusted, rather than merely hard to copy.
| Note | Struck | In circulation | Redeemed | Withdrawn | Outstanding |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GR$1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | GR$0 |
| GR$5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | GR$0 |
| GR$10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | GR$0 |
| GR$20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | GR$0 |
| GR$50 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | GR$0 |
| GR$100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | GR$0 |
| All | GR$0 | ||||
Outstanding is what the Nation owes: every note in circulation, at par. The Treasury holds a Canadian dollar against each one, and the reconciliation says so.
The standard a note is struck to
How a note of the Nation is made proof against counterfeiting — not by the ink, which can always be copied, but by the record behind it.
- A note is a certificate, not the money
- A note is a claim on one Canadian dollar held in the Nation’s account, payable to whoever holds it. The dollar sits in the reserve; the paper goes about its business. Cashing a note takes the note out of circulation and the dollar out of the reserve in the same act — which is why the count of notes outstanding and the Canadian dollars held must always agree, and why the reconciliation is published.
- The note is the record, not the paper
- Every issuer defends paper with ink, and all ink can be copied well enough to pass at a till. The Nation does the ink too, but the defence is elsewhere: the paper is a claim on a record, the record can be checked by anyone in seconds, and it can be cashed once.
- One family, in sequence
- GRD001 and GRD005 are not two families: they are one family, GRD, in sequence — as the Nation already runs its claims of right and its residents. One entry in the Gazette constitutes the family; the sequence needs none. The sequence is made to carry the denomination — GRD001, GRD005, GRD010, GRD020, GRD050, GRD100 — so a number reads at a glance, counts cleanly by denomination, needs no further Gazette entry when a denomination is added, and gives the whole of the middle block back to the serial. The denomination is bound into the keyed tag as well, so the sequence and the tag must agree.
- Two codes of one family, signed together
- A note carries its record — dated, as every record of the Nation is — and its number, undated, as money must be. The record is what the Register files by and what the Edge Mark is made from, the Nation’s own mark packing the date into its bits; the number is what is printed large and read aloud. They are signed together, so neither stands without the other: a note bearing a number that does not belong to its record is refused, and so is the reverse.
- Its number carries no date
- A banknote circulates for years through hands that have no business knowing the day it was struck, and a date on a serial tells a forger where to begin. A note’s number is the family, eight figures, and a check character computed by ISO/IEC 7064, MOD 37-36 — the international standard for check characters on alphanumeric identifiers, the same family of checks used on IBANs and ISINs. Three blocks still, so it reads as the Nation’s own; no date; and a number mistyped at a till is caught before the Register is asked anything. The day a note was struck is in its record, where it belongs.
- Its family is made in the Gazette
- The Record Code family for notes is constituted by an entry in the Gazette, not by the Register and not by whoever is at the keyboard. An officer enters it with the Gazette number that made it, and until that is done the Register will not strike a note at all. A family is never renamed: a new one is constituted in the Gazette.
- Struck before printed
- A note’s record exists before any paper is made. A note that was never struck has no record, and the Register says so to anyone who asks.
- Signed with the Nation’s key
- The Treasury signs the code, the value and the series with the Nation’s Ed25519 key, as RFC 8032 sets it — the same curve the Nation’s cards and seals use. The signature is printed on the note and can be verified against the Nation’s published key without asking the Register anything.
- Sealed under a panel
- A secret of 128 bits is generated for each note. Only its SHA-256 hash is kept and printed; the secret itself goes under a panel that must be broken to read. A photograph of a note cannot be redeemed, because a photograph cannot show what is under the panel.
- Anchored in Bitcoin
- The note’s record enters the Nation’s Ledger, whose root is anchored daily in the Bitcoin blockchain through OpenTimestamps, over Merkle trees as RFC 6962 sets them. Nobody — the Nation included — can backdate a note into existence.
- Spent freely; redeemed once
- A note is made to be spent. It passes from hand to hand, at tills and between people, as often as it likes, and a payment is not a redemption: nothing is asked of the Register, and the panel stays whole. A note is redeemed only when it comes home — presented to the Treasury for Canadian dollars, or paid into an account. Then the panel is broken, the sealed number is given, and the note is retired in the same breath. The panel is the last act of a note’s life, not a thing done at every till.
- A note presented twice is a dispute, not a refusal
- If a note comes home a second time, one of the two people who held it was given a copy — and it is not the Register’s place to decide which. The second presentation is recorded with its day and place and put before an officer, and the person at the counter is told plainly what has happened and to take the note to the Secretariat. The common case is an honest holder of a forged note, not a forger, and the system should be built for the common case.
- A note moves forward only
- Struck · printed · issued · in circulation · redeemed. Beside those: disputed, where a note has come home twice and an officer must decide; withdrawn, where the Treasury calls a note in; and void, where it is destroyed before issue. Nothing moves backwards.
- What a forger is left with
- A copy can be passed while it circulates, as any forgery can — but it cannot come home. A code never struck: the Register does not know it. A real code already redeemed: the second presentation is caught, recorded, and investigated. A real code with a panel that is a picture: the seal does not match, and three tries quarantine the code. A forged note is therefore worth only what it can be spent for before someone checks it, and checking is free, instant, and needs no account.
- What this does not claim
- It does not make paper impossible to copy; nothing does. It makes a copy worthless to pass, which is the thing that was actually wanted.
The family of the Record Code is not settled here. The Conventions set the families and none of them is a note; an officer settles it, and until then the Register will not strike a note at all.
Check it yourself
The proof of reserves Where to spend it stellar.toml The token’s particulars Its interface (ABI) The Nation’s Ledger The National Books
