How to Propose to Your True Love — Blockchain Proposals and Why They Matter
Have you ever approached a traffic light that changes to yellow just in time to catch you, with no cars even waiting to go the other direction?
Have you ever used software that just doesn’t work the way you think it should?
Have you ever thought “things” should just be different?
Of course you have.
We all know the best way to run everything. But who to call to make the change?
We aren’t promising to fix traffic lights (although, traffic systems on blockchain…?), but at least when you’re using Provenance Blockchain, there’s a module for that. Enter governance proposals, which fixes all of your problems, guaranteed!
Well, not really, but maybe. Proposals govern how Provenance Blockchain adapts and changes. As additional features in the core Provenance Blockchain code are developed, or as ideas are generated in the community to continue to grow and build on Provenance Blockchain, proposals are submitted to ensure the entire ecosystem agrees with any upcoming (or “proposed”) changes before they can be implemented. Any Hash holder can propose ideas, dreams, hopes, improvements, complaints, etc… to the ecosystem. This is one of the beautiful things about Provenance Blockchain; if you have Hash, then people have to listen to your ideas, no matter how asinine. See? A fix to all of your problems, and a captive audience!
Why proposals
The proposal system ensures one of the most exciting aspects of blockchain; namely, democratization. Every user, to include the core developers of Provenance Blockchain, must apply changes via proposals, and every Hash holder has one vote per owned Hash (as long as that Hash is delegated, more to follow in the voting article). This means that even for routine upgrades, the core development team must submit a Software Upgrade Proposal to the chain to be voted on by all members of the Hash-holding community. This ensures a transparent, democratic system to police the ongoing evolution of Provenance Blockchain.
Limitations
Proposals are NOT meant to support actions such as spamming the community with your deeply rooted convictions on Burger King vs. McDonalds (although, I wonder how the community would vote?). Thus, some limitations have been placed to remove superfluous activity. As mentioned previously, you need to hold Hash in order to submit proposals. To push a proposal into the voting period, each proposal must have a minimum deposit of 50,000 Hash (this value is subject to change, and can be reviewed in the Provenance Blockchain Explorer Chain Parameters page under the “Gov” tab). However, to submit a proposal, the full deposit amount does not need to come from the submitter. A deposit can be crowd-sourced, which incentivizes excellent ideas that benefit the community. Deposits are either returned to their owners (if a proposal passes or is rejected), or burned (if a proposal never meets the minimum deposit, or is vetoed). Vetoed proposals are rare, but can occur if enough (currently 33.4%) of the Provenance Blockchain voting community submits NoWithVeto type votes on your proposal. A NoWithVeto submission typically means a strong disagreement, with the voter expressing concerns that the proposal is actively harming the chain, or the governance system is being abused to submit spam or meaningless messages. So, as long as your proposal is valid and improves the chain, vetoed proposals will remain highly unlikely. Some examples do exist in other cosmos blockchains and are easily understood as superfluous and meaningless. Additional information on Voting will be provided in a forthcoming Voting-specific article.
Types of Proposals
There are many different types of proposals. All proposal types are supported by Command Line Interface (CLI), but the Explorer team has added a GUI to simplify the submission of the more popular proposal types within the Provenance Blockchain Explorer, a website that allows users to view various aspects of the Provenance Blockchain. The current GUI-supported proposal types are:
- Text: The catch-all proposal type, where users can submit an open-ended text description of any topic of interest to the user/community. This is where you’d submit a complaint, or maybe a more theory-based change that isn’t covered by the other proposal types.
- Software Upgrade: The Software Upgrade proposal is used when upgrading the Provenance Blockchain core software. These are important as they capture significant changes to the ecosystem. Any upgrade proposals are explicitly highlighted by the Explorer notifications to ensure users are well aware of upcoming changes. You can see an example here.
- Cancel Software Upgrade: As can be expected from the name, this proposal is in place to cancel upgrades for whatever reason. While not used heavily, this proposal type is in place in case of an error in a Software Upgrade proposal. No examples exist yet (and hopefully never will!).
- Store Code: This type is to upload a smart contract build to the blockchain. Once complete, the smart contract can then be instantiated. An example of this proposal type can be seen here.
- Instantiate Code: This permits the smart contract to be instantiated on chain, meaning it creates a contract, which can then be executed. There are no examples of this proposal type yet.
- Parameter Change: The Parameter Change proposal changes one or more parameters within the Provenance Blockchain ecosystem. All chain parameters can be seen in the Explorer. An example of this proposal type can be seen here (note the original minimum deposit of 1000 Hash!).
How to submit
Luckily, there’s a GUI for that! After navigating to the Provenance Blockchain Explorer, log in to your account.
Once you’ve logged in, navigate to the Governance page, where you can review all proposals that have been submitted to the Provenance Blockchain community. If you are a Hash holder, at the top of the page you will see a blue “Submit New Proposal” button.
You’re nearly done! Simply select the proposal type you wish to submit, provide all necessary fields (helpful error messages will appear if you miss a field) and submit your proposal. Within a few seconds, you should see your proposal in the list. Congrats, you’ve just submitted your first proposal!
If you need to use the CLI (i.e., you hate GUIs or your proposal type is not yet supported) feel free to reach out on the Provenance Blockchain Discord for additional support. You can always request additional types be supported in the GUI, too.
What happens next
Well, assuming you’ve met the initial deposit, your proposal is on its merry way to voting, and will have a notification for all Explorer users that your proposal is open. Stay tuned for a follow-up article on how to vote. No worries, there’s a GUI for that, too!
JARRYD ALLISON
Jarryd somehow stumbled into an Engineering job at Provenance. When he’s not solving problems, he’s aggressively fighting dad bod, digging in the dirt, or fishing. He once ate a 64oz. steak and hasn’t stopped telling people.
