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Unibase Docs

Governance

Unibase protocol parameters — staking minimums, slashing penalties, proof timings, contract upgrades — are controlled by UB holders, not by a team key.

The path is deliberately boring: lock UB → get vUB voting power → signal on Snapshot → bind on-chain via the Governor → wait out a Timelock → execute. Every step has a brake.

If you hold UB, here’s the short version

Section titled “If you hold UB, here’s the short version”

What do I actually get? Lock UB and you get vUB — voting weight plus a share of staking rewards. Lock longer, get more of both (up to 2.5×).

Do I have to vote on everything? No. You can delegate your weight to someone who follows governance closely, and take it back whenever you like. Delegating doesn’t move or risk your UB — it only moves the vote.

What am I voting on? Real protocol settings: how much a storage node must bond, how hard it gets slashed for failing a proof, how long an epoch is, and whether a contract gets upgraded. Not slogans.

What’s the catch? Your UB is locked for the duration you chose, and leaving takes two steps — your voting power dies immediately on exit, then your UB unbonds for a cooldown before you can withdraw. That’s deliberate: it’s what stops someone from borrowing a vote and walking away.

Scope: what governance controls

Section titled “Scope: what governance controls”

In scope:

  • DA protocol parameters — node minimum stake, slashing penalties, proof timing, challenge windows, epoch length
  • Staking economics — lock durations, the boost curve, the cooldown, the reward asset
  • Contract upgrades — any UUPS implementation behind the protocol proxies
  • Roles and the safety apparatus — who holds GOVERNOR_ROLE, who sits on the Guardian council, whether the ParamCommittee fast lane exists at all

Not in scope:

  • Your data. Governance cannot read, move, or delete anything stored on Unibase DA, and cannot touch keys or encrypted memory.
  • Individual balances. There is no function to mint, seize, or freeze a specific holder’s UB or vUB.
  • Application-layer products. Membase, AIP, and Unibase Pay are not governed by this system today.

Voting power comes from a lock, not a balance

Section titled “Voting power comes from a lock, not a balance”

Voting power is vUB (vote-escrowed UB), minted by locking UB in the VUB contract.

Property Why
Non-transferable vUB is a locked position, not a tradeable asset — it cannot be rented or bought for a vote
Lock-weighted Longer lock ⇒ more vUB per UB (up to 2.5×) — power tracks commitment
Flash-loan resistant You cannot mint vUB and exit in the same block; unstaking needs the lock to expire, and burning vUB kills voting power immediately
Auto-delegated Your first stake self-delegates, so the stake counts as votes without a second transaction

No lock, no vote. See Staking & vUB.

Two venues: signal, then decide

Section titled “Two venues: signal, then decide”
Venue Binding? Cost Use it for
Snapshot — s:unibase.eth No Gasless (off-chain signature) Temperature checks, parameter polls, sentiment before spending gas
Tally — over DAOGovernor + DAOTimelock Yes On-chain gas Anything that changes protocol state: parameters, roles, upgrades, treasury

Both read the same vUB weight. Snapshot is live; the Tally front-end for binding votes is coming soon — the Governor contracts themselves are deployed and callable directly (see Proposals & Execution).

How a change actually lands

Section titled “How a change actually lands”
vUB holders
   │  propose (needs ≥ proposal threshold)
   ▼
DAOGovernor ──[voting delay → voting period → quorum + majority]──▶ Succeeded
   │  queue()
   ▼
DAOTimelock ──[2-day delay: anyone can inspect, Guardian can cancel]──▶ execute()
   │
   ├──▶ Ethereum-side targets (governance contracts, roles)
   └──▶ Base-side targets: canonical OP Stack L1→L2 message
            ▼
        L2GovernanceExecutor (Base) ──▶ Base Timelock ──▶ DA contracts

Unibase DA settles on Base, but governance authority lives on Ethereum. The two are connected by Base’s native rollup messenger — not a third-party bridge — so a cross-chain parameter change inherits Ethereum + OP Stack security rather than a bridge committee’s.

Two governing bodies

Section titled “Two governing bodies”

Governance is split between a body that decides and a body that can stop things — and the second one answers to the first.

