Voltaire Update: Metadata Standards at the Forefront of Cardano’s Governance
Something that caught my attention in the last few days was a new CIP submitted by Pi Lanningham, CTO of Sundae Labs, addressing the question of what metadata standards we should establish for the future on-chain governance model on Cardano, as described in CIP-1694.
For those unfamiliar, metadata is a feature that can be added to a transaction on Cardano to embed additional information specific to that transaction. A clear example of this can be seen with NFTs on the Cardano blockchain. The on-chain information of an NFT is not the visual representation (like the image of a beloved penguin) but rather specific data that links to a file containing that image.
There are established standards guiding developers on how to structure this metadata for NFT projects. Why are these standards crucial? Without such standards, every NFT marketplace or visualization tool like pool.pm would need to adapt to different NFT projects’ unique approaches to display their assets correctly. Standards help ensure consistency, allowing tools, infrastructure, and companies working with NFTs to display and interact with your NFTs correctly. Without following these standards, there’s a risk that an NFT may not be displayed or interacted with correctly.
Turning back to governance, and more specifically CIP-1694, all the particular transactions associated with Minimal Viable Governance (MVG), such as submitting a governance action (GA), registering as a delegated representative (DRep), or voting as a constitutional committee (CC) member, among other things, will need to incorporate specific and structured metadata that adheres to a certain standard. If not, there’s a risk that particular governance tools may not correctly interpret or display the information contained in the metadata.
Pi’s proposal outlines several core objectives, including:
- Standardizing a format for rich metadata related to Cardano governance.
- Standardizing a minimal and uncontroversial set of fields to support “Minimal Viable Governance.”
- Leaving the format open to extension and experimentation.
- Enabling tooling and ecosystem developers to build the best user experiences possible.
- Providing a set of best practices that tooling and ecosystem developers can rely on for the health and integrity of this data.
The document also mentions several standards, such as JSON-LD (JSON Linked Data) for document structuring, the usage of RFC 2119 keyword interpretations, and content-addressable storage mediums such as IPFS or Arweave for content hosting.
While the CIP is still a draft and needs to be refined, it is a fantastic initiative that requires more attention. Governance metadata is the cornerstone of a working on-chain governance model.