Governance Module
Canto's on-chain governance system leverages the Cosmos SDK
x/gov
module. In this system, $CANTO stakers can vote on proposals with votes weighted proportionally to their stake.The module supports the following basic features:
- Proposal submission: Users submit governance proposals with a deposit. Once the minimum deposit is reached, the proposal enters voting
- Voting: Participants can vote on proposals that reached MinDeposit
- Inheritance and penalties: Delegators inherit their validator's vote if they don't vote themselves.
- Claiming deposit: Users that deposited on proposals can recover their deposits if the proposal was accepted OR if the proposal never entered voting period.
Every account can submit proposals by sending a
MsgSubmitProposal
transaction through a Canto node. Once a proposal is submitted, it is identified by its unique proposalID
.A proposal includes an array of
sdk.Msg
s which are executed automatically if the proposal passes. The messages are executed by the governance ModuleAccount
itself. Modules such as x/upgrade
, that want to allow certain messages to be executed by governance only should add a whitelist within the respective msg server, granting the governance module the right to execute the message once a quorum has been reached. The governance module uses the MsgServiceRouter
to check that these messages are correctly constructed and have a respective path to execute on but do not perform a full validity check.To prevent spam, proposals must be submitted with a deposit in the coins defined by the
MinDeposit
param.When a proposal is submitted, it has to be accompanied with a deposit that must be strictly positive, but can be inferior to
MinDeposit
. The submitter doesn't need to pay for the entire deposit on their own. The newly created proposal is stored in an inactive proposal queue and stays there until its deposit passes the MinDeposit
. Other token holders can increase the proposal's deposit by sending a Deposit
transaction. If a proposal doesn't pass the MinDeposit
before the deposit end time (the time when deposits are no longer accepted), the proposal will be destroyed: the proposal will be removed from state and the deposit will be burned (see x/gov EndBlocker
). When a proposal deposit passes the MinDeposit
threshold (even during the proposal submission) before the deposit end time, the proposal will be moved into the active proposal queue and the voting period will begin.The deposit is kept in escrow and held by the governance
ModuleAccount
until the proposal is finalized (passed or rejected).When a proposal is finalized, the coins from the deposit are either refunded or burned according to the final tally of the proposal:
- If the proposal is approved or rejected but not vetoed, each deposit will be automatically refunded to its respective depositor (transferred from the governance
ModuleAccount
). - When the proposal is vetoed with greater than 1/3, deposits will be burned from the governance
ModuleAccount
and the proposal information along with its deposit information will be removed from state. - All refunded or burned deposits are removed from the state. Events are issued when burning or refunding a deposit.
Participants are users that have the right to vote on proposals. On Canto, participants are bonded $CANTO holders. Unbonded $CANTO holders and other users do not get the right to participate in governance. However, they can submit and deposit on proposals.
Note that some participants can be forbidden to vote on a proposal under a certain validator if:
- participant bonded or unbonded $CANTO to said validator after proposal entered voting period.
- participant became validator after proposal entered voting period.
This does not prevent participant to vote with $CANTO bonded to other validators. For example, if a participant bonded some $CANTO to validator A before a proposal entered voting period and other $CANTO to validator B after proposal entered voting period, only the vote under validator B will be forbidden.
Once a proposal reaches
MinDeposit
, it immediately enters Voting period
. We define Voting period
as the interval between the moment the vote opens and the moment the vote closes. Voting period
should always be shorter than Unbonding period
to prevent double voting. The initial value of Voting period
is 1 hour.The option set of a proposal refers to the set of choices a participant can choose from when casting its vote.
The initial option set includes the following options:
Yes
No
NoWithVeto
Abstain
NoWithVeto
counts as No
but also adds a Veto
vote. 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 voteQuorum is defined as the minimum percentage of voting power that needs to be cast on a proposal for the result to be valid. At launch, quorum is set to 40%.
Threshold is defined as the minimum proportion of
Yes
votes (excluding Abstain
votes) for the proposal to be accepted.Initially, the threshold is set at 50% of
Yes
votes, excluding Abstain
votes. A possibility to veto exists if more than 1/3rd of all votes are NoWithVeto
votes. Note, both of these values are derived from the TallyParams
on-chain parameter, which is modifiable by governance. This means that proposals are accepted iff:- There exist bonded tokens.
- Quorum has been achieved.
- The proportion of
Abstain
votes is inferior to 1/1. - The proportion of
NoWithVeto
votes is inferior to 1/3, includingAbstain
votes. - The proportion of
Yes
votes, excludingAbstain
votes, at the end of the voting period is superior to 1/2.
If a delegator does not vote, it will inherit its validator vote.
- If the delegator votes before its validator, it will not inherit from the validator's vote.
- If the delegator votes after its validator, it will override its validator vote with its own. If the proposal is urgent, it is possible that the vote will close before delegators have a chance to react and override their validator's vote. This is not a problem, as proposals require more than 2/3rd of the total voting power to pass before the end of the voting period. Because as little as 1/3 + 1 validation power could collude to censor transactions, non-collusion is already assumed for ranges exceeding this threshold.
At present, validators are not punished for failing to vote.
Later, the Canto network may introduce permissioned keys that can only sign txs from certain modules. For the MVP, the
Governance address
will be the main validator address generated at account creation. This address corresponds to a different PrivKey than the Tendermint PrivKey which is responsible for signing consensus messages. Validators thus do not have to sign governance transactions with the sensitive Tendermint PrivKey.If proposals are of type
SoftwareUpgradeProposal
, then nodes need to upgrade their software to the new version that was voted. This process is divided into two steps:After a
SoftwareUpgradeProposal
is accepted, validators are expected to download and install the new version of the software while continuing to run the previous version. Once a validator has downloaded and installed the upgrade, it will start signaling to the network that it is ready to switch by including the proposal's proposalID
in its precommits.(Note: Confirmation that we want it in the precommit?)Note: There is only one signal slot per precommit. If several
SoftwareUpgradeProposals
are accepted in a short timeframe, a pipeline will form and they will be implemented one after the other in the order that they were accepted.Once a block contains more than 2/3rd precommits where a common
SoftwareUpgradeProposal
is signaled, all the nodes (including validator nodes, non-validating full nodes and light-nodes) are expected to switch to the new version of the software.Last modified 6mo ago