xGov status and voting power

Abstract

This ARC defines the Expert Governor (xGov) status and voting power in the Algorand Expert Governance.

Specification

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC-2119.

The notation (x, y) denotes a pair of elements, while (x; y) (with ;) denotes the interval of real numbers between x and y (including neither x nor y).

xGov Registry

The xGov Registry is the Application that manages the Algorand Expert Governance on the Algorand blockchain.

Let

g be the Genesis Hash of the Algorand blockchain;
R the xGov Registry Application ID;
Bc the block number at which the xGov Registry R was created on g.

The xGov Registry is created by the Algorand Foundation and is identified by the tuple (g, R, Bc).

On the Algorand MainNet the xGov Registry is created by the Algorand Foundation address I7OP7WFSK57IFDHJA6DM5TJC2IFY4M3XSBV4R4PVOV4YWF7K57BZFUVQ5E and identified by:

g: wGHE2Pwdvd7S12BL5FaOP20EGYesN73ktiC1qzkkit8=

R: 3147789458

Bc: 52307574

Governance Period

A governance period is identified by a pair (Bi, Bf) such that

Bi = 0 mod 1,000,000;
Bf = 0 mod 1,000,000;
Bf > Bi;
Bf > Bc.

And is intended as a range of blocks [Bi; Bf) (Bi included, Bf excluded).

Note that Bi < Bc is valid and denotes a period across the xGov Registry creation.

xGov Status

xGovs (Expert Governors) are decision makers in the Algorand Expert Governance, who acquire voting power by securing the network and producing blocks.

These individuals can participate in the designation and approval of proposals submitted to the Algorand Expert Governance process.

An xGov is associated with an Algorand Address (a) subscribing to the Algorand Expert Governance by acknowledging the xGov Registry.

Once the xGov Registry confirms the acknowledgement on block h, the address a is considered an xGov.

The xGov status is defined by the tuple (a, h) on the xGov Registry state.

The xGov status of an address a is lost if pair (a, h) is removed from the xGov Registry, either by the address itself or by the xGov Registry rules.

xGov Voting Power

Given a governance period (Bi, Bf), an xGov (a, h) is eligible to acquire voting power for that period if and only if:

h ∈ [Bc; Bf);
a has proposed at least one block in [Bi; Bf).

The voting power assigned to each xGov (a, h) is equal to the number of blocks proposed by its Algorand Address (a) over the governance period [Bi; Bf).

If an address a has acknowledged the xGov Registry at some h ∈ [Bc; Bf) and has proposed one or more blocks in [Bi; Bf), then all such proposals in [Bi; Bf) contributes to its voting power, including those that occurred before h.

The eligibility of address a holds for all the governance periods (Bi, Bf) such that h ∈ [Bc; Bf), with no need to reacknowledge the xGov Registry for each period.

xGov Committee

An xGov Committee is a group of eligible xGovs that have acquired voting power in a governance period.

Given the xGov Registry (g, R, Bc) and a governance period (Bi, Bf) as above, an xGov Committee for (g, R, Bc, Bi, Bf) is a finite set C of address–weight pairs (a, v) such that the following three conditions hold:

Eligibility: For all (a, v) in C, a is an eligible xGov in [Bc; Bf);
Voting Power: For all (a, v) in C, v is equal to the voting power of a in [Bi; Bf);
Uniqueness: The addresses a in C are all distinct.

An xGov Committee is defined by the tuple (g, R, Bc, Bi, Bf, C).

If C is empty, then the xGov Committee for the governance period has no voting power.

xGov Committee Members

The number of xGov Committee members M is the cardinality of C, more formally M = |C|.

xGov Committee Voting Power

The total voting power of an xGov Committee V is the sum of votes (v) over all its members (a), more formally V = Σ_{(a,v) ∈ C} v.

xGov Committee Selection Procedure

The xGov Committee selection is repeated periodically to select new xGov Committees over time.

