Polygon Proposes Council for ‘Decentralized Governance,’ Names 13 Members

Polygon, a scaling solution to the Ethereum blockchain, released a proposal Thursday to create a “Polygon Protocol Council” in a push toward a more decentralized governance style, and named 13 inaugural members including officials from Coinbase and the Ethereum Foundation.

The proposal, known as PIP 29, will be “responsible for the narrow-in-scope, timelock-limited changes to system smart contracts implemented on Ethereum for existing and future Polygon protocols,” Polygon said in a press release.

According to the announcement, the council will “execute the community-led process to initiate future upgrades, including those proposed in the Frontier phase of Polygon 2.0.”

The committee will consist of members from the wider blockchain community. They include Viktor Bunin, a protocol specialist at Coinbase; Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation; Zaki Manian, co-founder of Sommelier Finance; and Jordi Baylina, a technical lead at Polygon Labs, which is the primary developer behind the Polygon project.

If these members want to execute changes to the Polygon blockchain, they will have to do so through a Gnosis Safe contract, according to a press release.

Thursday’s announcement is part of the Polygon 2.0 roadmap, a series of proposals and upgrades released in June that will change the blueprint of the blockchain.

The idea for a “community-controlled Ecosystem Council security model” was initially floated in a post in June by a representative of Polygon Labs, the primary developer behind the various Polygon networks.

“This proposal is a first step in a broader goal of further decentralizing governance for Polygon protocols in a security-oriented and responsible way,” Polygon wrote in their blog post. “Going forward, the community will help steer membership and terms of the Council through direct feedback, PIP proposals, as well as off- and on-chain voting components.”