---
title: "who counts as people?"
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-counts-as-people
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/who-counts-as-people.md
subtitle: "one person, a crew, a company, a town — the same account at every size"
category: ensurance
---

# who counts as people?

*one person, a crew, a company, a town — the same account at every size*

If you searched *what is a stakeholder*, here is the standard answer first. **A stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of an organization's objectives.** That is R. Edward Freeman's definition, from *Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach* (1984), the book that made the word part of management. Employees, customers, suppliers, lenders, neighbors, regulators, and shareholders all qualify. Stakeholder theory asks managers to answer to all of them, not only to the people who own shares.

The definition works because it starts from the organization. Draw the firm in the middle, draw everyone it touches around it. That map is useful. It is also drawn from one side: the cottonwood on the creek behind the office is not on it.

Now stand somewhere else. A cottonwood on a creek bank, the creek under it, and the town that drinks from the creek already depend on one another, whether or not anyone draws a map. [**Ensurance**](/?from=guide) is how the thing someone names gets funded to keep working. It is not the cottonwood, and it is not the creek. This post is about the people who keep them.

:::johnson
**people are whoever keeps it — one gardener or a whole town — and whoever was kept from keeping it.**

A stakeholder is defined by an organization. A keeper is defined by the thing they keep. The people leg starts with the keeper.

[see what a named place depends on →](/explore?from=guide)
:::

## a stake is not the same as keeping

A stake is a relationship to an organization's goals. Keeping is a relationship to a living thing. The two overlap often, but not always.

The rancher who has walked the same fence line for forty years is a stakeholder in the county's water plan. She is also something the stakeholder map does not name: the person who knows where the spring comes up in a dry August. A volunteer crew that pulls tamarisk every spring holds no title to the bank they clear. A family that fished a river for generations and was pushed off, or priced out, is not, on most maps, a stakeholder at all. Each of them keeps, or kept, or was kept from keeping.

**The people leg is the person or group who keeps a place or a purpose, or once kept it, or is kept from keeping it — with title or without, customary or formal.** Keeping comes first. Paperwork comes after, if at all.

| | stakeholder (Freeman, 1984) | people (in this protocol) |
|---|---|---|
| Defined by | An organization's objectives | The place or purpose being kept |
| Who is in | Anyone who can affect it or is affected by it | Whoever keeps it, kept it, or was kept from keeping it |
| Needs title? | No | No |
| What the word gives you | A map for managers | An address for the keeping |

## what the account does, and what it does not

In ensurance, people can hold an account. An account is a public ledger entry with an address that can hold, receive, and act. It gives the keeping an address, so a payment for the creek has somewhere to land with the people who look after it.

Signing is only how an account acts. A person confirms each action, unless they have switched on a program for it. The account does not decide who keeps a place, and it does not replace the land trust, the ditch company, the council, or the customary authority already doing that work. **Governance already exists on the ground, and it stays.** The account sits beside it.

Two more limits, stated plainly. The protocol does not speak for any person, tribe, or community, and several accounts can serve the same place or the same people; none is the official one. And an account is not legal personhood. Lawmakers and courts in several countries have given rivers and forests legal standing, and that is a separate question with its own history ([the voice and the land](/guide/the-voice-and-the-land?from=guide)). An account addressed to a river is not the river deciding anything. A person signs.

Those who cannot speak for themselves — a river, a herd, a species — are purpose and place in this model, not people. They can have stewards or guardians. The steward is people. The steward signs.

## one account shape, four sizes

The people leg is fractal: the same account holds at every size. Nothing new is invented as the group grows; only the grain changes. Here are four live examples from the catalog, read 26 Oct 2026.

| size | account | what is there |
|---|---|---|
| One person | [tmo.earth](/tmo.earth?from=guide) | A single person's account, wallet deployed |
| A community | [.tgn](/groups/tgn?from=guide) | 114 accounts, 106 of them people, in a namespace its own description ties to mangrove planting |
| A city name | [.boulder](/groups/boulder?from=guide) | 33 accounts: 30 people, two places ([cu.boulder](/cu.boulder?from=guide), [pearl.boulder](/pearl.boulder?from=guide)), one purpose ([ensurance.boulder](/ensurance.boulder?from=guide)) |
| A city outside the US | [.mumbai](/groups/mumbai?from=guide) | 22 accounts: 19 people, one place, and two untyped accounts named for the city's water, including [mithiriver.mumbai](/mithiriver.mumbai?from=guide) |

Be clear about what the city rows are. `.boulder` and `.mumbai` are namespaces made in the protocol. They are not the towns' own work, and no city government, university, or company in either place is a member. An account named `cu.boulder` is a name in our catalog, not the university's account.