To build the xGov Committee (g, R, Bc, Bi, Bf, C), the selection is executed with the following procedure:

Collect all proposed blocks in the governance period [Bi; Bf) to build the potential committee set P (note that not all the Block Proposers hold the xGov status).
For each Block Proposer address (a) in P, assign a voting power (v) equal to the number of blocks proposed in the governance period [Bi; Bf).
Collect all the eligible xGovs in the governance period [Bc; Bf) to build the eligible xGovs set E.
Filter P ∩ E to obtain the xGov Committee C.

Representation

The xGov Committee MUST be represented with the canonical UTF-8 encoded JSON object with the following schema:

{
  "title": "xGov Committee",
  "description": "Selected xGov Committee with voting power and validity",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "xGovs": {
      "description": "xGovs with voting power, sorted lexicographically with respect to addresses",
      "type": "array",
      "items": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
          "address": {
            "description": "xGov address used on xGov Registry in base32",
            "type": "string"
          },
          "votes": {
            "description": "xGov voting power",
            "type": "integer",
            "minimum": 1
          }
        },
        "required": ["address", "votes"]
      },
      "uniqueItems": true
    },
    "periodStart": {
      "description": "First block of the Committee selection period, must ≡ 0 mod 1,000,000",
      "type": "integer",
      "multipleOf": 1000000
    },
    "periodEnd": {
      "description": "Last block of the Committee selection period, must ≡ 0 mod 1,000,000 and greater than periodStart",
      "type": "integer",
      "multipleOf": 1000000
    },
    "totalMembers": {
      "description": "Total number of Committee members",
      "type": "integer"
    },
    "networkGenesisHash": {
      "description": "The genesis hash of the network in base64",
      "type": "string"
    },
    "registryId": {
      "description": "xGov Registry application ID",
      "type": "integer"
    },
    "totalVotes": {
      "description": "Total number of Committee votes",
      "type": "integer"
    }
  },
  "required": ["networkGenesisHash", "periodEnd", "periodStart", "registryId", "totalMembers", "totalVotes", "xGovs"],
  "additionalProperties": false
}

For a valid xGov Committee JSON object:

The number of entries in the xGovs array MUST equal totalMembers.
The sum of the vote fields of all xGovs entries MUST equal totalVotes.
All address values in the xGovs array MUST be distinct.

The following rules aim to create a deterministic outcome of the committee file and its resulting hash.

The object keys MUST be sorted in lexicographical order.

The xGovs arrays MUST be sorted in lexicographical order with respect to the unique address keys.

The canonical representation of the committee object MUST NOT include decorative white-space (pretty printing) or a trailing newline.

An xGov Committee is identified by the following identifier:

SHA-512/256(arc0086||SHA-512/256(xGov Committee JSON))

The ASCII string "arc0086" MUST be encoded as the UTF-8 byte sequence 0x61 0x72 0x63 0x30 0x30 0x38 0x36.

Trust Model

The Algorand Foundation is responsible for executing the Committee selection algorithm described above and publishing the resulting Committee ID on the xGov Registry.

The correctness of the process is auditable post-facto via:

The block proposers’ history (on-chain)
The xGov Registry history and state (on-chain)
The published Committee JSON (hash verifiable)

Any actor can recompute and verify the selected committee independently from on-chain data.

Clients SHOULD use a trusted provider for both the block proposer history and the xGov Registry state.

Rationale

Given the shift of the Algorand protocol towards consensus incentivization, the xGov process could be an additional way to push consensus participation.

Security Considerations

Recomputing the xGov Committee requires access to block proposer history for the entire governance period [Bi; Bf) and to the xGov Registry state.

Implementations MUST ensure that this historical data remains available (for example, via archival nodes or indexer services), or document any assumptions about third-party infrastructure.

Clients SHOULD notify the Algorand Foundation if:

The xGov Committee for period [Bi; Bf) is not published by the Algorand Foundation within 10,000 blocks of the end of the period.
A published Committee ID does not match any recomputed xGov Committee using the agreed (g, R, Bc, Bi, Bf, C).