Overview of Governance
Governance may sound formal and official as we are used to centralized governance. But what decentralized governance represents is a flow or process of continuously improving the Carbon protocol collectively.
Why is decentralized governance fundamental to Carbon?
In order for Carbon to be truly censorship-resistant and permissionless, a distributed network of authority must exist to avoid centralized failure points, and to prevent a concentration of influence by a select few entities.
By decentralizing governance, you will be empowered as a stakeholder to drive the growth of Carbon and implement the changes you wish to see on the protocol without undue restrictions.
To organize all SWTH stakeholders participating in governance, we have created a governance portal and social channels via the Carbon Governance Forum and Switcheo Labs Discord server, where you can discuss and exercise your governance rights.
How does governance work?
Governance on Carbon goes through 4 phases before the outcome of a proposed topic is enforced on-chain. The 4 phases are:
Proposal → Voting → Results → Implementation
The progression of a proposal through each stage is determined by a number criteria that determine if a proposal is passed or rejected.
Proposal Phase
Under Carbon's governance feature, any improvement or update to the blockchain’s protocol will be done via Improvement Proposals. To bring forward a topic for voting, you will need to create a proposal on Carbon and acquire the minimum deposit amount of 10,000 SWTH to send the proposal into the Voting Stage. Anyone can contribute to this deposit amount.
Tip: Before creating a proposal, we encourage you to put forth your ideas via the forum and discuss it on Discord. This will be useful as a gauge on whether the community is supportive of your proposal or not, and avoid potentially wasting your deposit.
Before submitting a proposal on Carbon, learn more about how you can share your proposal ideas with the community, as well as how to properly propose your proposal in the walkthrough here.
Voting Phase
Once the proposal has reached the minimum deposit amount, it will automatically enter into the voting period which lasts for 2 days.
While every community member has voting rights, your voting power or influence is determined by the amount of SWTH you staked on Carbon.The higher your stake, the bigger your voting power.
After the 2 day voting period, results are tallied based on a few predetermined criteria.
Results
How are votes tallied?
After the 2 day voting period, the voting results are recorded on-chain. In order for a proposal to pass, it must satisfy all of the following 3 criteria:
Quorum: More than
33.4% of total staking power voted on a proposal
For example, if the total staked SWTH is 600 million, it needs voting participation that makes up at least 200.4 million of the total amount staked
Threshold: At least 50% of voters vote “Yes” on a proposal
Veto: Less than 33.4% of voters vote “NowithVeto”
The best case scenario is when the predetermined conditions are met and the proposal is passed.
Details of scenarios where criteria is not met are explained using examples here.
Implementation
Proposals passed will be automatically implemented on the blockchain. The implementation process differs depending on the type of proposal.
Implementation of proposals are final and irreversible (unless a new proposal is able to revert the change). Therefore, all changes proposed and voted on should be carefully weighed for maximum benefit to our ecosystem as a whole.
If you’re going to vote, here’s a walkthrough on how to do so.
If you’re going to make a proposal, here’s a walkthrough on how to do so.