Pillar 07
Workflow
Durable, resilient workflows for member onboarding, governance proposals, collective decisions, and automated treasury actions. Powered by Temporal — workflows survive server restarts, network interruptions, and deployment cycles.
Design philosophy
Cooperative operations involve multi-step processes that take time: a governance proposal has a discussion period, a voting period, and an execution period — each measured in days, not seconds. A membership application may require verification from multiple coordinators. Treasury disbursements require multi-signature approval across different time zones.
Ordinary web request/response cycles cannot model these processes reliably. Temporal provides durable execution: a workflow can pause for days waiting for input, survive a server restart, and resume exactly where it left off.
Temporal Server
The platform runs a self-hosted Temporal Server alongside the other services. Workflow definitions are written in TypeScript and registered with the Temporal Worker. The Control Plane API dispatches workflow executions in response to member actions.
Core workflows
Member onboarding
Steps: identity verification → provisional membership assignment → welcome message → coordinator introduction → status upgrade to active member.
Each step can require human input or automated verification. If a coordinator does not respond within the configured window, an escalation notification is sent. The workflow can be paused and resumed without losing state.
Governance proposal
Steps: proposal submission → discussion period (configurable) → vote open → vote tallying → decision execution.
Vote tallying is automated. Decision execution — if the proposal passed — is a child workflow that performs the approved action (e.g., treasury transfer, role change, policy update).
Treasury disbursement
Steps: disbursement request → multi-sig collection (n of m council members) → on-chain transaction broadcast → receipt logging.
Multi-sig collection uses Temporal signals: each council member's approval is delivered as a signal to the running workflow. When the required threshold is reached, the workflow proceeds to execution.
Credential issuance
Steps: attestation badge request → cost verification → Lit Protocol PKP signature → credential issuance → wallet delivery.
The Executor Service handles the Lit Network MPC signing step. The workflow coordinates the timing and retries.
Resource lifecycle transition
Steps: transition request → governance check → authorization verification → state change → notification → audit log.
Used when a project moves from active to hibernating, or a member moves from active to alumni. See the Lifecycle pillar for full details.
Workflow visibility
All running and completed workflows are visible in the governance dashboard. Members can see the current state of any workflow that involves them. Coordinators can see all workflows in their resource's scope. Council members can see all workflows platform-wide.
Error handling and retries
Temporal handles retries automatically with configurable backoff policies. If an external service (e.g., a blockchain node) is temporarily unavailable, the workflow retries the activity without losing the overall workflow state. Permanent failures result in a workflow error state that is visible to the relevant coordinators.