# FAQ - Open Value Blog

> Common questions.

Blog · 2026-09-23

## FAQ

### What is Open Value?
Open Value is an open research initiative organized as a Swiss association in formation. It coordinates open research and open standards for moving value between independent systems, the way the Internet moves information.

### Is Open Value a product, a platform, or a token?
No. Open Value is shared infrastructure and open standards, owned by no one. Whether the base layer can run without a native token is an open research question, and it stays open until the research answers it.

### Who can participate?
Participation is open to builders, researchers, standards bodies, and enterprises. Membership comes as an individual or enterprise agreement, kept simple, and every contribution is publicly credited.

### How is the work organized?
In two working groups. Base Layer Network Design treats the base layer as a network design problem: content-blind ordering plus data availability. Semantic Layer Standards defines how domains interact with each other and with the base. Proposals are submitted and discussed openly.

### Can the base layer operate securely, permissionlessly, and sustainably without a token?
The open question is whether the base layer can run without a fee token, a staking token, or any token at all, so that no asset steers its design. No network of this kind has shipped one yet. Exploring new incentive and security models is one of the initiative’s core objectives.

### How is Open Value governed?
As a Swiss association (verein) modeled on the Linux Foundation and RISC-V International.

### How do I get in touch?
Write to contact@iovi.org, select Join the research below to send in a request to join a working group, or follow the channels in the footer.