What stays the same down the table: each account has an address, can receive, and acts when a person confirms (or runs a program a person switched on). What changes: who confirms, how many people a decision needs, and how the group decides. One person decides alone. A town decides through institutions it already has, and an account does not change that.

These accounts are thin, and saying so matters. On 26 Oct 2026 the catalog held 2,085 active accounts: 1,671 place, 220 people, 185 purpose, and 9 untyped. Only 86 had a wallet deployed. An account page is where a payment can land. It is not proof that one has.

## the rest of this series

**One person.** The smallest people account is one person who already keeps something: a garden bed, a stretch of creek, a tree on a school yard. [One person can hold an account](/guide/one-person-can-hold-an-account?from=guide) starts from the question "what can one person actually do" and offers one action among the others.

**A small group.** A crew, a club, a family. [A small group is big enough](/guide/a-small-group-is-big-enough?from=guide) gives four plain steps to start one, then shows a group as a namespace that can hold as many accounts as it has things to keep.

**A company.** [Every company depends on places it does not own](/guide/every-company-depends-on-places-it-does-not-own?from=guide) names the established ways to map nature dependency first, then shows a company as a group with a balance sheet and a people account like any other.

**A town.** [A town is people who share a place](/guide/a-town-is-people-who-share-a-place?from=guide) takes community resilience and shows a town as the whole triad at one size: people, places, and purposes in one name.

**Every size at once.** [Place, purpose, people at any size](/guide/place-purpose-people-at-any-size?from=guide) closes all three series: three ladders side by side, and where the fractal comparison holds and where it breaks.

## where people sit in the triad

Every place is for something, and every purpose lives somewhere. People are the third leg: the ones who keep the place and the purpose. The protocol funds the place and the living systems on it first, and the people who keep them receive from what the place is funded to do. That is why this series comes last of the three, not least.

If you keep something already — a creek, a garden, a herd's winter range, a cause your neighbors share — start there. Look at what a named place depends on in [explore](/explore?from=guide), or [open an account](/agents/create?from=guide) for what you keep. If you run a group that already lives onchain, [onchain groups](/solutions/onchain-groups?from=guide&topic=ppp-people) shows how groups use the protocol. If you want to think through who the keepers are in your case, [write to us](/contact?from=guide&topic=ppp-people).

## frequently asked questions

### what is a stakeholder?

A stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of an organization's objectives. R. Edward Freeman set out that definition in 1984. Employees, customers, suppliers, communities, and regulators are common examples.

### is a people account a legal person?

No. An account is an address that can hold, receive, and act when a person confirms or has switched on a program. It adds no legal status, vote, or standing to anyone. Rights of nature are a separate legal question.

### can someone without title to land count as people?

Yes. The people leg is defined by keeping, not by a deed. A volunteer crew, a tenant farmer, a customary keeper, or a family kept from land they once looked after all count, and the account sits beside the governance they already have.

## sources

R. Edward Freeman, *Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach*, Pitman, 1984 — the definition of a stakeholder as any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of an organization's objectives

## the series

Six posts on one leg of the triad: people, from one person to a whole town.

1. **who counts as people?** — you are here — read first
2. [one person can hold an account](/guide/one-person-can-hold-an-account?from=guide)
3. [a small group is big enough](/guide/a-small-group-is-big-enough?from=guide)
4. [every company depends on places it does not own](/guide/every-company-depends-on-places-it-does-not-own?from=guide)
5. [a town is people who share a place](/guide/a-town-is-people-who-share-a-place?from=guide)
6. [place, purpose, people at any size](/guide/place-purpose-people-at-any-size?from=guide)

## the three series

Place, purpose, and people, each walked from the smallest size to the largest, after one question.

- [what counts as a place?](/guide/what-counts-as-a-place?from=guide) — the place series
- [what counts as a purpose?](/guide/what-counts-as-a-purpose?from=guide) — the purpose series
- [who counts as people?](/guide/who-counts-as-people?from=guide) — the people series
- [what do you want to ensure?](/guide/what-do-you-want-to-ensure?from=guide) — the question the three series start from