Court Hierarchy

Understanding the hierarchical court structure and specialized domains

Kleros courts are organized in a hierarchical tree structure, allowing disputes to be handled by jurors with appropriate expertise while maintaining a clear appeals path.

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Court Structure

The court tree forms an arborescence with the General Court as the current root. New courts can be added by governance as Kleros is adopted for additional dispute types.

This diagram reflects the court tree from the Kleros yellow paper (Figure 5). The live court tree on v2.kleros.builders may differ as courts are added or modified through governance.

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Court Types

General Court

The Root Court (ID: 1)

The General Court currently serves as the root of the entire court system. It handles appeals from all specialized courts and has the broadest juror pool because staking in any specialized court automatically stakes you in all parent courts up to the General Court.

Every juror in the Kleros system is, by definition, a General Court juror.

Specialized Courts

Domain-Specific Expertise

Specialized courts focus on specific domains and require relevant expertise from jurors. Each has its own policy document defining rules and requirements.

Examples from the live court tree:

• Blockchain Technical: Smart contract disputes, protocol-level technical questions
• Solidity: A sub-court of Blockchain Technical for Solidity-specific disputes
• Curation: Token lists, address tags, registry disputes
• English Language: Translation quality, content disputes
• Data Analysis / Statistical Modeling: Data-related disputes
• Video Production: Video content quality disputes
• Humanity Court: Proof of Humanity registration challenges
• Corte General en Español: Spanish-language disputes

Forking Court

Reserved for Future Use (ID: 0)

Court ID 0 is reserved for the future Forking Court, which will handle protocol-level disputes and serve as the ultimate escalation point. It currently cannot be used for regular disputes.

Court ID 0 is reserved and cannot be used. Attempting to create disputes in the Forking Court will fail.

• Currently serves as the root of the court system
• Handles appeals from all specialized courts
• Has the broadest juror requirements
• Includes every juror in the system (due to automatic parent staking)

When you stake in any specialized court, you are automatically staked in all parent courts up to the General Court.

Automated Curation

AI-Optimized Resolution

• New court type designed for AI agents
• Optimized dispute resolution parameters
• Suitable for high-volume, lower-stakes curation tasks

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Court Parameters

Each court has parameters that define how it operates. These are set during court creation and can be changed by governance so always check v2.kleros.builders for current live values.

Parameter	Description	Spec Example
Minimum Stake (minStake)	Minimum PNK required to stake in this court	2,300 PNK
Alpha (alpha)	Basis points controlling how much PNK is locked per vote	10000 (100%)
Fee For Juror (feeForJuror)	Payment per juror per dispute round	0.005 ETH
Jurors For Court Jump (jurorsForCourtJump)	Juror threshold that triggers escalation to parent court	511
Hidden Votes (hiddenVotes)	Whether commit-reveal voting is used	true / false
Times Per Period (timesPerPeriod)	Duration of each dispute phase in seconds	[280800, 583200, 583200, 388800]

Court parameters are adjusted through governance and may differ from any static source. Always verify current values at v2.kleros.builders.

Mainnet Court Parameters (Arbitrum One)

The following table shows the production court configuration as deployed. Values are governance-controlled and may have changed since this was written — always cross-check with v2.kleros.builders.

ID	Name	Parent	minStake (PNK)	feeForJuror (ETH)	jurorsForJump	hiddenVotes
1	General Court	1 (root)	2,300	0.005	511	Yes
2	Blockchain	1	7,000	0.0069	63	No
3	Non-Technical	2	7,000	0.003	31	No
4	Token Listing	3	70,000	0.064	47	No
5	Technical	2	33,000	0.033	31	No
6	Marketing Services	1	7,800	0.0062	15	No
7	English Language	1	9,000	0.0074	3	No
8	Video Production	1	7,500	0.0062	3	No
9	Onboarding	1	2,300	0.0007	255	No
10	Curation	1	2,600	0.0024	30	No
11	Data Analysis	1	15,000	0.018	64	No
12	Statistical Modeling	11	19,000	0.019	32	No
13	Curation (Medium)	10	2,900	0.0023	30	No
14	Spanish-English Translation	7	9,000	0.0031	128	No
15	French-English Translation	7	9,000	0.0031	128	No
16	Portuguese-English Translation	7	9,000	0.0031	128	No
17	German-English Translation	7	9,000	0.0039	128	No
18	Russian-English Translation	7	9,000	0.0039	128	No
19	Korean-English Translation	7	9,000	0.005	128	No
20	Japanese-English Translation	7	9,000	0.005	128	No
21	Turkish-English Translation	7	9,000	0.005	128	No
22	Chinese-English Translation	7	9,000	0.005	128	No
23	Corte General en Español	1	5,100	0.005	128	No
24	Humanity Court	1	5,300	0.0024	31	No
25	Development Court	1	9,500	0.011	63	No
26	Solidity Court	25	9,500	0.011	63	No
27	Javascript Court	25	9,500	0.011	63	No
28	Corte de Curación en Español	23	5,100	0.0024	30	No
29	Corte de Disputas de Consumo y Vecindad	23	8,400	0.0054	15	No
30	Oracle Court	1	5,000	0.0069	31	No
31	Automated Curation	10	2,600	0.00017	3	No
32	Corte de Defensores del Cliente	29	8,400	0.0054	15	No

