Participating in kernel governance

For simplified instructions for voting for Etherlink kernel upgrades, see Voting quickstart.

Bakers can vote on kernel updates with these commands. The commands are the same for slow and fast upgrades but they target different governance contracts.

Getting information about the current period

You can get information about the current period at https://governance.etherlink.com.

To get information about the current state of either kernel governance contract directly from the contract, connect the Octez client to an active node and call the contract's get_voting_state view. For example, this Octez client command calls this view for the slow governance contract on Mainnet:

octez-client -E https://mainnet.ecadinfra.com \
  run view get_voting_state on contract KT1VZVNCNnhUp7s15d9RsdycP7C1iwYhAQ8r

The view returns information about the current governance period in this order:

• The index of the current period
• Whether the current period is Proposal (Left Unit) or Promotion (Right Unit)
• The number of blocks remaining in the period
• Information about voting during the period

For example, this response shows that the contract is currently in the Proposal period:

(Pair 1619 (Left Unit) 64 None)

Block explorers and the governance web site show this information in a more human-readable format.

You can also subscribe to the voting_finished event to be notified when the Proposal period completes.

Upvoting upgrades in the Proposal period

To upvote a proposed kernel update during a Proposal period, go to the governance web site, connect your wallet (baking key or voting key), select the governance process and active period, and cast your vote.

As an alternative, call the upvote_proposal entrypoint with the same parameters as the new_proposal entrypoint:

octez-client call KT1VZVNCNnhUp7s15d9RsdycP7C1iwYhAQ8r from my_wallet \
  --entrypoint "upvote_proposal" \
  --arg "0x<KERNEL_HASH>"

Voting for or against upgrades in the Promotion period

When a proposal is in the Promotion period, you can vote for or against it by going to the governance web site, connecting your wallet (baking key or voting key), selecting the governance process and active period, and casting your vote.

As an alternative, you can vote for it by calling the vote entrypoint of the appropriate governance contract:

octez-client call KT1VZVNCNnhUp7s15d9RsdycP7C1iwYhAQ8r from my_wallet \
  --entrypoint "vote" --arg '"yea"'

The command takes these parameters:

• The address or Octez client alias of your baker account or voting key
• The address of the Etherlink kernel governance contract
• "yea", "nay", or "pass", including the double quotes

The command does not need the hash of the kernel because only one kernel can be in the Promotion period at a time, so the options are to vote for or against that kernel or to abstain by voting "pass."