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Submitting votes as DRep, Stake pool or Constitutional Committee member

Pre-requisites​

  • Payment key pair and it's address with funds
  • Authorized hot credentials, DRep credentials OR stake pool keys

To vote on governance actions, follow this process:

  1. Obtain the action ID of an ongoing governance action from Discord or query the governance state.
  2. Determine your voting stance; engage in discussion if required.
  3. Construct your vote file through the Cardano CLI. The example below demonstrates voting --yes, although options for --no or --abstain are also available.

Verify the content of the governance action​

Assume we need to submit a vote on the governance action with ID df58f714c0765f3489afb6909384a16c31d600695be7e86ff9c59cf2e8a48c79#0 that proposes a new constitution.

  1. Obtain the URL and hash of the new constitution proposal from the governance state:
cardano-cli conway query gov-state | \
  jq -r --arg govActionId "df58f714c0765f3489afb6909384a16c31d600695be7e86ff9c59cf2e8a48c79" '.proposals | to_entries[] | select(.value.actionId.txId | contains($govActionId)) | .value'
{
  "action": {
    "contents": [
      null,
      {
        "anchor": {
          "dataHash": "5d372dca1a4cc90d7d16d966c48270e33e3aa0abcb0e78f0d5ca7ff330d2245d",
          "url": "https://tinyurl.com/mr3ferf9"
        }
      }
    ],
    "tag": "NewConstitution"
  },
  "actionId": {
    "govActionIx": 0,
    "txId": "df58f714c0765f3489afb6909384a16c31d600695be7e86ff9c59cf2e8a48c79"
  },
  "committeeVotes": {
    "keyHash-c8ac605b25d6084c2ceb28043c8f01b62629966d038a249c7847d66d": "VoteYes",
    "keyHash-d13507f7e7fb8ac3ce2094187c9d99d4601021e9ef5a5f310567765d": "VoteYes"
  },
  "dRepVotes": {
    "keyHash-16faaf6daa2635bbf53bbbaf38b3a6040adf7ced2f7f08952592cf5b": "VoteYes",
    "keyHash-57cb90cfb635e76af648abf1b6a91519218a5919b3cba2527e3725d1": "VoteYes",
    "keyHash-7d84808d563f0f258ad7e4337c2c4bd13010930ebdf7b86c3bfd9ef8": "VoteYes"
  },
  "deposit": 0,
  "expiresAfter": 80,
  "proposedIn": 78,
  "returnAddr": {
    "credential": {
      "keyHash": "f925cbd4eb78aad49ec7bf9b4ddfa4cc4486c967e392699d143c81aa"
    },
    "network": "Testnet"
  },
  "stakePoolVotes": {}
}
  1. Download the file from the URL registered on the proposal:
wget https://tinyurl.com/mr3ferf9 -O constitution.txt
  1. Verify that the hash of the file matches the dataHash registered on the proposal:
b2sum -l 256 constitution.txt
5d372dca1a4cc90d7d16d966c48270e33e3aa0abcb0e78f0d5ca7ff330d2245d  constitution.txt

Everything is in order; the text at the URL matches the dataHash, confirming that the text at the URL is precisely what we are voting for.

In the future, voting apps, explorers, wallets, and other tools could perform the filtering, ensuring that they only display actions whose URL content has been verified against the reported hash.

Create the vote file​

Voting with DRep keys:

cardano-cli conway governance vote create \
  --yes \
  --governance-action-tx-id "df58f714c0765f3489afb6909384a16c31d600695be7e86ff9c59cf2e8a48c79" \
  --governance-action-index "0" \
  --drep-verification-key-file drep.vkey \
  --out-file df58f714c0765f3489afb6909384a16c31d600695be7e86ff9c59cf2e8a48c79-constitution.vote

Voting with CC hot keys:

cardano-cli conway governance vote create \
  --yes \
  --governance-action-tx-id "df58f714c0765f3489afb6909384a16c31d600695be7e86ff9c59cf2e8a48c79" \
  --governance-action-index "0" \
  --cc-hot-verification-key-file cc-hot.vkey \
  --out-file df58f714c0765f3489afb6909384a16c31d600695be7e86ff9c59cf2e8a48c79-constitution.vote

Voting with SPO keys:

cardano-cli conway governance vote create \
  --yes \
  --governance-action-tx-id "df58f714c0765f3489afb6909384a16c31d600695be7e86ff9c59cf2e8a48c79" \
  --governance-action-index "0" \
  --cold-verification-key-file cold.vkey \
  --out-file df58f714c0765f3489afb6909384a16c31d600695be7e86ff9c59cf2e8a48c79-constitution.vote

Include the vote in a transaction​

Build the transaction:

cardano-cli conway transaction build \
  --tx-in "$(cardano-cli query utxo --address $(< payment.addr) --output-json | jq -r 'keys[0]')" \
  --change-address $(< payment.addr) \
  --vote-file df58f714c0765f3489afb6909384a16c31d600695be7e86ff9c59cf2e8a48c79-constitution.vote \
  --witness-override 2 \
  --out-file vote-tx.raw

Sign it with the DRep key:

cardano-cli transaction sign --tx-body-file vote-tx.raw \
  --signing-key-file drep.skey \
  --signing-key-file payment.skey \
  --out-file vote-tx.signed

OR sign it with the CC hot key:

cardano-cli transaction sign --tx-body-file vote-tx.raw \
  --signing-key-file cc-hot.skey \
  --signing-key-file payment.skey \
  --out-file vote-tx.signed

OR sign it with the SPO cold key:

cardano-cli transaction sign --tx-body-file vote-tx.raw \
  --signing-key-file cold.skey \
  --signing-key-file payment.skey \
  --out-file vote-tx.signed

Submit the transaction:

cardano-cli transaction submit --tx-file vote-tx.signed