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Announced in June 2022, the protocol is set to overhaul the existing framework so that the network will become more entrenched in the decentralization ethos. The team argued that the current governance system has elements of centralization. For example, the Polkadot Council, a body of executives, had sole control over some decision-making processes, including how the network’s treasury is spent.

To this end, the new development is replacing the existing governance infrastructure with a framework in the form of a “referendum.” In other words, the planned upgrade will introduce a voting system allowing anyone to submit proposals and have them approved.

Called Governorship version 2 or Gov2, this upgrade allegedly eliminates all forms of preferential first-class citizenry like the Technical Committee and the Polkadot Council.

With this, the protocol aims to reduce the concentration of voting power by replacing the Technical Committee with the Polkadot Fellowship, designed to accommodate up to tens of thousands of members and feature a lower barrier for entry. The members are ranked to showcase the degree the protocol expects each participant to make informed decisions and support proposals that are in the best interest of the network.

Another core component of the upgrade is the Origins and Tracks system. This mechanism will help grade the importance of a proposal and determine the appropriate way to treat them. As such, the network can implement suitable safeguards to ensure that the decision-making process is decentralized and fair. For instance, proposals tagged as Root Origins are the most sensitive. Such proposals undergo longer and more scrutinized consideration periods, with a higher approval threshold. Also, the system ensures that only one hypersensitive proposal can be deliberated on at a time.

On the other hand, proposals with less sensitive Origins have shorter consideration periods with a lower approval threshold. Put simply, the grade of the importance of proposals will determine the type of safeguards assigned to them and the length of the decision-making process they undergo.

Gov2 will first be tested on Kusama, an experimental development environment for testing applications, before it goes live on Polkadot. Once the testing and audit phase is complete, the team will submit the proposal to launch Gov2 on the Polkadot network.