Governance Decentralization: Introducing the first Election for Concordium’s Governance Committee in 2024

tl;dr June 2024 marks a pivotal moment in Concordium’s history with the election to expand the Governance Committee, taking the first step towards the decentralization of Concordium governance. This initiative aims to empower CCD holders by integrating them directly into the governance process, embodying a transition towards a more democratized and participatory model. This document offers an initial overview of the election process, setting the stage for a series of detailed updates as we move closer to the election.

The Governance Committee

The governance committee is an advisory committee to the Concordium Foundation Board. It is responsible for driving the planned governance decentralization and for proposing changes to the tokenomics parameters and protocol updates. In doing so, the Committee considers the interests of all relevant stakeholders related to the tokenomics and governance.

The governance committee is currently composed of five members chosen by the Concordium Foundation. Governance decentralization will kick off in June 2024, with the election by CCD holders of two new members to the governance committee. This will be followed by yearly election, and by mid 2027 the governance committee will be composed of nine members, all elected by token holders. In parallel, the governance committee will set up the processes and infrastructure needed for token holders to vote on governance committee decisions and propose their own changes to the blockchain, turning the governance of the Concordium blockchain into a powerful mix of representative and direct democracy. More details on the current governance decentralization roadmap can be found in the whitepaper.

2024 Election

The election has two stages: First, an informal process for candidate nomination. Second, the token holders vote for their favorite candidate(s).

Anyone who is involved with the Concordium blockchain may be nominated as a candidate. Nominations will take place in April 2024, and the exact process will be explained in the coming months.

In June 2024, token holders will be asked to vote on-chain for their preferred candidate(s). All votes are weighted by the CCD held in the account voting. Note that this weight will be obtained by taking the average CCD on the account over the 3 months prior to the election.

The Concordium Foundation will abstain from voting in the 2024 election.

It is important for token owners to understand that if their tokens are in a custody wallet, e.g., on a centralized exchange, then they cannot vote with those tokens. Moreover, the custodian will be able to vote with the weight of all tokens given to them in custody. It is thus important for all CCD owners who want to vote (or who don’t want custodians to vote in their name), to transfer all CCD to wallets of their own. Delegators can vote with their tokens, since delegation only involves changing the weights of validators in the consensus protocol — delegated tokens are never removed from the owner’s (delegator’s) wallet.

The election protocol chosen provides privacy and end-to-end verifiability. This means that votes remain secret at all times — no one can know how individuals voted. And every step of the protocol involves zero-knowledge proofs showing that the step was executed correctly. By checking the ZK-proofs, a third party (e.g., an auditor) can verify the correctness of the election outcome.

​​In the coming months we will elaborate further on the election process and protocol.

Timeline

February and March 2024
Several more articles will be published about the exact rules for the elections, details about the nomination process, a technical article and documentation for the election software, and a document describing the duties and limitations of the governance committee.

April 2024
Nominations will take place. By the end of the month we will have the final list of candidates.

May 2024
The candidates will be able to present themselves to the community and campaign for the election.

June 2024
The formal election will take place, tentatively from the 11th of June to the 23rd of June 2024. The final tally will be published in the following days.