Explaining Polkadot Governance

As the ecosystem matures, Polkadot’s governance structure has undergone upgrades as well, shifting into its modern form, known as OpenGov, which launched in June 2023.

Polkadot’s previous governance structure was made up of the token holders DAO, a technical committee, and the council. The technical committee was a select group of teams who had successfully built and implemented a Polkadot runtime or host, and the council was a 13-member onchain entity that controlled the treasury, suggested proposals, and veto malicious proposals.

Origins and Tracks

Proposals must abide by set parameters known as tracks and origins. Origins are used to categorize the referendum by its effect on the greater ecosystem, and different origins will lead proposals down different tracks based on their categorization.

Each origin has its own track, and while the type of referendum proposed can result in different origins and tracks, the size of it can change the proposals path as well.

Treasury use proposals offer a good example of this, a proposal for a small tip would take a different track than one that involves significant expenditures.

Through Polkadot’s OpenGov, all proposals are initiated by DOT token holders. These public referenda can be voted on immediately, however they cannot be enabled as quickly.

Proposals that are set to pass will enter a “lead-in period” and they must meet set criteria in order to move forward and actually be implemented. To pass the lead-in period these proposals must submit a “significant” refundable deposit payment that can mitigate spam transactions.

To ensure that the best proposals are given a proper amount of consideration, referenda must submit a decision deposit, as well as adhere to a decision period and a confirmation period. The deposits are cheap as the cost mostly correlates to the amount necessary to store the information onchain, with some variance based on the importance of the track.

Once a deposit is placed the decision period can begin, which is a set window of time for a proposal to be considered by OpenGov. These proposals are also required to pass through the confirmation period, which is the total time the referenda must meet both the minimum approval and support criteria in order to pass

OpenGov Structure

OpenGov results in a more democratic and efficient governance system controlling Polkadot.

With OpenGov all proposals are derived from the public, creating a more democratic environment that is representative of the DOT community, as opposed to prior structures which included a “council” composed of 13 entities that could also submit proposals.

OpenGov functions as a far more flexible and efficient governance system than its predecessors. Governance v1 referendums took place over 28 day eras, which restricted multiple proposals from being considered in the same 28-day time frame. Through OpenGov multiple referenda can be voted upon at the same time, making the system significantly more efficient and adaptable.

Polkadot’s OpenGov embodies a community-centric approach to governance and DAO related decision making, in line with a permissionless and decentralized onchain experience.