With the first Cardano Chang upgrade expected within days, everyone is excited by the new capabilities that the on-chain Conway era will bring to decentralised governance, and a realisation of the Voltaire roadmap. As a contributor to future on-chain governance actions, at the Eastern Cardano Council we decided it was important to communicate with the Cardano community in advance about how we will approach our evaluation of governance actions in the early stages following the first Chang upgrade.
Who We Are
The Eastern Cardano Council (ECC) currently holds one of 7 seats on Cardano’s Interim Constitutional Committee. We were elected by the community as part of a vote that was facilitated by Intersect, using the Summon platform.
In forming the ECC we brought together a broad range of community members who have been contributing to the Cardano ecosystem from East Asia, South East Asia and Oceania for many years. Our members have contributed as Cardano Ambassadors, SPOs, project builders, Catalyst contributors, Intersect committee & working group members, event organisers, and much more. Our individual profiles are available at https://t.ly/ugpdk.
Governance Participation
As a member of the Interim Constitutional Committee (ICC), our role is to work with the other ICC members to assess whether governance actions submitted to the Cardano blockchain are constitutional, in accordance with the Interim Constitution and its guardrails. During the interim period (between the first and second Chang upgrades) we will be required to ratify parameter changes, hard forks and info governance actions.
In preparation for this responsibility, we have been developing our own internal processes, which include providing a transparent governance framework (see https://t.ly/s0Q3P), establishing the technical process for signing and submitting our on-chain votes, and ensuring all the necessary legal and risk protections are in place.
When the first Chang upgrade is implemented, it will make it technically possible to submit governance actions, however it is important to manage expectations around the practical off-chain considerations required for actually completing an on-chain vote. Given the amount of anticipated work in bootstrapping our internal processes and developing communication protocols, both with those who submit governance actions and other ICC members, the timeframes for reviewing and completing governance actions in the early stages following the first Chang upgrade may be longer than some Cardano community members expect. This may be particularly pointed given the excitement around this milestone and the desire by many to see decentralised governance in action as soon as possible once it is enabled.
While the ECC will commit to engaging with all stakeholders for each governance action, we will initially require a minimum consultation period of 6 epochs prior to a governance action being submitted on-chain. As the Intersect Governance Parameters Working Group have recommended a governance action lifetime of 6 epochs (i.e. how long before a governance action expires if it doesn’t meet the threshold to be ratified), this will allow a total of 12 epochs in which to properly engage with and review a governance action. As everyone’s experience around Cardano’s decentralised governance will improve over time, we anticipate that this consultation period may be shortened at some stage in the future.
While this approach provides up to 12 epochs; which aligns with Article III, Section 6 of the Interim Constitution, regarding the need to scrutinise governance actions thoroughly; it doesn’t mean that all governance actions will need that long. We will make every effort to review governance actions as fast as possible, however this ensures that we will have ample time to provide sufficient rationale, conduct technical reviews, and assess the potential impact of each proposed action on the Cardano blockchain ecosystem.
Communications
One of our core pillars within the ECC is communication. We believe this is an essential part of our role as an ICC member and something we emphasised in our election campaign, and continue to champion within the ICC. This is not only to provide transparency and community engagement, but as a reflection of the cultural and language diversity our council represents. We aim to ensure that language does not become a barrier that prevents some in the Cardano community from engaging in decentralised governance.
We will be announcing our communications plan in the coming weeks, which will describe ways that we will engage with the community. This will include both our outbound communications, as well as ways that community members can engage with us if required.
We look forward to walking with everyone on this exciting next stage of our journey, where we will discover together what Cardano can become, and how it can help shape a better world.