Governance member guide

Who holds the network’s three admitted roles: governance member, footnote reviewer, and validator. Members admit people to those roles and remove them, and that is the whole of their authority. They have no say over what anyone publishes or sees, and protocol changes come through releases from Soliton Group LLC, the protocol steward, not through votes.

No. Governance members are unpaid volunteers. The network credits BFT for assigned network work and for reviewed contributions, and sponsoring or voting is neither. Fees and credits lists what the network credits each role.

Read the applications you receive, sponsor the candidates you support, and vote on the proposals other members sponsor. Keep your governance key safe: every action you take is signed with it.

Yes. Every sponsorship, vote, and removal is signed with your governance key and kept in the network’s public record under your thumbprint. Applications themselves never go on the network.

Create a key with the Bigfoot CLI and sign your application with it: bigfoot-node sign-application --role governance_member --email ADDRESS --thumbprint T, where ADDRESS is the email address you apply with. It prints a one-line application token, which works only for this role and that email address, and only while it is recent. Paste the token into the form on the governance member page; the site checks its signature and takes your thumbprint from it. Find your thumbprint explains how to create the key and sign.

bigfoot-node create-key leaves a key’s role unassigned, and bigfoot-node sponsor and approve work only with a key registered as governance_member. Once you are admitted, save a protected copy of the key with bigfoot-node export-key --id N --out FILE --passphrase-file FILE, where --out names a new file for the copy and --passphrase-file names a file holding its passphrase. Then register the copy with bigfoot-node import --key FILE --role governance_member, which asks for that passphrase. Use absolute paths.

Once you are admitted, the website emails you each new application at the address you applied with. Every governance member gets an individual email, so no one sees another member’s address. It includes the role, the applicant’s thumbprint, their statement, when they applied, and the exact command to sponsor them. It never includes the applicant’s email address or their application token. These emails, and other service messages about the role, are part of holding it and can’t be turned off while you are a member.

Run bigfoot-node sponsor --role ROLE --candidate THUMBPRINT --thumbprint T, where ROLE is governance_member, reviewer, or validator, THUMBPRINT is the candidate’s, and T is your own governance key’s thumbprint. You can use --id N instead of --thumbprint T. Your sponsorship counts as your vote. Each member can have up to eight admission proposals open at once.

Run bigfoot-node list-proposals --admissions to see open admissions, and bigfoot-node show-proposal --proposal CID to inspect one. To approve it, run bigfoot-node approve --role ROLE --proposal CID --thumbprint T. There is no vote against: a proposal that does not gather enough approvals expires.

When more than two-thirds of all active governance members have approved it, counting the sponsor once, within seven days of sponsorship. The change takes effect two blocks after the deciding vote, a few seconds later. A proposal that expires can be sponsored again. If governance membership changes before a proposal passes, it has to be sponsored again.

The same way they are admitted. A member sponsors the removal with bigfoot-node sponsor-removal --role ROLE --member ID --thumbprint T, and it passes with the same vote. bigfoot-node list-proposals --admissions does not list removals, so the sponsoring member shares the proposal ID that sponsor-removal prints with the other members. They inspect it with bigfoot-node show-proposal --proposal CID and approve it with bigfoot-node approve --role ROLE --proposal CID --thumbprint T, where CID is that proposal ID. This works for governance members, footnote reviewers, and validators. Soliton Group LLC, as protocol steward, can also appoint or remove governance members directly, without a vote.

Run bigfoot-node rotate-key --thumbprint T. It offers to export the old key first, asks you to confirm, and moves your membership to a new key. Your membership and your past votes stay with you, and the old key can never be used for the role again.

There is no resignation command. A membership ends through a removal, so ask another governance member to sponsor your removal and the members to approve it, or ask Soliton Group LLC to remove you directly. At least one governance member must always remain.

Your sponsorships and votes stay in the public record, and so does your removed membership. To return later, apply again with a new key.