As Cardano enters its new era, its creator Charles Hoskinson has posted the initial CIP on Twitter for the Age of Voltaire, which brings about decentralized decision-making. According to the GitHub release, the CIP presents a proposal for an on-chain governance system that will facilitate Cardano’s Voltaire phase. This proposal builds upon and enhances the previous Cardano governance model, which relied on a fixed number of governance keys.
The plan aims to take an initial step that is both practical and advantageous to implement the Voltaire governance system. This proposal may be adjusted and expanded in future proposals to meet evolving governance needs. The Voltaire era follows the Basho phase, which focused on enhancing the underlying network performance.
During the Shelley era, Cardano introduced a scheme for delegation and incentives through stake pools run by the community, which contributed to the decentralization of the network. The Shelley era established the foundation for a functional and decentralized network, creating a pathway for the Voltaire Era. The existing governance structure under Shelley was designed to offer a straightforward transitional approach to governance. However, the new CIP seeks to address some of the weaknesses of this design.
The new governance proposal aims to enable active on-chain participation by ADA holders. Moreover, the CIP aims to enhance transparency and oversight over movements from the Treasury, which can be difficult to track. Finally, the proposal seeks to distinguish hard forks from other protocol parameter changes, as they require special treatment by SPOs.
Lastly, the CIP suggests creating a constitution for Cardano. Despite the fact that the majority of community members and Cardano’s founding entities share a similar vision, there is no official document that outlines these guiding principles. The CIP proposes using the Cardano blockchain to permanently document the project’s ethos through the Cardano Constitution.