The Responsible Minerals Credits Initiative, in operation.

Context: the Responsible Minerals Credits Initiative

Artisanal and small-scale mining accounts for around 20% of global mineral production by volume, yet ASM communities remain marginalised from formal supply chains and the economic benefits of the minerals they extract.

True physical traceability of ASM minerals through complex global supply chains is often impractical or impossibly expensive. Binary approaches, either investing heavily in full traceability or disengaging entirely, fail to serve the goal of improving conditions at mine sites whilst maintaining supply chain integrity. The industry needed a scalable model that enables financial engagement without claiming false certainty about physical flows.

The book-and-claim model

The RMC initiative addresses this paradox through a book-and-claim approach. Rather than tracking physical flow, the scheme decouples sustainability attributes from the commodity itself. Downstream companies purchase certificates, fixed-price volume-based instruments proportional to their estimated ASM mineral footprint. Proceeds fund community-governed improvement projects at participating mine sites.

• Scalable financial participation without false claims of traceability. Companies can engage at the scale of their footprint, not at the scale of their traceability budget.
• Product simplicity. Buying a certificate is a single transaction against a standard instrument.
• Fixed pricing ensures predictable fund flows and equal engagement incentives across all buyers.
• Fungibility simplifies allocation logistics and prevents artificial scarcity tied to named sites.
• Community governance. Decisions on how proceeds are spent sit with Fund Allocation Committees at each mine site, not with distant buyers.

The RMC scheme is designed to complement, not replace, supply chain due diligence under the OECD Due Diligence Guidance. Certificates represent financial commitment and engagement. They are not a claim of mineral purity or traceability.

DASME: the formal certificate designation

Certificates issued under RMC are formally designated DASME Certificates (Deliberate ASM Engagement). DASME is the instrument-level name; RMC refers to the scheme. The pattern mirrors precedent in other environmental markets: the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) is the scheme, the Verified Carbon Unit (VCU) is the instrument; Gold Standard is the scheme, Gold Standard VERs are the instruments.

The consortium

Platform overview

Oreka is the digital platform built by Datastake to operationalise and scale the RMC scheme. It does not define the rules. The consortium does. Oreka enforces them digitally and provides operational infrastructure for the entire certificate lifecycle.

What Oreka inherits from DAF

Oreka is configured on the Datastake Application Framework. The inheritance operates at two levels: architectural benefits that shape how the scheme can scale, and built-in capabilities that Oreka consumes as configuration rather than code.

Architectural benefits

• Distributed custody. Each consortium organisation holds its own data in its own account and grants scoped access to counterparties. There is no central ledger owned by one party.
• Modular infrastructure. DAF is composed of independent modules. Oreka enables the modules the RMC scheme needs at MVP and leaves the rest inert.
• Interoperability. Records created in Oreka are structured against the generic DAF data model. Cross-app data exchange over the Datastake network is a configuration step, not a rewrite.
• Principled reuse. Every primitive (subjects, role hierarchy, sharing, audit, notifications) is governed by DAF specifications validated across other apps.

Built-in capabilities

Beyond these primitives, Oreka adds scheme-specific logic: the Certificate entity with its three-state lifecycle, issuance constraints tied to eligible production, conversion ratios per mineral, and the Retirement Statement generator. Everything else is DAF configuration.

Architecture principles

Oreka's design follows four principles that flow from the RMC governance model, not from generic software preferences.

• Coordinator-driven at MVP. TIF, as Coordinator, performs most operational functions directly. Mine operators and FAC members do not have direct system access at MVP. The Coordinator acts as their proxy.
• Separation of production from issuance. Recording production and issuing certificates are deliberately distinct actions, on different screens, with potentially different authorisations.
• Offline-first governance. Critical governance processes (FAC voting, fund allocation decisions, payment confirmation) occur outside the system. Oreka documents and enforces the outcomes but does not mediate the decisions themselves.
• Irreversible state transitions. Once a certificate is issued, assigned, or retired, that transition cannot be undone. The system enforces this at database level.

User interfaces at MVP

Account model

Two operational account types exist at MVP. Accounts transition through three statuses: Active (operational), Pending (invited, awaiting confirmation or payment), and Suspended (access revoked).

User roles

Oreka uses the standard DAF role hierarchy, configured per interface. Each role inherits the capabilities of the one below it: Administrator (full access, including user management), Custodian (operational role), Editor (create and edit only, no sharing), Viewer (read-only).