Courts 29 and 32 (Argentina Consumer Protection courts) use DisputeKitGated and require specific SBT eligibility tokens. See Deployment Addresses for SBT contract addresses.

Testnet Parameters (Arbitrum Sepolia)

Testnet court parameters are deliberately different from mainnet to allow faster testing:

Parameter	Mainnet (General Court)	Testnet (General Court)
minStake	2,300 PNK	150 PNK
feeForJuror	0.005 ETH	0.00001 ETH
timesPerPeriod	~3 days each	12 hours each
Courts available	32	6

Do not use testnet parameter values to estimate mainnet costs or draw probabilities.

Understanding Alpha

The alpha parameter determines how much of your stake is locked when drawn as a juror:

pnkAtStakePerJuror = (minStake × alpha) / 10000

Alpha Example

With minStake = 2,300 PNK and alpha = 10000 (100%)

Your locked amount per vote = 2,300 PNK

If alpha were 5000 (50%), your locked amount would be 1,150 PNK per vote. The alpha parameter effectively sets the economic risk of participating as a juror higher alpha means more PNK at stake per vote.

Time Periods

Each dispute progresses through four key periods, with durations defined per court:

1. Evidence Period: Time for parties to submit evidence
2. Commit Period: Time for jurors to commit votes (when hiddenVotes = true)
3. Vote / Reveal Period: Time for voting or revealing committed votes
4. Appeal Period: Time to fund appeals

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Automatic Parent Staking

Critical Concept: When you stake in a specialized court, you are automatically staked in all parent courts up to the General Court.

What this means in practice:

• Staking in the Solidity court = also eligible for Blockchain Technical and General Court cases
• Staking in Curation (Medium) = also eligible for Curation and General Court cases
• The General Court includes every juror in the entire system

This ensures sufficient juror availability at each level and maintains a proper appeals path where parent courts always have a broader jury pool than their children.

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Multi-Court Staking

You can stake in multiple courts, but there are important constraints:

Court Limit

There is a MAX_STAKE_PATHS limit on how many courts a single juror can stake in simultaneously. This exists for gas efficiency many sortition operations scale linearly with the number of staked courts.

Verify the current MAX_STAKE_PATHS value on-chain or in the Sortition Module contract. If you attempt to stake in more courts than allowed, the transaction will revert with CannotStakeInMoreCourts.

Choosing Courts

Consider these factors when selecting courts:

1. Your Expertise: Match courts to your knowledge areas, read each court’s policy before staking
2. Minimum Stake: Ensure you meet the court’s minStake requirement (check live values)
3. Activity Level: More active courts = more earning opportunities
4. Policy Alignment: Understand and agree with court rules before committing PNK

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Court Policies

Each court has a policy document that defines:

Section	Description
Purpose	What types of disputes the court handles
Rules	Guidelines jurors must follow when evaluating evidence
Required Skills	Knowledge or expertise jurors should possess
Special Procedures	Any court-specific requirements

Policies are managed through the PolicyRegistry contract and can be updated by governance. Child courts inherit policies from their parent courts so General Court policies apply everywhere.

Critical for Jurors: Always read the court policy before staking or voting. Failing to follow court policies may result in incoherent votes and lost PNK.

Explore Court Policies

Visit Kleros Court, click on “Courts” and review the policy for any court that interests you.

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Court Transparency Features

The V2 interface provides enhanced transparency for each court:

• Top Jurors Staked: See who has the largest stakes in each court
• Latest Stakes: Monitor real-time staking activity
• Court Statistics: View dispute history and resolution rates
• Court Parameters: All parameters are viewable on-chain and in the Court UI

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What’s Next?

Appeals

Learn how cases escalate through the hierarchy

How It Works

Understand the full dispute resolution process

Staking Guide

Step-by-step guide to staking in courts