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A policy is the set of rules your organization enforces on every signing request. The Bitnob Secure Enclave evaluates the policy before it produces a signature, so a rule that blocks a transfer blocks it in hardware, not in your application code. An API key can only move funds the policy allows. Your organization enforces one policy at a time. That policy holds an ordered list of rules. Each rule has conditions, such as an amount above a threshold or a destination outside a set of addresses, and an action to take when every condition matches.

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What a policy can do

The first rule whose conditions all match decides the outcome. How policy evaluation works covers the order, the conditions, and what happens when nothing matches.

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Why policies are safe to rely on

  • No single key can change them. Activating a policy always goes through your organization’s quorum, which needs at least two approvers. An API key can draft a policy but never enforce one by itself. See Policy lifecycle and quorum.
  • The enforced policy is immutable. You change it by drafting a replacement and activating that, so every change is reviewed and recorded.
  • You can test before you enforce. Dry-run evaluation runs any draft against a sample request and returns a per-rule trace, with no side effects.
  • Every change is audited. Each policy carries an audit log of who created, edited, and activated it.

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How you work with policies

1

Discover what you can write

Rule reference lists the categories, actions, condition fields, and operators. List approver candidates lists who can approve.
2

Draft and lint

Create a draft with Create draft policy, then check it with Validate stored draft policy. Drafts are never enforced.
3

Test against real scenarios

Run sample transfers through Dry-run policy evaluation with the draft’s policy_id.
4

Activate through quorum

Activate policy stages the draft. It becomes enforced once your quorum approvers approve it.
Write and activate your first policy walks through all four steps with working requests.

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In this section

Concepts

How rules are evaluated, and how a draft becomes the enforced policy.

Get started

Draft, test, and activate a policy end to end.

Guides

Approvals, time locks, testing, changing a live policy, and handling held transactions.

Reference

Actions, operators, condition fields, validation codes, statuses, and events.