Polkadot Unveils Governance V2 to Become More Decentralized and Censorship-Resistant

Blockchain protocol Polkadot (DOT) has announced changes to its governance mechanism in a bid to become more decentralized and censorship-resistant.

Dubbed Gov2, the new governance system aims to migrate the responsibilities of the Council, an elected body of on-chain accounts that are intended to represent the passive stakeholders of Polkadot, to token holders.

This will help the project become more decentralized and censorship-resistant given that the Council is centralized and generally not anonymous, which «puts both the protocol in some degree of risk as well as the individual councillors who may find themselves pressured to act one way or another,» the protocol said in an announcement shared with Cryptonews.com.

The new governance model also changes «the practical means of day-to-day decision-making.» Currently, there exists only a single “all or nothing” referendum model, which is why there can only be one referendum voted at a time.

However, the Gov2 makes «the repercussions of referenda better scoped and agile,» which dramatically increases the number of collective decisions the system is able to take.

Meanwhile, the new governance model does not change the original Polkadot governance principle that 50% of the total stake in the system would command the system’s future. It also doesn’t remove «the Conviction Voting pioneered in Polkadot giving greater weight to those who are willing to lock their tokens into the system for longer,» the announcement said.

The new governance model is set to launch on Polkadot’s sister network Kusama in the near future. Once tested on Kusama (KSM), a proposal will be made for the Polkadot network to vote on.

At 12:10 UTC, the 11th coin by market capitalization, DOT, is trading at USD 7.23. It is down 8.3% in a day and 6.5% in a week. Overall, it’s down 54% over the past year and 87% from its all-time high seen in November 2021. At the same time, KSM, ranked 94th, is trading at USD 49. It’s down 9.6% in a day, 8.3% in a week, 77% in a year, and 92% from its all-time high recorded in May last year. 

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