Voltaire Update: CIP-1694 Pull Request Merged: Next Steps and Community Reactions
After almost eight months of collecting feedback and undergoing various fundamental changes, as reported above, on Friday, June 30, 2023, the CIP-1694 Pull Request was merged into the main branch of the CIP repository on GitHub. By doing so, the proposal obtained the status of “Proposed.” CIP editor, Matthias Benkort, provided some context on why the merge was happening now and not as originally planned after the final CIP-1694 workshop in Edinburgh (July 11-12).
With the recent departure of Jared Corduan from IOG, who was also a CIP editor and championing the CIP-1694 pull request, the other CIP editors concluded that it was the right time to move the proposal forward.
Some community members were surprised by this action and voiced their concern on GitHub (1, 2). One of the commentators mentioned that no alternative governance model was even considered, and another stated that he didn’t understand why things were rushed. The two commentators were reminded by other contributors that it has been almost eight months since CIP-1694 was first introduced, the pull request got over 700 comments, more than any other CIP before, and as of today, no alternative governance solution has been put forth for discussion.
It is important to note that a merged CIP is not a binding document nor has any authority to command changes to a project. As Matthias Benkort mentioned in one of the comments:
A CIP is first and foremost, a technical solution to a problem that is thoroughly discussed and backed by arguments. … A CIP isn’t an order or a statement of work, it is a rather detailed solution that may or may not be implemented.
Once a CIP is merged, it only means that the soundness, technical details, and rationale of the proposal align with the requirements described in CIP-0001, nothing else. Teams and companies for CIP-1694, IOG, still need to come in and commit to implementing the changes described in the CIP. In short, a merged CIP does not have more authority than a CIP that is still a Pull Request.
Now that CIP-1694 has been merged and is available on the main branch in the CIP repository, it is also easier to discuss specific intricacies of the proposal in separate pull requests. The next crucial step for CIP-1694 is the ratification process. While the proposal is ready, the community still needs to ratify the proposal publicly. There are different ideas and ways on how to do that. For stake pool operators (SPOs), it makes sense to use the on-chain SPO polls as described in CIP-0094 to measure sentiment. Ultimately, SPOs directly vote by upgrading their nodes that contain the Voltaire code.
I will continue to monitor the progression of the Voltaire era and post regular updates in this thread.