Information sharing model

When a Partner is approved, the system creates an Exchange Partnership between the Partner Account and the Coordinator Account. Partner-to-Coordinator: all submitted data is shared upon form submission. Coordinator-to-Partner: scoped sharing only. Partners see mine, FAC, and project data only to the extent that it relates to certificates they hold. Production records are not shared.

Registry design references

Oreka's registry mechanics draw explicitly on established environmental and mineral-sector registries.

From eligibility to disclosure

From mine site registration through final disclosure and retirement. Each subsection describes what the process is for, the key challenges and decisions that informed its design, the step-by-step mechanics, and the locked MVP defaults. The certificate is the connecting record across these workflows, not the protagonist of any single one.

Mine site identification & eligibility evaluation

To identify ASM mine sites in Oreka and evaluate their eligibility for the RMC scheme. Identification covers subject creation plus full population of identity, Operator linkage, mineral types, and basic governance data. A fully identified mine is the precondition for evaluation. Only production from a mine that was Eligible at the production date can back certificate issuance.

Mine Site Navigation Page

The per-mine landing surface from which all mine-scoped operations are accessed. A worked example of the DAF Subject Detail archetype applied to a Location subject. Layout slots, top to bottom: General Information panel (identity, GPS, Operator, mineral types), Mine Summary header button, Production Tracking module, Mining Operation Assessment cards, Linked Subjects.

Framework cards: anatomy

Each configured framework renders as a card with Status, State, Vintage, Date, and a Details button. Status answers "is this mine eligible under this framework?" Stateanswers "where is this evaluation in its lifecycle?" The two dimensions coexist on the card.

Expert Evaluation

A mine site's eligibility under a given framework is established by an Expert Evaluation: a human-led assessment against framework criteria. The Coordinator (or an appointed auditor) opens the framework's form, works through the questionnaire, attaches evidence, and attests to compliance. The system captures the evaluator's identity, date, evidence references, and the resulting Status, derived deterministically from the form fields per the framework's eligibility rule. Algorithmic scoring is out of scope for Oreka.

Workflow

Minimum Viability Framework

The MVP baseline. An Expert Evaluation framework aligned with CRAFT Code Modules 1–3 and OECD Due Diligence Guidance Annex II. It encodes the immediate-disengagement criteria: the conditions under which downstream engagement would not be permissible.

1. Legitimacy of the mining operation per CRAFT Code modules 1 and 2 (legal registration, standard mining practices).
2. Absence of worst forms of child labour and forced labour per CRAFT Code module 3, and absence of conflict financing or serious abuses per OECD Annex II.
3. Basic organisational governance: production register, sales and financial record-keeping, documented chain of custody.
4. Operational prerequisites: legal status, royalty / tax compliance, land use permissions, bank account, minimum age compliance, fair wage / share, mercury management.

Verification options. Each evaluation records an Assessment basis: First-party (self-assessment, with Coordinator entering on behalf of the operator), Second-party (Coordinator or scheme operator verifies directly), or Third-party (independent auditor). At MVP, first-party is acceptable.

Eligibility withdrawal & existing certificates

A critical governance question. The system must balance integrity against legitimate Partner expectations. Rule at MVP: withdrawal halts new issuance from that site immediately. Certificates already issued and assigned to Partners remain valid; they are not revoked. The system applies a Flagged Originannotation visible in the Partner's portfolio, in the Certificates Registry, and in any disclosure or retirement workflow.

Production recording

To record the quantity of minerals produced at any registered mine site, regardless of its current eligibility status. Production recording is a general operational log. Eligibility gates issuance, not recording.

Production is recorded at every registered mine

A mine site may be registered and actively producing before it achieves eligibility under any framework, or it may lose eligibility mid-period. Oreka captures the full production history. Whether a given batch backs certificate issuance depends on whether the mine site was eligible at the time of production, not on its status today.

• Historical integrity. A mine's production record is a continuous log. Censoring based on current status would break the audit trail.
• Retrospective issuance. If a mine achieves eligibility today, production recorded earlier cannot be retroactively claimed. The system enforces the date-window rule.
• Reassessment analytics. Long-term production trends are a primary input to reassessment and framework layering decisions.

