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L1/L2 Governance

For being able to handle and execute governance activities not only on Ethereum but also on other networks such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and many more, Curve has developed a cross-chain governance system called labeled as x-gov.

GitHub

Source code of the x-gov repository can be found on GitHub.

A comprehensive list of all deployed components on different chains is available here.

Architecture & Smart Contracts

Voting for governance proposals is exclusively conducted on the Ethereum mainnet. Following a successful vote, the to be executed actions are broadcasted to a L2 network via a Broadcaster contract followed by the execution of the intended actions by Agents on the respective network via a Relayer contract.

  • Broadcaster

    The Broadcaster contract is responsible for broadcasting governance actions from Ethereum to the sidechain for execution.

    Broadcaster.vy

  • Relayer

    The Relayer contract facilitates the relaying of governance actions from Ethereum to Agents on the sidechain for execution.

    Relayer.vy

  • Agents

    On each sidechain and Layer 2 network, the Agent contract assumes three distinct roles: ownership, parameter, and emergency, mirroring the structure found on the Ethereum mainnet for controlled actions.

    Agent.vy

  • Vault

    The Vault serves as a contract to hold various assets, controlled by the OwnershipAgent.

    Vault.vy

Creating a Cross-Chain Vote

Notebook for Creating a Cross-Chain Vote

Creating a cross-chain vote is very similar to creating a vote on Ethereum. The only difference is that the executionScript is a bit more complex. Here is an example of a cross-chain vote which modifes the minimum and maximum interest rate for lending markets on Arbitrum.
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1SEmqdBgY3Pcg7q4XWGIoQOc1q5GEVGR6?usp=sharing

The notebook can easily be modified to create votes for any other chain.

Example: Claiming $OP Airdrop on L2

Best way to showcase how a system works is to show an example. Shortly after the launch of Optimism, a airdrop of OP tokens to projects that built infrastructure on Optimism was conducted. As Curve deployed their market-making infrastructure there, they were allocated 500,000 OP tokens. The airdrop could be claimed by simply calling the transferFrom on the OP token contract as the Vault contract was granted allowance.

Due to Curve's voting mechanism being only on Ethereum, a proposal to claim the 500,000+ OP tokens was made.

The proposal initiated a call to the broadcast function of the Optimism Broadcaster with the following calldata:

Call via agent (0x40907540d8a6C65c637785e8f8B742ae6b0b9968):
 ├─ To: 0x8e1e5001C7B8920196c7E3EdF2BCf47B2B6153ff
 ├─ Function: broadcast
 └─ Inputs: [('(address,bytes)[]', '_messages', (('0x4200000000000000000000000000000000000042', '23b872dd00000000000000000000000019793c7824be70ec58bb673ca42d2779d12581be000000000000000000000000d166eedf272b860e991d331b71041799379185d5000000000000000000000000000000000000000000006ae6c7dd0a9fb2700000'),))]

Decoding the calldata1 results in the following:

function: transferFrom
├─ from: 0x19793c7824Be70ec58BB673CA42D2779d12581BE
├─ to: 0xD166EEdf272B860E991d331B71041799379185D5
└─ amount: 504828000000000000000000

Conclusion: Once the vote on the Ethereum Mainnet was successfully passed and executed2, the Optimism Broadcaster contract relayed the message to the Relayer on L2. Subsequently, the OwnershipAgent executed the specified calldata, resulting in the transfer of 504,828 OP tokens from 0x19793c7824Be70ec58BB673CA42D2779d12581BE to 0xD166EEdf272B860E991d331B71041799379185D5.

  1. Calldata in our case is 23b872dd00000000000000000000000019793c7824be70ec58bb673ca42d2779d12581be000000000000000000000000d166eedf272b860e991d331b71041799379185d5000000000000000000000000000000000000000000006ae6c7dd0a9fb2700000 ↩

  2. Executing passed votes is fully permissionless. Anyone can do it. ↩