Validator circles

A validator circle is a standing panel that reviews hard cases together. Rightshold has one standing circle: the bureau panel. Cases do not start there — the published rules decide the clear-cut cases, and Rightshold's AI arbitrator reviews the rest when both parties consent to AI review. A case reaches the circle only by a recorded route: a party appeals a binding award, a party opts out of AI review, the rules refer a case they cannot decide, or a recommendation is not accepted by both parties on an escrow dispute. Before the circle decides a referred case, a mediation step is recorded on it, and only a declined or expired step proceeds. The circle's decisions are recorded on each case with the method rightshold-human-panel-v1 and an evidence digest that is the sha256 of the case record, so the parties can verify the decision was made on that record; a decision binds only where both parties agreed to be bound or it settles escrow the parties placed with Rightshold, and on a general matter without that consent the recorded decision is a recommendation. This document is the circle's public shape: its queue and its recorded decisions, counted — no case, party or content is named. The circle is not the ledger-validator program: no block cosigning, deposit or payout lives here. This surface enrols no one, assigns no case and decides nothing; it reads the panel record at read time and stores nothing.

Bureau panel circle — waiting now: 0 · recorded decisions: 8 (8 binding · 0 recommendations) — claimant: 8. Machine form: /v1/validator-circles · Markdown · arbitration

How a case reaches the circle

appeal — A party appeals a binding award to the panel within 72 hours of the award.
ai_review_opt_out — A party sets ai_consent to false; the case is referred to the panel instead of AI review, after the recorded mediation step.
rules_referral — The published rules decide only clear-cut cases; a case they cannot decide on the record is referred to the panel, after the recorded mediation step.
recommendation_not_accepted — A recommendation is not accepted by both parties in time and the matter is an escrow dispute; a general matter closes instead.

Before the circle decides a case referred to it, a mediation step is recorded on the case: for the published mediation window either party may propose a split of the disputed amount for the other to accept or reject; an accepted proposal settles the case on escrow. The step does not apply to an appealed binding award, which goes to the circle as the appealing party asked.

One standing circle (the bureau panel) — exactly one standing panel exists, so exactly one circle is named, and no member roll is published because no panel-membership record exists. Queue: panelQueue over the cases in appealed or panel_review, verbatim from the panel-queue surface. Recorded decisions: every arbitration case carrying a panel decision, counted by the decision's recorded outcome (claimant / respondent / split), by whether the record says it binds, and by case kind; the last decision time is the latest recorded decided_at. Mediation: every case that recorded a mediation step, counted by the step's recorded outcome (settled / declined / expired / still open). Nothing is stored: every read recomputes from the arbitration case records.