Governance Operations

This appendix collects the governance operations most integrations touch only occasionally: the Constitutional Committee's credential ceremonies, the queries that power governance UIs, and the wallet and validator hooks for building governance features.

Committee operations

Constitutional Committee members use a cold/hot credential model: the cold credential identifies the seat and stays offline; an authorized hot credential does the day-to-day voting. If the hot key is compromised, authorize a new one (it overrides the old); if the cold key is compromised, the only recourse is to resign.

Mesh's transaction builder exposes no committee-certificate helpers, so use Evolution or cardano-cli for these.

Evolution

import { Anchor, Credential } from "@evolution-sdk/evolution"

declare const coldCredential: Credential.Credential
declare const hotCredential: Credential.Credential
declare const anchor: Anchor.Anchor

// Authorize a hot credential
const authTx = await client.newTx().authCommitteeHot({ coldCredential, hotCredential }).build()

// Resign the seat
const resignTx = await client.newTx().resignCommitteeCold({ coldCredential, anchor }).build()

cardano-cli

A member holds a cold credential (offline, the on-chain identity) and a hot credential (signs votes); an authorization certificate links them, and a new one overrides the previous.

# cold key pair + its hash (what an update-committee action references)
cardano-cli latest governance committee key-gen-cold \
  --cold-verification-key-file cc-cold.vkey \
  --cold-signing-key-file cc-cold.skey
cardano-cli latest governance committee key-hash \
  --verification-key-file cc-cold.vkey > cc-key.hash

# hot key pair
cardano-cli latest governance committee key-gen-hot \
  --verification-key-file cc-hot.vkey \
  --signing-key-file cc-hot.skey

# authorize the hot credential
cardano-cli latest governance committee create-hot-key-authorization-certificate \
  --cold-verification-key-file cc-cold.vkey \
  --hot-verification-key-file cc-hot.vkey \
  --out-file cc-authorization.cert

Submit the certificate in a transaction signed by the payment and cold keys. To step down, submit a resignation certificate the same way:

cardano-cli latest governance committee create-cold-key-resignation-certificate \
  --cold-verification-key-file cc-cold.vkey \
  --out-file cc-resign.cert

Script-based members use --cold-script-hash / --hot-script-hash instead of the key files.

Query governance state

To show proposals, DRep info, voting power, or committee state in a UI, query your node:

cardano-cli

cardano-cli latest query gov-state                           # committee, constitution, params, proposals
cardano-cli latest query drep-state --all-dreps              # DRep registration: deposit, expiry, anchor
cardano-cli latest query drep-stake-distribution --all-dreps # voting power per DRep
cardano-cli latest query committee-state                     # members, hot-key auth, expiry, threshold
cardano-cli latest query proposals --all-proposals           # actions eligible for ratification

query constitution returns the current constitution anchor and guardrails script hash, and query gov-state | jq -r .nextRatifyState.nextEnactState.prevGovActionIds gives the last-enacted action IDs you need for the --prev-governance-action-* flags. Query APIs (Blockfrost, Koios, Maestro) expose the same data over HTTP; see Use a provider.

Browser wallet APIs (CIP-95)

For a browser dApp, CIP-95 adds governance methods to the wallet connector, so you can read what you need to build governance transactions.

It is an optional extension, not part of the CIP-30 core, so two things follow. You have to ask for it when you connect, and a wallet is free to say no. Plenty of wallets implement core CIP-30 only, and your dApp has to handle that rather than assume the methods are there.

Browser API

// Request the extension at enable time
const api = await window.cardano.eternl.enable({ extensions: [{ cip: 95 }] })

// A wallet without CIP-95 still connects, it just returns no cip95 namespace
if (!api.cip95) throw new Error("This wallet does not support governance (CIP-95)")

const dRepKey = await api.cip95.getPubDRepKey()                // the user's DRep key
const stakeKeys = await api.cip95.getRegisteredPubStakeKeys()  // registered stake keys

Mesh

import { MeshCardanoBrowserWallet } from "@meshsdk/wallet"

const wallet = await MeshCardanoBrowserWallet.enable("eternl", [{ cip: 95 }])

const dRepKey = await wallet.getPubDRepKey()

signTx and signData are extended rather than namespaced, so they keep working as before and gain the ability to witness Conway certificates and DRep credentials. For the connection itself, see Connect a wallet.

Governance in your validators

Plutus V3 added governance script purposes: a validator can run as a Voting or Proposing script, letting a contract participate in governance under script control. See the ScriptPurpose list in Datum, redeemer & context. All the SDK governance operations in this module also support script-controlled credentials: pass a redeemer and attachScript({ script }), exactly as for script-controlled stake.

Next steps

• Smart Contracts: the next module. Write the validation logic behind the script credentials and governance purposes this module kept pointing at.
• cardano.org/governance: the participant hub. Delegate your vote, become a DRep, and read the constitution.