Welcome to the Cosmos Hub Forum! Content here will guide you in being an active participant of the forum - recommended processes, formatting, moderation, etc.

Other helpful posts

Governance process overview

Cosmos Hub has an on-chain governance process that allows token holders to submit and vote on several kinds of proposals:

  1. Signalling Proposal: Signal an intent through text proposals. The only kind of proposal that does not directly cause any change.
  2. Community Spend Proposal: Spend tokens from the community pool.
  3. Parameter Change Proposal: Change on-chain parameters.
  4. Software Upgrade Proposal: Propose a software upgrade at a specified halt height.
  5. Client Update Proposal: Update an expired IBC client with a substitute client.

You can read more about the on-chain process in the Cosmos Hub documentation .

Voting FAQ

  • Who can vote? Any ATOM holder who has staked their ATOMs with a validator. ATOM holders who have staked are also called delegators.
  • How do I vote? You can cast your vote using the Keplr dashboard or the gaiad CLI.
  • How much influence do I have? Your vote is proportional to your staked ATOMs.
  • What happens if I don’t vote? If you have ATOMs staked with validators but choose not to vote on a proposal, you inherit the vote made by your validator. It’s like an opt-out if you want to vote differently from your validator – if you don’t take action you’ll automatically vote the way your validator does. But you can actively choose to vote differently or move to a different validator (re-delegating the first time happens instantaneously instead of the 14 days it takes to unbond completely).

General tips for governance participants:

  • Vote in on-chain proposals! You can view current and past proposals using a block explorer such as Mintscan or Big Dipper .
  • Ask questions and give feedback to proposal posts.
  • Use your forum ‘likes’ to show support and boost visibility.
  • Offer perspective and expertise where you can – the community benefits from participation and varied points of view!

Best practices for proposal makers:

Some collected wisdom on soft governance strategies for making and passing proposals. To make proposal-writing easier, topics in each Hub Proposal subcategory come with a template for formatting your content.

  1. Socialize the idea (e.g. On the Hub Discord, Twitter, arranging calls with stakeholders) before going on-chain. Because proposals can’t be changed once they move on-chain it’s important to solicit as much feedback and editorial comments from stakeholders as possible before setting it in stone.
  2. Include a link to the forum post (so that people can come read the discussion and contribute even once the proposal is on-chain)
  3. Take a pdf snapshot of the forum post and discussion just before going on-chain and pin it to IPFS so that the info is preserved. Include the IPFS link in your proposal text so that people viewing it on-chain can easily access historical content.
  4. Let your top-level post in the forum be exactly the text you expect to put on-chain (except for the changelog and IPFS link). This will help people know exactly what sort of edits and feedback might be needed to make the proposal text clear and palatable.
  5. Mind the character limit! The limit for proposals is 10000 characters and this includes markdown formatting and links.

How long should a proposal be on the forum before going on-chain?

We recommend keeping a proposal open for discussion for at least two weeks. In this time you may want to hold public conversations to answer more questions, such as using a Twitter Spaces call (you can tag @CosmosGov and we’ll RT to get you more visibility).

Before moving on-chain be sure to publicly announce a last call for feedback and state what day you’re planning to go on chain. People are more likely to provide feedback when they are given a deadline.

There is no hard rule that’s enforced, but use your judgement to ensure you’ve received adequate feedback before putting on chain.

This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

These are not hard and fast rules. They are guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a kind, friendly place for civilized public discourse.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always adding something positive to the discussion, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond by disagreeing. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

  • Name-calling
  • Ad hominem attacks
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
  • Knee-jerk contradiction

Instead, provide thoughtful insights that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

Discourse provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, watching, muting and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. Replying encourages bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

  • Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of a major news site.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Don’t start a topic in the wrong category; please read the category definitions.
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Don’t post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

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