Smart Cheques
Signed, verifiable payment instruments between citizens — an explainer.
What a Smart Cheque is
A Smart Cheque is a signed instruction from one citizen to pay another, written as data instead of paper. Like a paper cheque it names a payer, a payee, an amount, and a date, and carries the payer's signature. Unlike a paper cheque, its signature is cryptographic: anyone can verify who signed it and that not one character has changed since.
How it works
The payer's wallet signs the cheque CLIENT-SIDE — the signing key never leaves the payer's device, and the Republic never sees it. What may be recorded with the Republic is only the public face of the instrument: the hash of its contents, the signer's public address, and the signature. Settlement, when it happens, is a peer-to-peer on-chain transfer executed by the payer's own wallet.
What the Republic does — and does not do
The Republic's registry can witness a cheque: record that it existed, when, and under whose signature — the same public attestation it keeps for signed certificates. The Republic does NOT hold the funds, does not execute the payment, cannot cancel or reverse it, and takes no fee on it. A Smart Cheque is an instrument between citizens; the state is its notary, never its bank.
Standing and disputes
A cheque dishonoured — signed but never settled — may be presented as evidence in a dispute. A verified pattern of dishonoured instruments is misrepresentation under the Penal Code and answers in trust-score standing, which is the Republic's only enforcement: reputational, public, and proportionate.