# Solar Monetary Authority (SMA)

> Coordination layer for civilization-scale industry. Not a government.

## What it controls

| Resource | Lever |
|---|---|
| Solar Credits (☉) | Issuance |
| Fab scheduling | Queue arbitration |
| Corridor slots | Slot allocation |
| Relay bandwidth | Priority |
| Megastructure construction | Coordination |
| **Beam allocation** | Grant decisions |
| Authenticated identity | Registration |

Does not govern territory, enforce laws, or maintain armed forces. Power comes from controlling access. **If a project needs civilization-scale infrastructure, it passes through SMA systems.**

## Origin

Started as orbital compute-allocation market — server capacity, power, processing time traded against solar energy. Original Credit = claim on energy + computation.

As Dyson infrastructure expanded, **energy ceased to be limiting; throughput became the constraint** — fab slots, corridor capacity, relay bandwidth, scheduling priority. Credit evolved. Now represents priority over coordinated throughput, not raw energy.

## Solar Credit (☉)

| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Reference unit | 6,119,348,090,000 J |
| Backed by | Priority allocation, not redemption for joules |
| Issuance | Through registered industrial projects |
| Adjustment policy | Stabilize queue depth, not price |

**Objective isn't price stability.** It's keeping civilization-scale infrastructure occupied without systemic backlog disruption.

## Beam allocation (the structural lever)

Directed power from conversion nodes — microwave and laser beaming to fixed receiver coordinates — is a scheduled SMA resource.

**A grant fixes a continuous delivery slot.** Sized to the receiver's throughput floor.

Beam grants are **multi-dimensional**:

```
Grant := receiver coords
       × total power
       × spectral profile (band × wattage)
       × coherence
       × modulation schedule
       × duration
```

Premium bands (Soret-equivalent for ATP-fed, coherent narrowband UV, comm-frequency lines) clear at multi-decade forward contracts. Commodity bands (broadband visible/NIR) clear near-spot. **Grant brokers** mediate between operator demand and SMA-acceptable specifications.

Beam delivery into atmospheric airspace = published-hazard doctrine. See `atmospheric-beam-safety.md`.

→ `beam-fractionation.md`, `pure-atp.md`

## What beam access does

Splits the **beam-dependent tier** (SMA-native, institutional capital, scheduled throughput) from the **beam-independent tier** (ambient resources, local storage, no grant needed).

| Beam-fed | Beam-independent |
|---|---|
| Hyperscale ATP slime (Grades IV–VI) | Conventional photosynthetic (Grades I–III) |
| Advanced fab lines | nirmāṇa-class ownership |
| Mercury extraction | AutoSlime |
| Certain remediation | Most edge operations |

Grant decision determines which queue a facility enters and what ownership structure is viable for it.

## Megastructure coordination

Cylinder production, corridor expansion, swarm deployment — centrally scheduled. **At this scale, coordination failures become physical failures.** Two projects cannot simultaneously occupy the same fab stream or corridor slot.

## Infrastructure form

No capital, headquarters, or central admin complex. Distributed across relay nodes, scheduling servers, authentication systems, industrial coordination hardware. Prevents single-point capture.

Most visible public interface: the **queue feed** — continuously updated broadcast of fab backlog, corridor availability, relay load, issuance metrics. Monitored across habitats, exchanges, hubs. **For most people, the queue feed is more important than local politics.**

## Sovereignty question

Occupies the functional role of a government without matching historical definitions.

Doesn't tax, claim territory, or legislate. But exclusion from authenticated systems excludes participants from civilization-scale coordination.

Position: provides services, not governance. Critics argue any institution controlling currency, scheduling, and authentication exercises governmental power regardless of label.

**Distinction matters less operationally than structurally.** Civilization runs through SMA infrastructure whether or not SMA is formally recognized as a state.

→ `relay-network.md`, `logistics-layers.md`, `beam-fractionation.md`, `atmospheric-beam-safety.md`