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NODE/03 · Term

Governance

Decision-making mechanism in a decentralised protocol: governance-token holders vote on parameter changes, upgrades, and treasury spending. On TON, governance is still mostly off-chain Snapshot-style.

Aliases: governance, onchain governance, dao voting

Governance is the process of making collective decisions about a protocol: upgrades, parameter changes, treasury spending. It is implemented through votes by governance-token holders or community members.

Models

  • Token-weighted voting — 1 token = 1 vote. Simple, but biased toward whales.
  • Quadratic voting — the cost of additional votes grows quadratically. Reduces whale dominance.
  • SBT-gated — only holders of a non-transferable badge can vote.
  • Off-chain (Snapshot) — voting happens off-chain (by signature); execution is multisig.

Governance on TON as of 2026

  • TON Foundation itself is not a decentralised DAO — it’s a legal entity.
  • Major protocols (STON.fi) launched governance tokens and run off-chain votes.
  • No mature on-chain DAO framework comparable to Aragon exists on TON yet.

Further reading

DAOs on TON: voting and frameworks — detailed breakdown.

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