2025/06/07 23:49:30

Governance

Can this contract be crowdfunding for "anything", where "crowdfunding 100k for submitting governance action" is one of the use case?

Jingles

2025/06/07 23:52:08

exactly 100,000 ADA

is this amount hardcoded in the contract? or a variable? what if the amount changed?

Felix

2025/06/08 08:03:51

hardcoded i think since has to comply with cip1694

Jingles

2025/06/07 23:53:33

Once exactly 100,000 ADA

what happens if there is balance? where the last contribution adds up to 102,000 ADA. would that happen? what happened to the 2000?

Felix

2025/06/08 08:09:11

check "max crowdfunding limit" at 10)

2025/06/09 14:29:39

rejected

Not directly possible. But from the off-chain code we can just ignore irregular donations.

2025/06/09 14:38:25

Any wallet

Probably through platform with specific endpoints.

Hinson Wong

2025/06/16 17:37:42

automatically

Suggest not automatically, since would incurred high cost for operator + prohibit token base approach

Cardano Governance Deposit Crowdfunding

Smart Contract Specification

Overview

To ideate, design and develop an open source smart contract who enables ADA holders to collaboratively fund the deposit required to submit a governance action on Cardano onchain governance. The goal is to allow trustless crowdfunding and exact refunds while respecting the rules of on-chain governance (CIP-1694 & Constitution).

Ultimately removing financial barriers for Cardano citizens who want to engage in Onchain Governance by submitting Governance Actions

Project Owner: Mesh
Development lead: Hinson & Ken (SIDAN Lab)
Mesh Multisig Integration: Quirin
Support: Mike Hornan & Adam Rusch
Audit: TxPipe

Estimate time for development: ~3 weeks, to be completed in July 2025

Core Behaviors & Requirements

1. ADA-Only Contributions

The contract only accepts ADA (Lovelace).
All transactions involving native tokens must be rejected.

2. Open, Flexible Contributions

Any wallet can contribute any amount of ADA toward the 100,000 ADA goal.
No whitelist or cap per contributor.
Contributions are cumulative until the threshold is reached.

3. Tracking Individual Contributions

Each contributor’s exact contribution must be recorded.
This is needed to ensure precise and fair refunds.
Can be done via per-user UTxOs with datums or a central tracking datum.

4. Early Withdrawals Before Goal

Contributors can withdraw their ADA at any time before the 100k ADA goal is reached.
The smart contract validator must allow UTxOs to be consumed and returned to the contributor if the pool is still “open.”

5. Locking Upon Goal Reached

Once exactly 100,000 ADA is contributed, the pool is locked.
Further contributions and voluntary withdrawals are no longer permitted.
At this point, the funds are ready to be used for submitting the governance action.

6. Open Governance Action Submission

The contract should allow submission transactions to consume the locked UTxO and transfer the funds into the governance system.
gov action type and content has to be provided by creator of a deposit, deposit initiator = ga proposer.
Gov action automatically submitted onchain once deposit trheshold is met

7. Campaign Deadline & Failure Case

A time-based deadline (measured in epochs) is set from the time of the first contribution.
If the 100k ADA target is not reached within this time, the campaign is considered failed.
After the deadline, funds are automatically returned to the contributors wallets.

8. Exact Refunds on Failure

In a failed campaign, each contributor must receive exactly the amount they originally contributed.
Refunds must be precise, and account for minimal UTxO requirements.

9. Refunds After Governance Action Ends

After the governance action is either enacted or expired, the 100k ADA deposit is refunded by protocol.
These funds return to the contract address and become withdrawable.
Each contributor may withdraw their original share exactly as before.
from initial deposit until treshold must be met: 6 epochs.

