Abstract
This paper specifies a data-model correction for a group-based gratitude ledger in which users belong to household groups, each holding a shared group balance administered by one member. The correction replaces single-group containment with user-scoped identity, rooted in a proof-of-personhood verification, and represents group membership as a many-to-many set of edges: each user's personal account sits at the user record, above every group, and a group's administrator controls only the shared balance. One change addresses two failures of the single-group assumption. It lowers the cost of an administrator's departure, since members keep their personal accounts and their other memberships and the pool of successor candidates widens. And it removes most of the need for a separate tier for users with no household group, by treating a default global membership of every verified person as the outermost layer of an existing nested architecture, with admission-gated local groups as the on-ramp. Three invariants keep plural membership safe: giving capacity is metered per verified person rather than per membership; each group controls its own admission; and a member of two groups may not route or net value between their shared balances. Membership count is left uncapped by default, with a damping lever held in reserve until pilot data warrant it. Stated limits: an explicit succession protocol is still required when a member's last group fails; users admitted to no group rely on the global layer alone; per-person metering presupposes a working personhood layer; and the design is unmeasured in deployment.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Ly, Thon, "Multi-Family Membership: User-Scoped Identity, Plural Membership, and the Two Problems It Resolves — Many-to-Many User–Group Membership with Proof-of-Personhood Identity and Per-Person Metering for Administrator Succession in Shared Group Accounts", Technical Disclosure Commons, (September 29, 2026)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/11889