Granularity & cadence

Every Production Record anchors on a specific Pit or Shaft (a sub-Location of the Mine Site). Mine-only granularity is not supported. Cadence accepts daily, weekly, or monthly granularity. The recording form does not constrain it to a fixed interval. Decimal quantities are accepted up to 3 decimals.

Workflow

Certificate issuance

To create certificates from eligible production. Certificates are integer-based (confirmed for MVP, April 2026). They are the fungible, tradeable instruments that Partners purchase.

Manual, deliberate issuance

Issuance is manually triggered, not automated. The Coordinator reviews eligible production, decides how many certificates to issue, and confirms issuance as a deliberate action. This preserves human oversight and allows partial / staged issuance: issue 30 of 47 certificates from a mine, reserving the remainder for later.

Workflow

Production-to-certificate conversion ratios

Rounding rule. Conversion rounds down to the nearest integer. Fractional production below one unit remains as eligible balance and may contribute to future issuance. Conversion ratios are stored as system parameters, configurable per mineral by the App Administrator. Changes apply prospectively; certificates already issued under a prior ratio are unaffected.

Vintage year tagging

Every certificate carries a vintage_year attribute recording the calendar year of the underlying production. Vintage year is set at issuance and is immutable. Follows established practice in carbon credit and renewable energy certificate registries. At MVP no auto-expiry is applied; instead, the system flags certificates with a vintage older than 24 months for Coordinator review before assignment.

Ownership at issuance

Certificates become official registry instruments at issuance. Unassigned certificates are held in the Coordinator's registry account on behalf of the originating mine community. The Coordinator acts as custodian, not owner. Upon assignment, legal ownership transfers to the Partner.

Certificate assignment & transactions

To assign issued but unassigned certificates to a Partner after their purchase request has been approved and payment received.

Two logical steps

Payment happens outside the system. Certificate assignment is therefore separated from transaction logging: a Coordinator may approve a request and log the offline payment in Transactions, and another Coordinator may later assign the specific certificates from the registry. Certificates are fungible at MVP; the Partner cannot request specific mine sites or frameworks.

Workflow

Batch assignment

Coordinators assign in batches. When fulfilling a 153-certificate request, the Coordinator selects from the unassigned pool and assigns the batch in a single operation. The system records transaction reference, assignment date, and Partner account as a single audit event.

Partner management & engagement

To manage Partner queries, onboard new buyers, and track engagement. The Partners Management module is the hub for Partner lifecycle: account creation, KYC capture, status transitions, and purchase history.

Partner footprint & coverage

To help Partners understand their ASM mineral exposure, calculate a recommended certificate purchase quantity, and track engagement over time. The ASM share percentage is a notional estimate of ASM's share in global mineral production. Exact traceability is virtually impossible, so precise shares cannot be determined with certainty.

Footprint as a guide, not a ceiling

The footprint calculator provides a recommendation but does not enforce a requirement. Partners may cover 0%, 50%, 100%, or exceed their calculated footprint. The system displays the recommendation and tracks coverage as a reference metric but does not gate purchasing.

Workflow

Reporting year model

Certificates are not stamped with a reporting year at purchase. They are assigned to the Partner's account as a pool. The reporting year is specified at retirement, when the Partner retires a batch against a specific period (e.g. FY2025). A Partner may purchase 50 certificates in 2026, retire 30 against FY2025 (retroactive coverage), and hold 20 for FY2026.

Project creation & fund allocation

To create improvement projects at eligible mine sites and allocate certificate proceeds to fund them. Projects translate capital into tangible outcomes.

FAC governance, offline at MVP

FAC governance is complex. The MVP does not implement direct FAC voting or proposal submission inside Oreka. The Coordinator acts as the proxy: the FAC decides offline, and the Coordinator records the decision in Oreka as the justification for project creation and funding allocation. The FAC is a first-class Stakeholder subject (one FAC per Mine Site), with FAC Members as linked subjects, supporting future direct FAC access without restructuring the data model.

Workflow

Pooled impact claims model

Certificate proceeds are pooled. There is no direct mapping between an individual Partner's certificates and specific projects at the point of purchase or assignment. The FAC allocates pooled proceeds. Partners are informed ex-post which projects their contribution has supported, proportionally.

Certificate retirement & disclosure

To allow Partners to use certificate holdings in their sustainability reporting, materialise the impact claim as a tangible deliverable, and prevent double-counting. Partners must not misrepresent certificates as physical traceability claims. The RMC model provides evidence of engagement, not proof of supply chain integrity.

