Governance
Quantus uses the Polkadot OpenGov governance model, adapted for a proof-of-work chain. Governance enables forkless runtime upgrades -- critical for a chain that may need to swap cryptographic primitives as PQC standards evolve.
Why Forkless Upgrades Matter
If NIST deprecates ML-DSA-87 or a vulnerability is found in Poseidon2, Quantus can upgrade its runtime via on-chain governance without coordinating a hard fork. The Substrate framework compiles the runtime to WASM, and governance can schedule a runtime swap that all nodes automatically adopt.
This is the key advantage over Bitcoin's upgrade model, where consensus changes require years of social coordination and miner signaling.
Technical Collective
A group of technically qualified members who can fast-track urgent protocol upgrades (security patches, critical bug fixes). The Technical Collective has its own referendum track with lower thresholds and shorter voting periods, enabling rapid response to security issues.
Governance Components
| Pallet | Purpose |
|---|---|
pallet-referenda | Referendum management |
pallet-referenda::Instance1 | Technical Collective referenda |
pallet-conviction-voting | Conviction-weighted vote tallying |
pallet-ranked-collective | Technical Collective membership |
pallet-preimage | Stores referendum proposal data |
pallet-scheduler | Executes approved referenda at scheduled blocks |
Key Source Code
| Component | Path |
|---|---|
| Governance track definitions | runtime/src/governance/definitions.rs |
| Runtime configuration | runtime/src/configs/mod.rs |
| Scheduler (custom) | pallets/scheduler/ |