Fantom Gets Serious About Decentralized Governance

The scalable distributed ledger project Fantom (FTM) has released a rough draft of their proposed governance framework. With multiple voting mechanisms, the new system is designed to encourage greater participation and consensus among the community.

According to a blog post published this afternoon, there will be different types of voting on Fantom, depending on the subject and urgency of the issue. In the majority of cases, proposals will be voted on by token holders who will have seven options, ranging on a scale between complete disagreement, neutrality and complete agreement.

Fantom’s proposed governance system will be more elaborate than your typical local elections. In order to succeed, a proposal must meet no major objections from even a minority of holders, who will have the power to veto any motion. This system is designed to encourage broad appeal as well as prevent any significant rifts from splitting the community.

“[W]e need to avoid polarisation,” according to the project’s post. “[And] need to accept veto power of a minority when it comes to important decisions. We should not have decisions when there is a sizeable minority that very strongly objects.”

In emergency situations, decisionmaking will fall to a technical committee with a deep understanding of the network. Elected by the community for a one-year term, these five developers will also be responsible for any urgent bug fixes.

Fantom is a DAG-based ledger, designed as a fast and scalable decentralized solution for payments, as well as supply-chain management and secure communications platform. The initial protocol, known as ‘Lachesis’, was released in Q2 2018, with the mainnet expected to launch sometime in Q3 2019.

The governance framework is designed to give Fantom token holders and validators ultimate control over the ecosystem, as outlined by the project’s constitution. It will “balance the need for improvements and change to the network, while also ensuring that a sufficient number of participate of the network are in favor of such changes.” 

Governance is an increasingly important discussion point in crypto. Some have suggested that “DeFi needs a little more ‘De’” with the industry still overly centralized in the hands of a few key players.

The DAO, Ethereum’s first experiment in decentralized governance, failed spectacularly in 2016. But other projects learned from the DAO’s lessons. There are now several functional DAOs for cryptocurrencies such as Digix, Dash (DASH), or Maker (MKR). Other projects, like Aragon (ANT), are laying the foundations for their own autonomous communities.

The latest plans for the Fantom Governance Framework may seem unimportant, compared with the major movements in larger projects. But it’s a sign to the community that the Fantom project is serious about decentralization and enabling self-governance through technology.

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