Flare governance enables everyone in the ecosystem to collaborate on decision-making for both the Flare and Songbird networks.
Why is governance important?
Decentralized governance is a critical part of any decentralized network. It ensures that changes to the network are not made by a centralized entity. Without the members of the ecosystem knowing and approving the changes, centralized governance could censor, inflate (reduce the value of the token), or expose the network to malicious behavior.
Any holder of wrapped FLR/ SGB tokens can vote
The number of votes you can cast, also known as your vote power, is equal to the number of FLR or SGB tokens held which are either wrapped or staked to a validator. Your Flare vote power applies to governance votes on the Flare network and your Songbird vote power applies to votes on Songbird. You are still eligible to vote even if you have delegated your WFLR or WSGB.
Neither the Flare Foundation nor Flare VC Fund is able to participate in network governance.
How are my current votes calculated?
The number of wrapped tokens you currently own equals the number of votes you currently have. However, if you transferred your votes to another address or if you received votes from other addresses, the number of your votes will be different. See the question about the transfer of votes for more information.
What can you vote on?
There are three kinds of proposals in Flare governance aimed at improving the Flare and Songbird networks. All are currently initiated by the Flare Foundation, but in the future, community initiated proposals will also be possible.
- Flare Improvement Proposals (FIPs).
- Songbird Improvement Proposals (SIPs).
- Songbird Test Proposals (STPs).
Voting on FIPs is acceptance-based, so they are rejected by default and accepted only if enough votes are cast in their favor.
SIPs are designed to improve the Songbird network only, with no effect on Flare. SIP.03, for example, was proposed to align the Songbird codebase with the Flare network. SIPs are also rejected by default, and only accepted if enough votes are cast.
STPs, however, are accepted by default and are only rejected if enough votes are cast against them. This is to ensure the swiftness with which new proposals can be tested on Songbird, before launching on Flare.
All of the Flare and Songbird proposals to date can be seen in the Governance Proposal Repository.
How voting works
Voting starts with an announcement and progresses as follows.
1. Announcement
After a proposal is published, the notice period begins once the Flare Foundation announces it to the community. During this time, the proposal can be discussed, clarified, commented on, and even canceled if issues are found with it.
Announcements are made on X, LinkedIn, Discord, and Telegram between a few days to a week in advance of the voting period.
2. Vote count block
Since the amount of wrapped tokens an account holds varies over time, a snapshot of all accounts is taken before each voting period starts at a random time on a random block. The amount of wrapped tokens held by an account at the snapshot then dictates the number of votes it can cast later – its vote power.
Tokens wrapped after the selected vote count block will not be reflected in the voting. See Wrapping Flare Tokens in the Flare documentation.
3. Voting
The proposal is submitted to the Flare Portal, and it is immediately available for voting. Voting concludes after a week, and final results are presented on the portal.
4. Voting results
- For an FIP to be accepted, more than 50% of the votes must be FOR the proposal.
- For an SIP to be accepted, more than 50% of the votes must be FOR the proposal.
- For an STP to be rejected, a minimum quorum of 75% must be reached and more than 50% of the votes must be AGAINST the proposal.
Execution
Once a proposal is accepted, Flare’s governance contracts allow for its automatic execution via a contract call, unless the proposal cannot be implemented through a smart contract. In this case, they are manually executed by Flare.
Connect your wallet now to see the current status of your votes and active proposals: https://portal.flare.network/voting