Stewards

A public goods steward can consist of an arbitrary number of people or can be a single person. The only requirement is that the steward's multisignature account is elected by the community through a governance proposal.

For this reason, the first step to becoming a steward is to create a multisignature account. This can be done using the commands found in the multisignature documentation.

No more than maximum_number_of_stewards are allowed to exist at any given time; this parameter that controls the upper bound on stewards can be changed via governance.

Becoming a steward

Once the multisig account is created, the steward can submit a governance proposal to nominate themselves for election as a steward. A steward proposal to elect a multisig account may only be submitted by that same account.

Submitting a steward governance proposal

A special governance proposal must be submitted in order to elect a steward. This is done with the following command:

namadac init-proposal \
        --pgf-stewards \
        --data-path $PATH_TO/steward_proposal.json

where $PATH_TO/steward_proposal.json is the path to the steward_proposal.json file.

The structure of the proposal steward_proposal.json looks like a default proposal but with an altered "data" section:

{
    "proposal" :{
        "content": {
            "title": "Stewie for Steward",
            "authors": "[email protected]",
            "discussions-to": "forum.namada.net/t/stewies-manifesto/1",
            "created": "2024-01-01T00:00:01Z",
            "license": "MIT",
            "abstract": "Stewie is an expert in zero-knowledge cryptography that would like to identify influential cryptographers to receive funding to continue their work.",
            "motivation": "Funding cryptography research will help Namada and other blockchain projects innovate and flourish.",
            "details": "We will describe here certain areas of ZK research that should receive funding."
        },
        "author": "tnam1qp326qxmkncgwavskar9lfwm68x04vu8sg80crm4",
        "voting_start_epoch": 3,
        "voting_end_epoch": 6,
        "activation_epoch": 12
    },
    "data" : {
        "add" : "tnam1qp326qxmkncgwavskar9lfwm68x04vu8sg80crm4",
        "remove": []
    }    
}

The "data" field contains the structure that allows either the addition or removal of a multisignature account from the list of stewards. In this case, the "action" is "add", and the "address" is the address of the multisignature account that will be elected as a steward. In this case, the proposal does not call to remove any stewards, and so this field is an empty list []. A steward proposal may propose to remove more than one steward at a time.

Becoming elected

Once the proposal is submitted, it will be voted on by the community like any other governance proposal (see here).

Once a multisignature account is elected (which occurs at the beginning of the activation_epoch), it will be able to submit proposals to the public goods funding pool (see submitting proposals).

Removing stewards

There are three ways that a steward can lose their stewardship:

1. Resign as a steward

A steward account may resign their position at any point. Through the CLI it can be done with the command:

namadac resign-steward --steward $STEWARD_ADDRESS

2. Funding proposal veto with removal

If a steward submits a funding proposal that receives at least as many nay votes as 2/3 of the total active voting power, then the steward is immediately removed in addition to the veto of the proposal.

3. Removal through a governance proposal

A steward may be removed by a steward governance proposal as described above. For removal, the "remove" list within the "data" field of the json file would contain the relevant steward address.

Steward inflation

A PGF steward also receives inflationary NAM tokens at the beginning of every epoch. The steward inflation rate is a constant parameter stewards_inflation_rate that can be changed via governance.

Each PGF steward receives an inflation amount according to stewards_inflation_rate; this amount is given to each steward and not divided among them.

Steward's reward distribution

A steward may also designate certain portions of its steward inflation to be minted to other addresses. This distribution can be set with the following steward commission CLI command:

namadac  update-steward-rewards --steward $STEWARD_ADDRESS --data-path $PATH_TO/steward_rewards.json

The file steward_rewards.json contains the desired reward distribution with the structure:

{
    "reward_distribution": {
        "tnam1qp326qxmkncgwavskar9lfwm68x04vu8sg80crm4": "0.3",
        "tnam1qp326qxmkncgwavskar9lfwm68x04vu8sg80aaaa": "0.3",
        "tnam1qp326qxmkncgwavskar9lfwm68x04vu8sg80bbbb": "0.4"
    }
}