Vote on a Proposal

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.

Parameters

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

Roadmap of a Proposal

Before a proposal is enacted, it must go through various steps. The general flow of a proposal is the following (some simplifications were made):

• Token holders must create a preimage of the proposal, which defines the action to be carried out. The submitter pays a fee-per-byte stored: the larger the preimage, the higher the fee. Once submitted, it returns a preimage hash
• Token holders can submit the proposal using the preimage hash, locking tokens in the process. Once the submission transaction is accepted, the proposal is listed publicly
• Once the proposal is listed, token holders can second the proposal (vouch for it) by locking the same amount of tokens the original proposal submitter locked
• The most seconded proposal moves to public referendum
• Once in referendum, token holders vote "Aye" or "Nay" on the proposal by locking tokens. Two factors account the vote weight: amount locked and locking period
• If the proposal passes, it is enacted after a certain amount of time

Voting on a Referendum

Voting on GEEK is pretty straight forward. Everything related to governance lives under the "Democracy" (opens new window) tab, where (in the image) you can note that there is a 1, indicating there is one democracy item 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 0). 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
3. 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 (tokens are still locked during the duration of the referendum)
4. Click on "Vote Aye" to approve the proposal or "Vote Nay" to disapprove the proposal, and then sign the transaction