Understanding Elections, Candidacy, and Voting in Vitreus
Introduction
Elections are the cornerstone of governance in Vitreus, enabling the community to select individuals who will represent or protect the network’s shared interests. This guide explains the election process, candidacy announcement, and voting.
What Are Elections in Vitreus?
Elections determine key positions such as Council members or other decision-making roles. These ensure fair representation and uphold the values of decentralization.
Announcing Your Candidacy
Eligibility:
Minimum token holding requirements. 1 VTRS is required to announce candidacy
Vitreus currently has no other restrictions and leaves it up to the discretion of vote to determine eligibility.
Steps to Announce:
Load your wallet to the developer explorer (orange explorer: stats.vtrs.io)
Navigate to the "Council" tab, under the “Governance” header and select "Submit Candidacy."
Sign the extrinsic
Key Considerations:
Candidacy requires a refundable deposit of tokens to avoid spam.
Election periods are predefined to be every 6 months, with the first election being February 1st, 2025.
Token holders can vote during the designated period.
Between each period, a vote can be applied and moved as many times as a user wants.
How to Vote:
Navigate to the "Governance" section in the governance portal.
Review candidate profiles and their proposed contributions. This is primarily done in Discord.
Use your tokens to vote, applying conviction levels to signal strong preferences.
Voting is straightforward:
i Council Candidates are listed on the left-hand side in a table. ii Clicking on a candidate will populate the right-hand table. iii Vote Value is the amount of VTRS you wish to commit to a vote in totality. iv The amount of VTRS commitment is evenly distributed across all Candidates in your right-hand table when you confirm your vote.
v. Clicking the “Vote” at the bottom requires at least 1 VTRS and at least 1 candidate to be selected. This button will call the elections.vote pallet/extrinsic and apply this to the chain. vi. The election system will run on the execution block based on the counter found at the top of the page.
Fairness and Transparency:
Adaptive Quorum Biasing ensures fair outcomes regardless of voter turnout. This applies to Referenda and Governance in General.
Real-time voting results are displayed to maintain transparency.
Winning candidates must fulfill their stated responsibilities. Other council members can pass a supermajority motion to unseat a council member.
Runners up will be brought into council should the membership be less than the target numbers
Winners are automatically assigned the council permissions on-chain and are able to start their duties immediately.
Steps to Use "Submit Candidacy" in the Council Tab
Prepare Your Wallet:
Open your browser extension wallet (e.g., Polkadot.js). Or Load your wallet into the Developer Explorer via Mnemonic Phrase (see here)
Ensure it is loaded with the required tokens for candidacy submission and transaction fees.
Verify that the wallet is connected to the same network as the Developer Explorer (e.g., Vitreus mainnet/testnet).
Navigate to the Council Tab:
Go to the Council section in the Developer Explorer.
Locate the "Submit Candidacy" button.
Click "Submit Candidacy":
Clicking the button will prompt you to submit your account for candidacy.
The Developer Explorer will generate the corresponding extrinsic payload for candidacy submission.
Signing the Transaction:
Since the Developer Explorer cannot directly connect to your wallet, copy the extrinsic payload generated by the Developer Explorer.
Open your wallet extension (e.g., Polkadot.js Apps), go to the Developer > Sign and Submit section.
Paste the extrinsic payload into the interface and sign the transaction using your account.
Confirm Submission:
Return to the Developer Explorer or monitor the chain state to verify that your candidacy has been submitted successfully.
Conclusion Participating in elections, either as a candidate or voter, shapes the future of Vitreus. Your engagement ensures that governance remains inclusive, transparent, and effective.