How to Vote on a Proposal in Governance v1

Introduction

Once a proposal reaches public referenda, token holders can vote on it using their own tokens. Two factors defined the weight a vote has: the number of tokens locked and lock duration (called Conviction). This is to ensure that there is an economic buy-in to the result to prevent vote-selling. Consequently, the longer you are willing to lock your tokens, the stronger your vote will be weighted. You also have the option of not locking tokens at all, but vote weight is drastically reduced.

Referenda are simple, inclusive, and stake-based voting schemes. Each referendum has a proposal associated with it that suggests an action to take place. They have a fixed duration, after which votes are tallied, and the action is enacted if the vote is approved.

In Moonbeam, users will be able to create, second, and vote on proposals using their H160 address and private key, that is, their regular Ethereum account!

Moonbeam's governance system is in the process of getting revamped! This next phase of governance is known as OpenGov (Governance v2). During the roll-out process, OpenGov will be rigorously tested on Moonriver before a proposal will be made to deploy it on Moonbeam. Until it launches on Moonbeam, Moonbeam will continue to use Governance v1. As such, this guide is for proposals on Moonbeam only. If you're looking to vote on a proposal on Moonriver or Moonbase Alpha, you can refer to the How to Vote on a Proposal in OpenGov guide.

This guide will outline the process, with step-by-step instructions, of how to vote on referenda in Governance v1 on Moonbeam. For more information on Moonbeam's governance system, including Governance v1 and OpenGov (Governance v2), please refer to the governance overview page.

Note

This page goes through the mechanics on how to vote at a more techincal level. Token holders can leverage platforms such as Polkassembly to vote using a more friendly user interface.

Definitions

Some of the key parameters for this guide are the following:

• Voting Period — the time token holders have to vote for a referendum (duration of a referendum)

• Voting — a tool used by token holders to either approve ("Aye") or reject ("Nay") a proposal. The weight a vote has is defined by two factors: the number of tokens locked and lock duration (called Conviction)

  • Conviction — the time that token holders voluntarily lock their tokens when voting: the longer they are locked, the more weight their vote has
  • Lock balance — the number of tokens that a user commits to a vote (note, this is not the same as a user's total account balance)

  Moonbeam uses a concept of voluntary locking that allows token holders to increase their voting power by locking tokens for a longer period of time. Specifying no Lock Period means a user's vote is valued at 10% of their lock balance. Additional voting power can be achieved by specifying a greater conviction. For each increase in Conviction (vote multiplier), the Lock Periods double.

  For more information on the vote multiplier parameters, please refer to the Conviction Multiplier section of the Governance v1 docs

• Turnout — the total number of voting tokens

• Electorate — the total number of tokens issued in the network
• Maximum number of votes — the maximum number of votes per account
• Enactment Period — the time between a proposal being approved and enacted (make law). It is also the minimum locking period when voting
• Lock Period — the time (after the proposal's enactment) that tokens of the winning voters are locked. Users can still use these tokens for staking or voting
• Delegation — the act of transferring your voting power to another account for up to a certain conviction

Moonbeam

Variable	Value
Maximum number of votes	100
Voting Period	100800 blocks (14 days)
Enactment Period	14400 blocks (2 days)

Roadmap of a Proposal

This guide will cover the steps highlighted in the proposal roadmap diagram below. Primarily, you'll be learning how to vote on public referenda.

You can find a full explanation of the happy path for a Governance v1 proposal on the Governance overview page.

Forum Discussion

A vote on a democracy referenda is a binary outcome. However, a token holder's opinion is often more nuanced than yes/no, which is why it's strongly recommend that you preface any proposal with a post on Moonbeam's Community Forum.

The forum serves the critical role of providing a platform for discussion and allowing proposers to receive feedback from the community prior to an on-chain action. Creating a post on the forum is quick and easy as shown in the Using the Moonbeam Community Forum guide. There are categories corresponding to each type of proposal, including democracy, treasury, and grant proposals. While this step is optional, explaining the details of the proposal and following up with any questions raised may increase the chances of the initiative being accepted and subsequently passed by the community.

