Governance

Introduction to blockchain governance and VeChain's implementation.

On-Chain Governance Overview

On-chain governance in blockchain refers to the process of making decisions and implementing changes to the blockchain protocol directly on the blockchain itself. This approach ensures transparency, allowing all stakeholders and community members to view proposals, votes, and changes. Major stakeholders in blockchain networks should aim to make as many decisions as possible directly on-chain.

VeChain's On-Chain Governance Implementation

VeChain leverages on-chain governance to enable stakeholders — or its governing body — to make decisions on critical on-chain actions and execute those actions. The actions can, for instance, be authorizing or revoking consensus validators (i.e., the Authority Masternodes), changing network parameters, such as the base gas price and block reward ratio, or any on-chain activity embodied by a smart contract deployed on the VeChainThor blockchain.

VeChain's on-chain governance process consists of three phases:

• Decision-Making: First phase where decisions on executing certain on-chain actions are made. Decisions are obtained through voting. Voting can be conducted either on-chain via a voting contract or off-chain within the governing body.

• Authorization: Second phase where a voted on-chain action is proposed to the governing body for final approval. Each proposal has to be approved by a majority of the members of the governing body.

• Execution: Final phase of on-chain governance. Once a proposal has been approved by the required majority, anyone can trigger the execution of the on-chain action defined in the proposal.

Framework for on-chain governance.

The governing body of the mainnet is the steering committee of VeChain Foundation

Elected Steering Committee Members

The governing body of VeChain, our steering committee, oversees various functional committees and represents the balanced interests of all VeChainThor blockchain stakeholders. The steering committee is appointed at the end of a rigorous election process in which all eligible stakeholders, per the terms of the governance charter (Economic / X Node holders and Authority Masternode holders), can cast a vote.

The initial pre-selection process allows eligible stakeholders to vote for 10 candidates. After this stage, a shorter list of 10 candidates proceeds to the next phase. In the second and final round of voting, stakeholders vote for 5 candidates they want to be part of the steering committee. Before this round, each candidate is interviewed by a VeChain Foundation representative to help the community get to know them better.

The most recent steering committee elections closed on March 1st, 2023, at 11:59 PM. The elected steering committee members are Luca Crisciotti, Qi Ge, Renato Grottola, Sunny Lu, and Antonio Senatore.

o explore VeChain's on-chain governance and view past or future proposals, visit VeVote, VeChain's voting platform. VeVote enhances ecosystem transparency and streamlines the voting process for relevant stakeholders.