Creating Governance Proposals

Introduction

In order to create a governance proposal, you must submit an initial deposit along with a title and description. Currently, in order to enter the voting period, a proposal must accumulate within a week deposits of at least 100 SCRT.

Note: Please remember through the duration of this guide that the secretcli counts SCRT in uscrt. 1 SCRT = 1,000,000 uscrt.

Modules

Various modules outside of governance may implement their own proposal types and handlers (eg. parameter changes), where the governance module itself supports Text proposals. Any module outside of governance has it's command mounted on top of submit-proposal.

Submit-Proposal

Proposals can be submitted using secretcli tx gov submit-proposal.

Using secretcli tx gov draft-proposal can help prepare a proposal. The tool will create a file containing the specified proposal message and it also helps with populating all the required proposal fields. You can always edit the file after you create it using draft-proposal

To submit a proposal:

secretdcli tx gov submit-proposal path/to/proposal.json

Where proposal.json contains:

{
  // array of proto-JSON-encoded sdk.Msgs
  "messages": [
    {
      "@type": "/cosmos.bank.v1beta1.MsgSend",
      "from_address": "cosmos1...",
      "to_address": "cosmos1...",
      "amount":[{"denom": "stake","amount": "10"}]
    }
  ],
  // metadata can be any of base64 encoded, raw text, stringified json, IPFS link to json
  // see below for example metadata
  "metadata": "4pIMOgIGx1vZGU=",
  "deposit": "10stake",
  "title": "My proposal",
  "summary": "A short summary of my proposal",
  "expedited": false
}

metadata example:

{
        "title": "",
        "authors": [""],
        "summary": "",
        "details": "",
        "proposal_forum_url": "",
        "vote_option_context": "",
}

Text

To submit a Text proposal:

secretcli tx gov submit-legacy-proposal \
  --title <title> \
  --description <description> \
  --type Text \
  --deposit 100000000uscrt \
  --from <key_alias>

You may also provide the proposal directly through the --proposal flag which points to a JSON file containing the proposal:

secretcli tx gov \
    submit-legacy-proposal \
    --proposal <path/to/proposal.json> \
    --from <key_alias>

Where proposal.json is:

{
  "type": "Text",
  "title": "My Cool Proposal",
  "description": "A description with line breaks \n and `code formatting`",
  "deposit": "100000000uscrt"
}

Param Change

Most cosmos-sdk modules allow changing their governance gated parameters using a MsgUpdateParams which is a new way of updating governance parameters. It is important to note that MsgUpdateParams requires all parameters to be specified in the proposal message.

We will use draft-proposal to help us create a proposal file that we will later submit.

secretcli tx gov draft-proposal
// running the command will start a terminal applet allowing you to choose the proposal type

// 1st screen
Use the arrow keys to navigate: ↓ ↑ → ←
? Select proposal type:
    text
    community-pool-spend
    software-upgrade
    cancel-software-upgrade
  ▸ other // choose this

// 2nd screen
✔ other
Use the arrow keys to navigate: ↓ ↑ → ←
? Select proposal message type::
↑   /cosmos.staking.v1beta1.MsgUndelegate
  ▸ /cosmos.staking.v1beta1.MsgUpdateParams // choose this option
    /cosmos.staking.v1beta1.MsgValidatorBond
    /cosmos.upgrade.v1beta1.MsgCancelUpgrade
↓   /cosmos.upgrade.v1beta1.MsgSoftwareUpgrade

After choosing the /cosmos.staking.v1beta1.MsgUpdateParams message, the applet will allow you to set the message fields and some other proposal details. Upon completion, the proposal will be available in the directory where you called the gaiad command inside the draft_proposal.json file.

Here is an example of the draft_proposal.json file:

{
 "messages": [
  {
   "@type": "/cosmos.staking.v1beta1.MsgUpdateParams",
   "authority": "secret1...",
   "params": {
    "unbonding_time": "0s",
    "max_validators": 0,
    "max_entries": 0,
    "historical_entries": 0,
    "bond_denom": "",
    "min_commission_rate": "0.000000000000000000"
   }
  }
 ],
 "metadata": "ipfs://CID",
 "deposit": "",
 "title": "Updating the staking params",
 "summary": ""
}