Voting on a Referendum

This section goes over the process of voting on a referendum. The guide assumes that there is one already taking place, in this case, the one created in the How to Propose an Action guide.

Note

This guide was done with a customized version of Moonbeam with short Launch/Enactment Periods for demonstration purposes only. You can adapt these instructions for Moonbeam.

To vote on a proposal in the network, you need to use the Polkadot.js Apps interface. To do so, you need to import an Ethereum-style account first (H160 address), which you can do by following the Creating or Importing an H160 Account guide. For this example, three accounts were imported and named with super original names: Alice, Bob, and Charley.

The proposal being voted will embed the remark "This is a unique string." on chain permanently.

How to Vote

To get started, you'll need to navigate to Moonbeam's Polkadot.js Apps interface. Everything related to governance lives under the Democracy tab, where (in the image) you can note that there is a number next to it, indicating there are democracy items pending (either proposals or referenda). Once there, you can view the details of the referendum you want to vote by clicking on the arrow next to the description. The number next to the action and description it is called the referendum index (in this case, it is 20). When ready, click on the Vote button.

Here, you need to provide the following information:

1. Select the account with which you want to vote
2. Enter the number of tokens that you want to vote with. These will be locked for the amount of time specified in the next step. Remember, you need to save a small amount of tokens for gas. If you try to vote with your entire balance the transaction will fail.
3. Set the vote conviction, which determines its weight (vote_weight = tokens * conviction_multiplier). Please refer to the Conviction Multiplier docs for more information
4. Click on Vote Aye to approve the proposal or Vote Nay to disapprove the proposal, and then sign the transaction

Note

The lockup periods shown in the previous image are not to be taken as reference. This guide was done with a customized version of Moonbeam with short Launch/Enactment Periods for demonstration purposes only.

In this case, Alice and Bob have decided to Vote Aye on the proposal with a Conviction of 6x. On the other hand, Charley has decided to Vote Nay on the proposal but chose not to lock any tokens (his tokens are only locked during the duration of the referendum), so his Conviction was 0.1x. With such vote distributions, the partial results can be seen in the main Democracy tab.

From voting, there are some key takeaways:

• Alice's weighted vote is 60000 units. That is, her 10000 locked tokens multiplied her Conviction by x6
• Bob's weighted vote is 60 units. That is, his 10 locked tokens multiplied his Conviction by x6
• Charley's weighted vote is 0.8 units. That is, his 8 tokens with no locking period (only during referendum) made his Conviction factor x0.1
• Both the remaining voting period and time before the proposal is enacted (if passed) are shown on the screen
• The overall turnout (in percentage) is just 0.09%. This is calculated as the total number of voting tokens (10018) divided by the total amount of tokens in the network (11.13M in this case)
• Even though the turnout is quite low, the proposal is tentatively approved because of the super-majority approval. More information can be found in the Positive Turnout Bias section
• It is important to write down the referendum index, as this is needed to unlock the tokens later when the locking period expires. Currently there is no way to retrieve the referendum index once it has been enacted

After the voting period has expired, the proposal will be visible under the Dispatch tab if approved. In here, you can also see the time remaining until the proposal is enacted.

Delegate Voting

Token holders have the option to delegate their vote to another account whose opinion they trust. The account being delegated does not need to make any particular action. When they vote, the vote weight (that is, tokens times the Conviction multiplier chose by the delegator) is added to its vote.

To delegate your vote, first, navigate to the Extrinsics menu under the Developers tab.

Note

If you try to delegate tokens to a person who has already voted, the transaction will fail. Consider using a new account for the below steps.

