The Polkadot developer team finally caused a governance issue which caused the protocol to prematurely slash all candidacy bonds for the Council positions. Now that the governance bug fix has been implemented, the Polkadot team will resume by refunding all affected users.
The announcement was shared in a governance forum discussion published on November 26.
Polkadot offers a truly unique and incredibly complex governance model. As such, it is prone to being more susceptible to yet unexplored bugs. Following a wave of council submissions, all bonds offered by users were prematurely slashed. Now that the Polkadot smart contract faces no bugs, the protocol will reimburse all accounts that recently lost their assets.
The Council represents an elected body of accounts who represent passive stakeholders on Polkadot. In governance, the council members have the task of submitting governance proposals and vetoing all malicious votes.
Users can become a part of this council by submitting a candidacy. For a candidacy, Polkadot requests that its community deposits a small bond consisting of either DOT or KSM.
In the case that a member does not join the Council, his bonds will be forfeited. However, he will keep the assets if he wins the candidacy and becomes a member. Moreover, the protocol will select runner-ups after each successful round, which may also receive their submitted bond.
Polkadot to directly reimburse users from the treasury
However, a bug has affected recent candidacies. In a governance discussion on November 13th, a developer revealed that a bug caused an ‘immature slashing of candidacy bonds.’ At the time, the team already fixed the issue through a bug fix implemented in Polkadot v26 runtime.
After successfully resolving the problem, the team announced a reimbursement program. Runner-ups and those who moved to the new Council role, but have lost bonds in the process, can apply for the program. Two weeks ago, the team merely hosted a discussion which made the situation more transparent. Moreover, developers proposed two ways of reimbursing users.
Through one method, the affected users would collect tips from the treasury pallet. Another method to use is to wrap all reimbursement calls inside a smart contract and create a transaction that would transfer assets from the treasury.
In the end, the Council voted for the second method. After approving today’s governance proposal, the Polkadot treasury smart contract will automatically execute all transfers. This would mark the end of the governance problem.
New PolkaBTC Assets
As Defiye previously reported, Polkadot announced a partnership with Interlay at the start of the month. The Web3 decentralized ecosystem will now host Bitcoin-backed assets. As one of the leading cross-chain solutions, Polkadot now offers a bridge between DeFi and the Bitcoin network.
On December 3, Polkadot will host a virtual panel joined by the Interlay CEO Alexei Zamyatin. During the virtual panel, Zamyatin will explain the importance of bringing Bitcoin to DeFi. Moreover, he will delve deeper into how Interlay works and why it works together with Polkadot.
Near the end of the virtual panel, Polkadot founder Gavin Wood plans to host a fireside chat moderated by Unchained host Laura Shin. Together, they will discuss the future of Polkadot and what the community can expect from the team in future updates.