Governance V2

Polkadot employs a sophisticated governance mechanism that allows the network to continuously evolve according to the needs of stakeholders. Its goal is to ensure that the majority of stakeholders can always control the network.

Polkadot’s first-generation decentralized governance system consists of three main components: the Technical Committee, the Council, and referendums. This system functioned well in its early days, but as the network matured, further improvements were needed to address its shortcomings and keep up with the latest developments. Thus, “Governance v2” was born.

“Governance v2” ( Gov2) has changed the way of daily decision-making, making referendums more impactful and flexible, greatly increasing the number of collective decisions that the system can make. Gov2 is currently live on the Kusama network and will propose deployment to the Polkadot network in the future.

The Polkadot network brings together multiple innovative mechanisms, including on-chain stored state transition functions and a voting mechanism with adaptive majority thresholds. All changes to the protocol must reach consensus through a weighted voting process based on stake.

In Gov2, anyone can initiate a referendum at any time, and there is no limit on the number. New Origins and Tracks features have been added to assist the referendum process. Each Origin is associated with a referendum category, and each category is linked to a Track. Different Tracks allow the network to adjust the dynamic parameters of the referendum based on privilege levels.

Voting can be conducted immediately after the referendum is created, but certain conditions must be met to enter the “decision” status. Conditions include having passed the import period, having remaining decision space, and paying the decision deposit, among others.

Voting is based on approval rate and support rate metrics, replacing the previous adaptive group bias system. Different Tracks have different confirmation periods and approval/support requirements. Proposals that are not approved after 28 days will be rejected.

Polkadot uses a “voluntary lockup” mechanism that allows for increased voting power by locking tokens. Tokens can be locked for up to 32 periods, approximately 2.5 years.

Gov2 introduces a multi-role delegation feature, allowing voters to designate different representatives for different categories of referendums.

To cancel a referendum, a specific Cancellation operation must be carried out, which also requires network voting to be approved.

The Technical Committee has been replaced by the new Polkadot Fellowship. The Fellowship is an autonomous expert institution that represents a group with knowledge of Polkadot technology. It adopts a hierarchy to reflect the expertise level of its members.

Overall, Gov2 has further promoted the decentralization process of Polkadot governance by removing centralized entities, introducing a more flexible voting mechanism, and improving the delegation system.