Governance

Governance Principles

The SHIP token functions as the governance instrument of the protocol. It does not represent legal ownership of vessels, SPVs, or underlying maritime cash flows. Instead, it grants holders the right to participate in structured, on-chain governance of the protocol layer that coordinates asset tokenization, treasury policy, and ecosystem standards.

Governance is implemented as a directed model: Ethra formulates and publishes proposals, and the community is invited to cast votes within defined parameters. This structure ensures that every decision put to vote has been pre-validated for operational, legal, and strategic feasibility before reaching the community, while still giving holders meaningful influence over the ecosystem's direction.

Governance is deliberately bounded. Holders vote on how the ecosystem expresses itself and where discretionary resources are directed, they do not vote on fleet management, revenue policy, fund structure, or any matter that falls within Ethra's fiduciary or operational authority. This separation preserves regulatory clarity while giving the community a genuine and structured voice in shaping the ecosystem they participate in.

All governance outcomes are transparently recorded on-chain and executed either via smart contract automation or authorized multi-signature processes where legal enforceability is required.

Scope of action

Subject to predefined quorum and voting thresholds, SHIP token holders may vote on matters including:

• Branding and visual identity: Vessel livery or naming

• Ecosystem development initiatives: Strategies, and implementation of growth campaigns

• Asset Onboarding Standards: eligibility criteria for vessel tokenization (e.g., vessel profile, jurisdictional structure, risk parameters), approval of new issuance frameworks, and authorization of operating partners.

• Risk & Exposure Parameters: parameters such as limits, ceilings (where applicable), buffer requirements, and reserve frameworks, applicable to future protocol RWA tokenizations

• Treasury & Capital Allocation: allocation of protocol revenues across operational reserves, ecosystem development, liquidity provisioning, and token buyback programs.

• Fee & Incentive Structures: platform fee schedules, staking mechanics, liquidity incentives, and distribution policies.

• Governance Framework Amendments: adjustments to quorum thresholds, proposal requirements, delegation mechanisms, and governance modules.

Governance authority is limited to platform-level matters and operates within applicable regulatory and fiduciary frameworks. Asset-level management, vessel operations, chartering, and SPV director duties remain exclusively under professional management and are not subject to token-holder control.

Wallet score interaction

A holder's voting power is directly proportional to their wallet score, meaning governance influence reflects not just the size of a position but the consistency and depth of commitment behind it. A holder who has maintained a position over time and staked a significant portion of their tokens will carry more weight in community decisions than one who recently acquired the same number of tokens, aligning governance influence with demonstrated long-term conviction.

In other words, voting power may be enhanced through voluntary staking and time-lock mechanisms to align long-term participation with ecosystem stability.