Astar Multisig - Centralized Control

Astar Network (Polkadot)
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Thanks to Polkabeat, I’ve learned that the founding Astar team has sudo control of the chain.

There is a 3/5 Multsig with complete upgrade control over the chain. I think there’s an explanation owed to the Astar community as to why this is the case and what the future plans are for the sudo pallet and this multisig.

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Hey @nyxy, thanks for opening up this topic! I planned on making a formal post about this in the coming days and bringing this topic to the public. I’m happy that you mentioned this because, yes, our community must know the current situation with the network’s management and the future of on-chain governance.

Before making a long post, let me make certain things clear;

  • yes, we are managing our sudo key through a multi-sig account that is owned by the core team. We are still centralized and managing the network through a multi-sig was necer a secret. I would have liked us to made it more explict, but it’s also not something we want to brag about.
  • we have been working on the Astar governance model for a while now with advice from Parity, Polkassembly, and other major governance professionals. I am personally leading this project and I am happy to announce that the general model proposal is over, and now we need to test it.
  • to us, removing sudo means giving the network authority to the community. I do not wish to remove sudo for the sake of compliance and pretend like we are decentralized even though the core team or institutional investors own everything. I repeat, removing sudo means REMOVING SUDO. I do not Astar to be like other networks that just copy Polkadot’s governance but don’t understand how governance in their ecosystem should work.
  • I expect the Astar governance model to be finalized by Q3 and implemented on Shiden DAO before the end of the year.

As you know, we were pushing the Shiden DAO narrative a while ago, and this was when the governance modeling project was preparing to be tested.
Based on what I’m seeing right now in the forums and network activity, even if we remove our sudo, we will still be centralized but with extra steps. That is why we need to create our own governance model that is different from Polkadot.

I apologize for the concerns that the community has with the network governance due to the lack of communication from our side and the wait. I hope the community understands and please stay tuned for our full strategy.

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This is a great response and even better than what I was hoping for @hoonkim.

You’re totally right that decentralizing governance takes more than just applying certain technical parameters. So I totally get that. Looking forward to an expanded public post on this, but what you’ve already said is really good.

I like astar a lot, so this is quite reassuring. I just hope the timelines you’ve given are realistic.

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As promised, I made a post that outlines the plans for our governance The state of Astar governance and our development plans

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