Council of 21 Governance

UltraDAG’s governance model separates technical consensus (validators, stake-weighted) from protocol governance (council, one-vote-per-seat). The Council of 21 governs protocol parameters without requiring any stake — seats are earned through expertise and community trust.

Design Philosophy

Traditional blockchain governance suffers from plutocratic capture: whoever holds the most tokens controls the protocol. UltraDAG deliberately separates these concerns:

• Validators secure the network through staking and produce DAG vertices
• The Council governs protocol parameters through expertise-based seats
• 1-vote-per-seat prevents wealth concentration in governance

Council Structure

The Council has 21 seats divided across six categories:

Each category has a fixed maximum enforced by the protocol. A CouncilMembership proposal to add a Technical member will be rejected if all 7 Technical seats are already occupied.

Voting Mechanics

Equal Governance Weight

Every council member has exactly 1 vote, regardless of category, tenure, or any UDAG holdings:

$$ \text{vote_weight}(\text{member}) = 1 $$

This contrasts with stake-weighted governance where a single whale can override the entire community.

Proposal Lifecycle

A proposal moves through the following states: Created (Active) -> Passed (if quorum + supermajority met) or Rejected (if voting period expires) -> PendingExecution (execution delay) -> Executed (parameter changes applied).

1. Creation: a council member submits a proposal (requires MIN_FEE_SATS fee)
2. Active: voting is open for the configured voting period
3. Passed/Rejected: determined by quorum and supermajority thresholds
4. Execution delay: passed proposals wait before taking effect
5. Executed: parameter changes are applied to the protocol

Voting Parameters

Proposal Types

TextProposal

Non-binding signals. Used for community sentiment, roadmap discussions, and coordination:

{
  "proposal_type": "Text",
  "title": "Increase bootstrap node diversity",
  "description": "Proposal to add bootstrap nodes in APAC and LATAM regions..."
}

TextProposals execute immediately after the delay period with no protocol effect.

ParameterChange

Modifies a governable protocol parameter:

{
  "proposal_type": "ParameterChange",
  "title": "Reduce minimum fee from 10,000 to 5,000 sats",
  "description": "Lower fees to encourage micropayment adoption...",
  "param_name": "min_fee_sats",
  "param_value": 5000
}

CouncilMembership

Add or remove council members:

{
  "proposal_type": "CouncilMembership",
  "title": "Add Jane Doe as Technical council member",
  "description": "Jane is a leading cryptographer with 15 years of experience...",
  "action": "Add",
  "address": "a1b2c3d4...",
  "category": "Technical"
}

Only existing council members can propose and vote on membership changes. Category seat limits are enforced.

Governable Parameters

The following 10 parameters can be modified via ParameterChange proposals:

Council Emission Rewards

Council members receive a share of each round’s block reward:

$$ \text{council_pool} = \text{round_reward} \times \frac{\text{council_emission_percent}}{100} $$

The pool is distributed equally among occupied council seats:

$$ \text{member_reward} = \frac{\text{council_pool}}{\text{occupied_seats}} $$

At default settings (10% council emission, 1 UDAG round reward, 21 seats):

$$ \text{member_reward} = \frac{0.1 \text{ UDAG}}{21} \approx 0.00476 \text{ UDAG/round} $$

This provides economic compensation for governance participation without requiring council members to hold or stake tokens.

DAO Activation Gate

The DAO activation mechanism prevents premature parameter changes:

Empty Council Safety

If all council members are removed (all 21 seats vacant):

• snapshot_total_stake = 0 at proposal creation
• has_passed_with_params() returns false when total stake is 0
• No proposals can pass — the council is effectively locked

This prevents a scenario where an attacker removes all members and then self-nominates with no oversight.

RPC Endpoints

Example: View Current Config

curl http://localhost:10333/governance/config

{
  "min_fee_sats": 10000,
  "min_stake_to_propose": 1000000000000,
  "quorum_numerator": 10,
  "approval_numerator": 66,
  "voting_period_rounds": 120960,
  "execution_delay_rounds": 2016,
  "max_active_proposals": 20,
  "observer_reward_percent": 20,
  "council_emission_percent": 10,
  "slash_percent": 50
}

Next Steps

• Supply & Emission — how council emission fits into the supply schedule
• Staking & Delegation — validator economics