key takeaways
- Polkadot is getting a new on-chain governance model.
- The new “Gov2” model aims to improve inclusivity and decentralization, while increasing the number of decisions the Polkadot regime makes.
- After a final professional audit of its code, Gov2 is ready to launch on Kusama soon.
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Polkadot founder Gavin Wood announced the new governance structure as part of the Polkadot Decoded 2022 conference.
Polkadot update governance model
Crypto’s eighth largest blockchain is preparing to change its governance structure.
Polkadot founder Gavin Wood announced on Wednesday that the “Layer 0” blockchain Governance structure led by its own council and technical committee will be moving towards a more decentralized and inclusive model. In a streamed keynote presentation at Polkadot Decoded 2022, Wood introduced the new “Gov 2” model and explained that it aims to improve Polkadot’s decision-making process.
The main goal of the new governance model is to increase the number of collective decisions made by the Polkadot governance system. While the current system uses a public proposal queue, the new governance model will allow anyone to initiate a referendum at any time, as many times as they want. This means that under the new Government 2 structure, multiple referendums covering a wide range of issues can be held simultaneously, and there is no limit to the number of referendums open to vote at any one time.
Additionally, the new model would eliminate the voting participation of the Governance Council and the Technical Committee, replacing their roles with a new Polkadot Fellowship. The fellowship will ensure that the opinions of technical experts are still heard and considered in the Polkadot regime, without giving this group of stakeholders an extraneous amount of control. However, Polkadot holders who wish to delegate their voting power to community leaders will still be able to do so through a new and improved multirole delegation system.
While the new system offers more freedom and flexibility, new measures have also been introduced to protect the protocol from attacks. A native and tracked system will help organize Polkadot governance and protect the system from malicious actors. When making a proposal, proposers should specify a “core” that best fits their goal to achieve. Proposals of origin that could change more important aspects of the Polkadot ecosystem would have more stringent security measures, higher limits and longer consideration periods. In contrast, origins that have relatively low power (eg, Tip Origins, capable of spending a maximum of 10 DOT from Treasury) offer shorter consideration periods and lower thresholds for approval.
Polkadot is considered a Layer 0 blockchain, which refers to a basic infrastructure layer on which further blockchains can be built. Polkadot does this through the use of its own relay chain, which settles transactions on its base layer before eventually passing on information to the other chains built on it.
Polkadot’s new governance model is not the first major update to the Layer 0 blockchain in recent months. In May, Polkadot launched XCM, a “cross-consensus messaging” format that allows communication between different parachains of the network. The update brought the network closer to realizing its goal of becoming a fully interoperable multi-chain ecosystem.
After the final professional audit of its code, the newly announced Polkadot governance model is set to launch soon on Kusama. After testing on Kusama, the Polkadot team plans to submit a proposal to launch the new infrastructure on the Polkadot network.
Disclosure: At the time of writing this article, the author owned DOT and several other cryptocurrencies.