Encointer Democracy Specification III

TL;DR

• We allow an infinite amount of proposals.
• A proposal will be enacted if it is in confirmed state for long enough.
• On enactment of a proposal, all proposals of the same type get cancelled.

Overview

Proposal Submission

• Everyone can submit a proposal
• There can be an infinite amount of proposals

enum ProposalAction {
	AddLocations(CommunityIdentifier, Vec<Location>),
	UpdateNominalIncome(CommunityIdentifier, NominalIncomeType),
    ...
}

enum ProposalAccessPolicy {
    Global,
    Community(cid)
}

enum ProposalState {
    ongoing,
    confirming(since),
    approved(since),
    cancelled
}

struct Proposal {
    start: BlockNumber,
    type: ProposalAction,
    state: ProposalState
    accessPolicy: ProposalAccessPolicy
}

Voting

• On every vote, we update the proposal state (Algorithm 1):
  • check if proposal is ongoing(since) < cancel date
    • if yes: cancel, return
    • if no: do nothing
  • check if proposal is older than lifetime
    • if yes: cancel, return
    • else: do nothing
  • check if passing
    • if yes: check if already confirming
      • if yes: check if it is confirming for > confirmation period
        • if yes: change state to approved
        • if no: no nothing
      • if no: change state to confirming with the current block number
    • if no: check if already confirming:
      • if yes: change to not confirming
      • if no: do nothing

Adaptive Quorum Biasing

• We dont use curves on turnout and approval like Substrate.
• In order to determine if a proposal is passing, we use AQB.
• The exact parameters are TBD and could even vary for different proposal types.

Proposal Cancelling

• If one proposal is approved, we cancel all ongoing proposals of the same type
• We cannot loop over all proposals for performance reasons so:
  • keep datastructure ProposalAction -> cancelDate
  • when trying to accept check if
    • ongoing(since) < cancelDate
      • if true: cancel
      • else enact
  • on approval update cancel date to current block

Enactment

• There is an enactment extrinsic which will enact a approved proposal if approved(since) >= cancelDate

fn enact_proposal(proposal: Proposal) {
	match proposal.type {
		ProposalAction::AddLocations(cid, locations) =>
			encointer_communities::Pallet::add_locations(CommunityMasterOrigin, cid, locations),
		ProposalAction::UpdateNominalIncome(cid, balance) =>
			encointer_communities::Pallet::update_nominal_income(
				CommunityMasterOrigin,
				cid,
				balance,
			),
	};
}

Additional Extrinsics

• update_proposal_state(proposalId) extrinsic in order to run Algorithm 1 in case if there is no more incoming vote but the proposal state should be updated.
• cleanup(proposalId) deletes a proposal if it is ongoing since < cancelDate

Naming issues

• cancelDate should be cancelBlockNumber or cancelledAt?

Open Questions

• Can we enact in the voting call?
  • Fee fairness?
  • Some proposals caan only be encated at certain times?