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Governance

How Tenzro Network is governed: Tenzro Foundation stewardship, on-chain proposals and stake-weighted voting.

Tenzro Network is open, permissionless and open source under Apache 2.0. Two things govern it: the Tenzro Foundation, which stewards the project, and on-chain governance, in which staked TNZO votes on the parameters the protocol runs by.

The Tenzro Foundation

The Tenzro Foundation is a non-profit and the steward of the network. It is responsible for:

  • The protocol and network primitives, published under Apache 2.0.
  • The repositories, documentation and tools that developers and operators use.
  • Distribution and outreach, making the network's resources known and available.
  • TNZO, as the governing body for the token that pays all network fees and transaction settlement.

The Foundation works with the people and companies building on the network: individual developers and the open-source community, and commercial partners such as Tenzro Labs, which helps operators of any background get onboard. Tools, including abstraction layers for payments and TNZO, are built by the Foundation, by independent developers and by partners.

Anyone can be an operator, a developer or a user. No role requires the Foundation's permission. See Foundation.

On-chain governance

Protocol parameters change through proposals that bonded stake votes on, on-chain. A proposal that passes is executed by the protocol, not by hand.

What a proposal can change

Action"action"Changes
Parameter changeparameter_changeA single protocol parameter, such as a bond floor or a burn share
Policy updatepolicy_updateA network policy, such as the economic policy (every rate the network charges and the revenue split) or a bridge route
Treasury granttreasury_grantA payment from the network treasury to a recipient

An economic-policy proposal carries the complete policy rather than one field, so a change can never leave the rates half-applied or a revenue split that does not sum to the whole payment. Start from the policy the network applies today:

bash
tenzro governance economic-policy --json

Voting power

Voting power is the stake bonded behind a validator at the proposal's snapshot. A ballot is cast for a validator by its root: the operator's passkey identity signs it, or, for a validator that is an autonomous machine, the machine's own identity key approves it. Read an address's voting power with tenzro governance voting-power <ADDRESS> or tenzro_getVotingPower.

Lifecycle

  1. Propose. An account with bonded stake opens a proposal carrying its action as JSON.
  2. Vote. While the proposal is open, validators vote yes or no, weighted by bonded stake.
  3. Timelock. A proposal that passes waits out a timelock. During it, governance guardians can veto, and people can raise a concern from their own passkey identity; past a quorum of concerns the timelock doubles, once.
  4. Execute. Once the timelock has run, anyone may enact the proposal, and the protocol applies it.

Quorum, approval threshold, voting duration and the timelock are themselves governance parameters.

Using the CLI

bash
# See what is being decided
tenzro governance list --limit 20
tenzro governance show <PROPOSAL_ID>

# Propose a parameter change
tenzro governance propose \
  --action '{"action":"parameter_change","key":"<PARAMETER>","value":1,"memo":"Rationale and expected effect"}'

# Vote for the validator you operate
tenzro governance vote <PROPOSAL_ID> --validator <VALIDATOR_ACCOUNT> --yes

# Enact a passed proposal once its timelock has run
tenzro governance execute <PROPOSAL_ID>

Every call that creates a proposal, votes or enacts must be signed by the account that acts. Reads are open to anyone:

bash
curl -s https://rpc.tenzro.com \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tenzro_listProposals","params":[]}'
MethodClass
tenzro_listProposals, tenzro_getProposal, tenzro_getVotingPoweropen

What governance controls

  • Fees and burn. The split of the base fee between burn and treasury, and the burn share for gas paid in local assets. See Token economics.
  • The economic policy. The network's share of settled payments and the RPC provider's share for nodes that do not validate. See Settlement.
  • Bonds. The bond floor for each operator role and the withdrawal cooldown.
  • The treasury. Every grant from it.
  • Upgrades. Which protocol version the network runs.

Some things are not up to a vote. The total supply of TNZO is fixed at 1,000,000,000, and an operator's majority of each settled payment is enforced by the protocol, so no proposal can take it away.