Cardano Governance Updates: Community Input, Voltaire Phase, and CIP-1694 Updates

Governance General Governance Conversation
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Voltaire Update: Cardano Node 8.2.0-pre - Advancements in the Conway Ledger Era and Improved Operational Flexibility

The release of Cardano-node 8.2.0-pre presents a variety of innovative features and enhancements. Progress has been made on the Conway ledger era to support new governance features via CIP-1694. In this first phase of the SanchoNet rollout, discussed in the CIP-1694 workshop in Edinburgh on July 12, 2023, the Conway ledger era now allows for Stake Pool Operators (SPOs) to vote on changes to the on-chain constitution. It is essential to underscore that this version is only intended for deployment on the sanchonet (Voltaire testnet) and preview public test environment. Do not use it for mainnet or preprod.

Conway era related changes:

  • Introduction of a DRep with pre-defined DReps that vote No and Abstain.
  • Change DCert type to a TxCert type family and introduce new certificates.
  • Implement voting on NewConstitution by StakePools as the most basic example of voting.
  • Implement query for getting Constitution hash from the ledger state.
  • Change structure of Governance Procedures in the TxBody.
  • Fix TICKF rule, avoiding VRF verification and syncing issues.
  • Clear out TxOuts with zero value from the UTxO upon translation into Conway.
  • Add --conway-era flag in cardano-cli.
  • Update cardano-cli with the ability to create votes and governance actions.
  • Update transaction build with the ability to specify votes and governance actions.

Other relevant enhancements and changes:

  • In terms of recommendations, refrain from building with ghc v9 as the performance with ghc v8 continues to exhibit superiority.
  • A newly introduced flag --start-as-non-producing-node allows to start a node by pointing to fictitious (or nonexistent) KES/VRF/opcert paths. With this non-producing standby mode, you can transition the KES/VRF/opcert files of the block producer to this location and simply “SIGHUP” the node to ingest the files and transition into a block producer, all without necessitating a restart. This adjustment streamlines the process of upgrading block-producing nodes.
  • The node now has a cap on resolving up to 8 DNS names for public peers and a maximum of 2 for local root peers, and this is in parallel, not an absolute restriction.
  • The version alignment between cardano-node and cardano-cli was removed, allowing for the release of a new cli version with updated functionality, independent of waiting for a fresh node release.
  • The cardano-cli ping has adopted the ISO8601 timestamp format and includes a --query-versions flag.

Comprehensive release notes, detailing all the nuances, are accessible at the following link: Release Cardano Node 8.2.0-pre · input-output-hk/cardano-node · GitHub

I will continue to monitor and update you about the developments of CIP-1694, its ratification process, and every other news item about the Age of Voltaire.

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