Body Who Powers Accountability
vUB holders Anyone who locks UB, plus the delegates they choose Propose, vote, and execute every change in scope above Sovereign — the DAO is the root authority
Guardian council A security-council multisig Veto a queued proposal (CANCELLER_ROLE) and trip the emergency circuit breaker Powers are delegated by the DAO and revocable by it. Governance administers GUARDIAN_ROLE, so a vote can rotate or remove the council outright

The Guardian can only ever subtract: cancel a queued proposal, or pause fund-moving entrypoints. It cannot propose, pass, or execute anything, cannot upgrade a contract, and cannot move funds. A Guardian that acts in bad faith can be dissolved by the holders it was supposed to protect.

No Guardian council is seated on the current deployment — see the deployment notice below.

Safety rails

Section titled “Safety rails”

Governance is fast enough to be useful and slow enough to be safe. Four independent mechanisms:

Rail Contract What it does
Timelock delay DAOTimelock Every passed proposal waits ~2 days before it can execute — time to read the calldata and react
Guardian pause EmergencyPause A security-council multisig can halt fund-moving entrypoints (withdraw / slash) instantly during an exploit. Bounded and auto-expiring, so an absent guardian cannot freeze the protocol; governance can lift it early or remove a rogue guardian
Bounded fast lane ParamCommittee A Safe multisig may enact a hardcoded, bounded list of routine parameter setters on Base without a full ETH round trip. It cannot upgrade, grant roles, or make arbitrary calls — the contract is immutable and has no such function — and the DAO can revoke it at any time
Immutable Governor DAOGovernor, DAOTimelock Deliberately not upgradeable. A captured governance cannot rewrite its own rules in place; evolving governance means deploying new instances and migrating roles by vote

EmergencyPause is fail-open by design: a guardian pause expires on its own. Governance pauses are capped per call (90 days max) so withdrawals can never be frozen permanently.

Roles

Section titled “Roles”
Role Held by Powers
GOVERNOR_ROLE The Timelock (after decentralization) Call parameter setters, authorize UUPS upgrades
DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE Deployer at bootstrap → renounced Grant/revoke roles. The last emergency-recovery path; irreversible once renounced
GUARDIAN_ROLE Security-council multisig Bounded emergency pause. Administered by GOVERNOR_ROLE — the DAO can fire a rogue guardian
REWARD_FUNDER_ROLE Treasury Stream staking rewards into VUB via notifyReward
PROPOSER / EXECUTOR / CANCELLER Governor / anyone / Guardian Timelock queue, execute, and veto

Deployments

Section titled “Deployments”

Governance contracts on Ethereum mainnet:

Contract Address
DAOGovernor 0xcc89AEa4D4bb8c0De2aC917f84a0E30Ee1247C92
DAOTimelock 0xbD721b1509D7574EE59e252a01111EBb35893A9d
VUB (voting token) 0x7a65Dd8256124c1c3eA8C3b90AC2411A04DD9353

⚠️ Current deployment is a dev deployment, not production governance. The deployer still holds Timelock admin and can bypass votes; no Guardian council is seated; the VUB contract runs testnet lock parameters. Treat on-chain votes as rehearsals until this notice is lifted. Base Sepolia runs a staking-only deployment (test UB, 60-second locks) for exercising the flow end to end.

How to participate

Section titled “How to participate”

Pick the level of involvement you actually have time for:

I want to… Do this
Earn and stay passive Lock UB for rewards, then delegate your weight to someone who follows governance. Your vote still counts; you don’t have to show up
Vote myself Lock UB (your first stake self-delegates), then vote on Snapshot — gasless — or on-chain for binding proposals
Vote on others’ behalf Build a track record in the forum and on Snapshot, and ask holders to delegate to you. Delegated weight is revocable at any time, so it has to be re-earned continuously
Change something Start an RFC — see Governance Process. Below the 2.5M vUB proposal threshold, partner with a delegate who clears it
Just watch Every queued proposal sits in the Timelock for 2 days before it can execute. Read the calldata; anyone can raise an alarm

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”