Governance

Governance is the process by which plans for reform in the Pastel Network are presented and voted on. As a completely decentralized, peer-to-peer blockchain there are no privileged access admin keys. Through the governance process, proposals can be presented to the community. The ratification of new proposals are handled by a voting process via SuperNodes.

Phase 1: Proposals

All on-chain governance actions start as proposals which can be submitted by any enabled SuperNode that has been active on the network for 17,280 blocks (currently approximately 30 days). Such SuperNodes are able to submit a governance-ticket identifying their various proposal to the network on any given blockHeight, which will then become active after 10 block confirmations.

There are several types of proposals that can be submitted, which include but are not limited to the following:

• Block-Reward Governance Payments

• Parameter Change Proposals

• Bridge Relayer and Orchestrator Proposals

• Plain Text Proposals

• Software Upgrade Proposals

Phase 2: Voting Period

After the governance-ticket passes the proposal period, the proposal enters a voting period during which SuperNode operators cast their vote. Any SuperNode operators in the active-set at blockHeight=X are considered for voting as governance participants. The Voting Period lasts 4,032 blocks from the time the proposal is confirmed on the network at blockHeight=X+10.

During the voting period, governance participants have 3 voting options:

• Yes

• No

• Abstain

The Abstain option allows voters to signal that they do not intend to vote in favor or against the proposal but accept the result of the vote.

Phase 3: Tallying Period

There are two conditions that have to be satisfied for the voted proposal to be accepted:

1. Quorum — More than 10.0% of the total governance participant SuperNodes, or active-set SuperNodes at blockHeight=X, need to have participated in the vote.

2. Threshold — At least 50% of votes that participated need to have voted in favor of the proposal (a Yes vote).

If both of these requirements are not met by the end of the voting period, the proposal will be rejected.

Phase 4: Implementation Phase

If the proposal is accepted, it enters the implementation stage. For most proposals, the implementation will be immediate and programmatically executed.