20 Apr 2021

Sovryn is a decentralized finance protocol governed as a Bitocracy, where SOV holders stake their SOV in exchange for voting power. The Bitocracy staking mechanism raises the cost of attacks on Sovryn’s governance system and aligns protocol governors with the long-term success of the protocol. However, not all stakers have the time or expertise to vote on every Bitocracy proposal. Sovryn developers understood this and had the foresight to build in delegation from the very beginning.

Delegation is a feature that enables SOV stakers to delegate their voting power (but not the authority to transfer tokens) to another party who can then vote on their behalf. This feature opens up the possibility for a new category of participants in Sovryn governance: protocol politicians. Like politicians in traditional governance systems, protocol politicians aggregate political power and represent the will of their constituents when proposals come up for a vote. Unlike in traditional governance systems, voting power in Bitocracy is extremely fluid. A protocol politician in Bitocracy may be the most powerful voter one moment and irrelevant the next if they do not wield their power responsibly.

In addition to aggregating voting power for the purpose of voting on proposals, delegation also helps lower the barrier to entry to submitting proposals as well. In Bitocracy, users must have at least 1% of the voting power to be able to submit a proposal for a vote. If a user wants to submit a proposal, but does not have enough voting power on their own, they can rally supporters to delegate voting power to them so that they can aggregate the 1% of voting power needed to submit their proposal.

If you think you have a strong vision for how Sovryn should evolve, and the time and expertise to be a good protocol governor, consider “running for office” as a delegate in the Sovryn Bitocracy. Create a new thread in the Delegates subcategory of the Sovryn forum, introduce yourself, share your vision, and let SOV stakers know what RSK address they should be delegating their voting power to. Then the real work begins and you can start to put your vision into action!