Finally, we submit the proposal:

secretcli tx gov submit-proposal <path_to_proposal.json>

You can see another param-change example here: enigma-1-proposal-3.json

Subspaces, Keys and Values

Subspace	Key	Type	Example
auth	MaxMemoCharacters	string (uint64)	"256"
auth	TxSigLimit	string (uint64)	"7"
auth	TxSizeCostPerByte	string (uint64)	"10"
auth	SigVerifyCostED25519	string (uint64)	"590"
auth	SigVerifyCostSecp256k1	string (uint64)	"1000"
baseapp	BlockParams	object	{"max_bytes":"10000000","max_gas":"10000000"}
baseapp	EvidenceParams	object	{"max_age_num_blocks":"100000","max_age_duration":"172800000000000","max_bytes":"50000"}
baseapp	ValidatorParams	object	{"pub_key_types":["ed25519"]}
bank	sendenabled	bool	true
crisis	ConstantFee	object (coin)	{"denom": "uscrt", "amount": "1000"}
distribution	communitytax	string (dec)	"0.020000000000000000"
distribution	secretfoundationtax	string (dec)	"0.030000000000000000"
distribution	secretfoundationaddress	string	"secret164z7wwzv84h4hwn6rvjjkns6j4ht43jv8u9k0c"
distribution	baseproposerreward	string (dec)	"0.010000000000000000"
distribution	bonusproposerreward	string (dec)	"0.040000000000000000"
distribution	withdrawaddrenabled	bool	true
evidence	MaxEvidenceAge	string (time ns)	"120000000000"
gov	depositparams	object	{"min_deposit": [{"denom": "uscrt", "amount": "10000000"}], "max_deposit_period": "172800000000000"}
gov	votingparams	object	{"voting_period": "172800000000000"}
gov	tallyparams	object	{"quorum": "0.334000000000000000", "threshold": "0.500000000000000000", "veto": "0.334000000000000000"}
mint	MintDenom	string	"uscrt"
mint	InflationRateChange	string (dec)	"0.080000000000000000"
mint	InflationMax	string (dec)	"0.150000000000000000"
mint	InflationMin	string (dec)	"0.070000000000000000"
mint	GoalBonded	string (dec)	"0.670000000000000000"
mint	BlocksPerYear	string (uint64)	"6311520"
slashing	SignedBlocksWindow	string (int64)	"5000"
slashing	MinSignedPerWindow	string (dec)	"0.500000000000000000"
slashing	DowntimeJailDuration	string (time ns)	"600000000000"
slashing	SlashFractionDoubleSign	string (dec)	"0.050000000000000000"
slashing	SlashFractionDowntime	string (dec)	"0.010000000000000000"
staking	UnbondingTime	string (time ns)	"259200000000000"
staking	MaxValidators	uint16	100
staking	KeyMaxEntries	uint16	7
staking	HistoricalEntries	uint16	3
staking	BondDenom	string	"uscrt"
ibc	AllowedClients	object (string[])	["07-tendermint"]
ibc	MaxExpectedTimePerBlock	uint64	"30000000000"
transfer	SendEnabled	bool	true
transfer	ReceiveEnabled	bool	true

Further Proposal Details

• The subspace is usually the ModuleName

  • See an example here

• The key is usually defined in x/$MODULE_NAME/types/params.go

  • See an example here

• The value's type is usually near the key definition

  • See an example here

• ⚠️ subspace and key are case sensitive and value must be of the correct type and within the allowed bounds.

  • Proposals with errors on these inputs should not enter voting period (should not get deposits) or be voted on with NoWithVeto.

• ⚠️ Currently parameter changes are evaluated but not validated, so it is very important that any value change is valid (i.e. correct type and within bounds) for its respective parameter, eg. MaxValidators should be an integer and not a decimal.

• ⚠️ Proper vetting of a parameter change proposal should prevent this from happening (no deposits should occur during the governance process), but it should be noted regardless.

Known Constraints

• distribution.baseproposerreward + distribution.bonusproposerreward < 1. See this and this for more info.

To read more go to the Cosmos Parameters Wiki.

Community Pool Spend

To submit a community pool spend proposal, you also must provide a proposal file as its contents are less friendly to secretcli input:

secretcli tx gov submit-proposal <path/to/proposal.json> --from <key_alias>

We can createproposal.json using tx gov draft-proposal

secretcli tx gov draft-proposal
// running the command will start a terminal applet allowing you to choose the proposal type

// 1st screen
Use the arrow keys to navigate: ↓ ↑ → ←
? Select proposal type:
    text
    community-pool-spend
  > software-upgrade
    cancel-software-upgrade
    other

Software Upgrade

To submit a software upgrade proposal use:

secretcli tx gov submit-proposal <path/to/proposal.json> --from <key_alias>

We can createproposal.json using tx gov draft-proposal

secretcli tx gov draft-proposal
// running the command will start a terminal applet allowing you to choose the proposal type

// 1st screen
Use the arrow keys to navigate: ↓ ↑ → ←
? Select proposal type:
    text
    community-pool-spend
  > software-upgrade
    cancel-software-upgrade
    other