Following Polygon June announcement that it was moving to protocol version 2.0, an on-chain framework also needed to be redefined in relation to the decision-making processes of crypto project stakeholders in response to security and upgradeability needs
Yesterday, with PIP-29, the Ethereum layer-2 community proposed the establishment of a “protocol board” to manage and govern regular and emergency updates with variable expiration of the Polygon system’s smart contracts
This is an important step forward toward achieving scalable, decentralized governance that minimizes the trust required toward a single entity and maximizes the deliberative power of the community.
The proposal will be formalized in the coming days.
Summary
Polygon: the proposal for a “protocol council” to update smart contracts in the crypto ecosystem
On 12 June 2023, Polygon shared with its community the idea of a new decentralized ecosystem architecture 2.0, with which the foundation was laid for the creation of the next “value layer of the internet,” capable of bringing unlimited scalability and unified liquidity within the crypto world.
However, the Polygon team’s innovative vision required reinventing some aspects of the protocol, including some issues related to so-called “governance 2.0” in line with the principles of the call for proposal called “Polygon’s three pillars of governance” published by contributor Mateusz Rzeszowski.
Just yesterday, as a first step toward achieving centralized and scalable governance, the same community was called upon to determine which project body should take responsibility for executing certain updates to the smart contracts implemented on Ethereum.
PIP-29 responds to this need by proposing the establishment of a “Protocol Council,” charged precisely with the task of managing these kinds of changes on the Polygon infrastructure, subject to the attainment of the collective consensus of the network’s participants.
All this represents an incredible achievement for the community of the crypto project, which gradually acquires more and more importance in the development process of the layer-2 network.
This council will consist of 13 members, and through the use of a Gnosis Safe contract will be able to govern the regular and emergency updates with variable expiration of the smart contracts of the new ZK-based Polygon system.
Updates of this kind are critical so that the protocol architecture can ensure a good level of security and avoid problems during the transition phase to version 2.0.
In detail at the outset, the Board will have the ability to make periodic and emergency changes to the following contracts:
- POL 2 migration contract
- Emissions management contract.
The list of future updates also includes those proposed in the “Frontier” phase with PIP-18 last month.
It will now be necessary to wait for the proposal to be formalized in order to see the actual establishment of the session.
The establishment of the protocol council and the identity of the 13 proposed members
The inauguration of the “Protocol Council” and the proclamation of the 13 members appointed to handle governance with regard to changes in Polygon’s new infrastructure must respect, as proposed in PIP-29, the core principles of Ethereum‘s philosophy and the ethical values of the Web3 world.
The composition of the council in question should ensure operational resilience, including through the jurisdictional, organizational, and identifying diversity of those charged with the delicate task of updating the contracts of the decentralized ecosystem.
These must be able to demonstrate a high level of expertise in several areas that are central to the development of cutting-edge crypto projects. These skills include:
- skills in cybersecurity on blockchain
- knowledge of governance mechanisms
- mastery of technical aspects in the Ethereum and L2 space.
Crucially, it should also be emphasized that no entity of the 13 nominees should have broad influence on the decision-making process of the Protocol Council.
This also applies to the representation of Polygon Labs, which while providing the technical insights in the construction of the new infrastructure will not be able to play a predominant role in the dominance factor.
Regarding the identity of Polygon Council members, the authors of PIP-29, Mihailo Bjelic and Mateusz Rzeszowski, proposed the following names:
- Jordi Baylina (Polygon Labs)
- Viktor Bunin (Coinbase)
- Mariano Conti (Independent)
- Justin Drake (Ethereum Foundation)
- Gauntlet
- Mudit Gupta (Polygon Labs)
- L2Batt
- Zaki Manian (Sommelier Finance)
- Anthony Sassano (The Daily Gwei)
- Liz Steininger (Minimum Authority)
- Jerome de Tychey (EthCC)
- Mehdi Zerouali (Sigma Prime)
- ZachXBT (Independent)
As listed in yesterday’s proposal, regular changes will require the consent of 7 out of 13 members of the Council’s Gnosis Safe contract with a 10-day time limit.Â
Emergency changes, on the other hand, will solicit the consent of 10 out of 13 signatories of the Gnosis Safe contract.
It should be emphasized that this proposal is only the first step toward a broader goal of further decentralizing governance for Polygon protocols in a responsible and safety-oriented manner.
Over time, the layer-2 crypto ecosystem will become even more decentralized by implementing other off-chain and on-chain voting components under the guidance of direct community feedback and upcoming PIPs.