if threshold is not met, funds automatically returned to contributors

10. DRep Registration & Voting Mechanism

Registration and Certificates:
- Stake Registration: The contract should automatically generate a Stake Registration Certificate (2 ADA) for the deposit return address.
- DRep Registration: The contract should also generate a DRep Registration Certificate (500 ADA) for the DRep.
- Delegation Certificate to DRep: The contract must issue a Delegation Certificate to delegate the voting power of the crowdfunding contract’s ADA to the crowdfunding contract's DRep ID. This delegation should occur when the governance action is submitted on-chain.
- Delegation Certificate to Stake Pool (Optional): The contract MAY issue a Delegation Certificate to delegate the stake of the crowdfunding contract’s ADA to a specific Stake Pool Operator (SPO). This delegation should happen during the crowdfunding period, as it will have no effect on staking rewards while the governance action is active on-chain. However, the delegation will still be used for voting power during the governance action.
Max Crowdfunding Limit:
The total limit for the crowdfunding contract should be set to 100,510 ADA to account for the 100,000 ADA pool and the 2 ADA for Stake Registration and 500 ADA for DRep Registration.
Single Transaction for All Certificates and Governance Action:

All the following actions should be bundled into a single transaction:

Submitting the DRep Registration Certificate.
Submitting the Stake Registration Certificate.
Submitting the Delegation Certificate for the crowdfunding DRep ID.
Submitting the Vote Certificate for the DRep to vote YES on the governance proposal tied to the crowdfunding. (The TX ID with index 0 = gov-action ID)
Submitting the Governance Action itself (the proposal) using the crowdfunding pool funds
DRep Voting Conditions:

once deposit treshold is met, smart contract creates DRep for each gov action, set as default vote yes for respective GA, allow ada holder to directly support specific GA by delegating to ga-DRep. GA DRep retires once GA lifetime is met

Vote Limitations: The GA DRep is only allowed to vote YES on the governance proposal that is tied to the crowdfunding campaign and no other governance proposals. The GA DRep should not be able to participate in any other governance actions outside the scope of the crowdfunding.
Vote Power: The DRep's voting power is derived from the funds in the crowdfunding pool, but the crowfunding stake address will not generate staking rewards while the governance action is active on-chain.(If also delegated to a stake pool)
Post-Governance Action:
- After the governance action is enacted or expired, the crowdfunding contract must unregister the DRep in order to reclaim the 500 ADA registration deposit. This unregistration must happen in the same transaction as the withdrawal of the governance action deposit that has been returned.
- The DRep's delegation status is not relevant at this stage; only the unregistration certificate is required to recover the deposit.
- Any leftover funds or rewards generated during the crowdfunding period should be dealt with according to your refund protocol.

Optional Enhancements

State machine pattern: Use states like Open, Locked, and Refundable for clearer logic.
Overshoot handling: Prevent or adjust contributions that would push the total over 100k ADA.
Minimal UTxO guardrails: Ensure refunds don't fall below protocol-required values.
Logging: Include contribution metadata in datums to support off-chain indexing and transparency.

Notes

once deposit treshold is met, smart contract creates DRep for each gov action, set as default vote yes for respective GA, allows ada holders to directly support specific GA by delegating to ga-DRep
ga type & content included in creation of ga-deposit action

Outcomes:

develop fully functional gov-deposit crowdfunding smart contract
create Docs to guide users on how to use the smart contract
Pack smart contract into Mesh smart contract library
licensed under open source license on Mesh GitHub
smart contract deployment & testing on sanchonet
smart contract audit by 3rd party
integrations into at least 3 Cardano Gov UIs (Mesh Multisig, Tempo, CF Voting tool, gov-space, etc)
publish twitter thread to inform the public

Acceptance Criteria:

successfully completed development of a fully functional gov deposit crowdfuning smart contract
successfully completed user-guide docs
successfully completed packing smart contract into mesh smart contract library
successfully completed issuance of open source license for the smart contract on mesh github
successfully completed deployment and testing of smart contract on sanchonet
successfully completed smart contract audit by TxPipe
successfully completed integrations of the smart contract on at least 3 Cardano Gov UIs
successfully completed and published a twitter thread to inform the public

Evidence of completion:

public url to completed smart contract on mesh GitHub
public url to user guide docs
public url to packed smart contract in mesh smart contract lbrary
public url to issued open source license
public url to report on completed deployment and testing of smart contract on sanchonet
public url to report of the smart contract audit by TxPipe
public url to status report on completed integrations of smart contract on Cardano Gov-UIs
public url to twitter thread to inform the public

Post-development KPIs

track usage of smart contract

% of gov actions using smart contract out of total submitted gov actions over time

Target:

more than 50% of all onchain gov actions using smart contract