Here, you need to provide the following information:

1. Select the account from which you want to delegate your vote
2. Choose the pallet you want to interact with. In this case, it is the democracy pallet
3. Choose the extrinsic method to use for the transaction. This will determine the fields that need to fill in the following steps. In this case, it is delegate extrinsic
4. Select the account to which you want to delegate your vote
5. Set the vote conviction, which determines its weight (vote_weight = tokens * conviction_multiplier). The Conviction multiplier is related to the number of enactment periods the tokens will be locked for. Consequently, the longer you are willing to lock your tokens, the stronger your vote will be weighted. You also have the option of not locking tokens at all, but vote weight is drastically reduced
6. Set the number of tokens you want to delegate to the account provided before
7. Click the Submit Transaction button and sign the transaction

In this example, Alice delegated a total weight of 1000 (1000 tokens with an x1 Conviction factor) to Charley. To verify the delegation, click the blue circle on the left that indicates a delegation exists.

Note

Another way to delegate votes is under the Accounts tab. Click on the three dots of the account from which you want to delegate your vote and fill in the information as before.

Once the account you have delegated your vote to votes, the total vote weight delegated will be allocated to the option that the account selected. For this example, Charley has decided to vote in favor of a proposal that is in public referendum. He voted with a total weight of 800 (800 tokens with an x1 Conviction factor). But because Alice delegated 1000 vote weight to him, Aye votes total 1800 units.

To remove delegation, repeat the process described before, but select the undelegate extrinsic in step 3.

From vote delegation, there are some key takeaways:

• If a token holder were to remove the vote delegation during a public referendum where the delegated votes were used, these would be removed from the tally
• A token holder that delegated votes still has an economic buy-in. This means that if the option the delegator selected were to win, the tokens delegated are locked for the number of Lock Periods
• The tokens delegated for voting are no longer part of the token holder's free balance. To read more about the types of balances, you can visit the Polkadot Wiki page on Free vs. Reserved vs. Locked vs. Vesting Balance
• A token holder that delegated tokens can't participate in public referendum. First, the token holder must undelegate his vote
• A token holder that delegated tokens needs to manually unlock his locked tokens after the locking period has expired. For this, it is necessary to know the referendum index

Unlocking Locked Tokens

When token holders vote, the tokens used are locked and cannot be transferred. You can verify if you have any locked tokens in the Accounts tab, expanding the address's account details to query. There, you will see different types of balances. If you hover over the icon next to democracy, an information panel will show telling you the current status of your lock. Different lock status includes:

• Locked because of an ongoing referendum, meaning that you've used your tokens and have to wait until the referendum finishes, even if you've voted with a no-lock Conviction factor
• Locked because of the Conviction multiplier selected, displaying the number of blocks and time left
• Lock expired, meaning that you can now get your tokens back

Once the lock is expired, you can request your tokens back. To do so, navigate to the Extrinsics menu under the Developers tab.

Here, two different extrinsics need to be sent. First, you need to provide the following information:

1. Select the account from which you want to recover your tokens
2. Choose the pallet you want to interact with. In this case, it is the democracy pallet
3. Choose the extrinsic method to use for the transaction. This will determine the fields that need to fill in the following steps. In this case, it is removeVote extrinsic. This step is necessary to unlock the tokens. This extrinsic can be used as well to remove your vote from a referendum
4. Enter the referendum index. This is the number that appeared on the left-hand side in the Democracy tab. In this case, it is 0
5. Click the Submit Transaction button and sign the transaction

For the next extrinsic, you need to provide the following information:

1. Select the account from which you want to recover your tokens
2. Choose the pallet you want to interact with. In this case, it is the democracy pallet
3. Choose the extrinsic method to use for the transaction. This will determine the fields that need to fill in the following steps. In this case, it is unlock extrinsic
4. Enter the target account that will receive the unlocked tokens. In this case, the tokens will be returned to Alice
5. Click the Submit Transaction button and sign the transaction

Once the transaction goes through, the locked tokens should be unlocked. To double-check, you can go back to the Accounts tab and see that, for this example, Alice has her full balance as transferable.

Last update: March 27, 2023
| Created: February 9, 2021