Workflow

The Retirement Statement

The tangible deliverable: the "proof of burn" that gives certificates their reporting utility. Without it, the Partner has a dashboard entry; with it, they have an auditable document. Contents: Partner name and reporting period; certificate count, ID range, and vintage year(s); mineral type(s) and framework tag(s); originating mine sites (aggregated, not per-certificate, to avoid supply chain discovery); projects funded from pooled proceeds with Partner's proportional contribution; standard claim boundary language; retirement date and Coordinator confirmation reference.

Claim boundaries

Certificate status lifecycle

Certificates progress through three states. Each transition is irreversible, creating a one-way chain from creation to permanent retirement. The system enforces these transitions at the database level. No administrative override can reverse a state change.

Business rules

The integrity, pricing, and governance rules enforced by Oreka.

Issuance

• No over-issuance. Total certificates issued from a mine site over a period cannot exceed eligible production for that period.
• Eligible only. Only production recorded during active eligibility windows qualifies for issuance.
• Manual issuance. Certificate issuance is a manual action, not automated. Preserves human oversight.
• Framework tagging. Certificates are tagged with applicable framework(s) at issuance. Tags are immutable and travel with the certificate through assignment and retirement.

Integrity

• State transitions are irreversible. Unassigned → Assigned → Retired cannot be undone.
• Single Partner ownership. Each assigned certificate is owned by exactly one Partner. Fractional ownership is not supported.
• No duplication. Each certificate has a unique system ID. Duplicate issuance or assignment is impossible.

Pricing & coverage

• Fixed pricing. All certificates priced at USD 5,000 per unit at MVP. Price changes require consortium governance approval.
• Coverage autonomy. Partners are not required to cover any percentage of their footprint. Footprint calculation is advisory.

Fund allocation

• FAC governance. Allocation decisions made offline by FACs in consultation with mine communities. The Coordinator documents and enforces outcomes in Oreka.
• Allocation tracking. Funds tracked per impact category. Projects assigned to categories; Partner contributions calculated per category.

System access & administration

Operational workflows describe what Coordinators and Partners do with the scheme. This section describes the administrative surface beneath them.

The Admin Panel

A cross-cutting surface used by system administrators to manage accounts, users, and access. It operates independently of the business logic of either operational interface. No certificate is ever issued, assigned, or retired from the Admin Panel. Scope: create and manage Coordinator and Partner accounts; invite, activate, suspend, or deactivate users; assign roles; manage organisation settings; trigger password resets. Standard DAF account administration primitives, no bespoke administration model.

Account lifecycle

User & role management

Each account contains one or more users, with a role assigned per user. The DAF role hierarchy applies (Administrator, Custodian, Editor, Viewer). Every account must have at least one Administrator. A user may belong to one account only at any one time. Cross-account access is handled by issuing separate user accounts, each scoped to one organisation.

Audit trail

Every state transition on an account, user, certificate, mine site, project, or transaction is recorded with timestamp, actor, and before / after values. The audit trail is immutable, queryable through the standard DAF Data Query interface. Certain transitions (certificate Unassigned → Assigned → Retired; framework State or Status changes; eligibility withdrawal) also surface as dedicated events on the relevant subject pages.

Design status & roadmap

Coordinator interface

Partner interface

The Partner Interface is at an earlier stage of design maturity than the Coordinator Interface. The My Footprint calculator is well developed. The My Certificates hub is partially built and needs the request and retirement flows wired in. Dashboard and My Impact will mature in subsequent iterations as the Coordinator workflows stabilise.

Deferred beyond MVP

• Operator Interface. Self-reporting production by mine site operators.
• FAC Monitor Interface. Direct FAC member access, voting, proposal submission.
• Multiple Coordinators. Parallel scheme operators across regions or minerals.
• Advanced Framework Integration. Full CRAFT, FCA, RMAP, LBMA workflow screens and automation.
• Non-fungible certificate purchase. Selecting specific mine sites or framework certifications.
• Automated issuance. Triggered automatically by production recording (MVP is manual).
• Public Interface. Public-facing dashboard with contributor rankings and aggregated impact data.
• Mineral-agnostic expansion. Beyond cobalt, copper, and gold.

Glossary