Understanding Decay & Delegation in Summer Governance

Start Here Resources and Tutorials
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How Voting Power Works

Your voting power in Summer Protocol comes from multiple sources:

  • Direct token holdings

  • Staked tokens in governance

  • Delegated voting power from other users

This total power is then modified by your decay factor. Starting at 100% (represented as 1e18), your voting power begins decaying after an initial grace period (60 days).

Linear Decay:

  • Reduces voting power at a constant rate

  • Easier to predict and understand

Delegation System

You can delegate your voting power to other addresses, creating “delegation chains”:

  • Maximum chain length: 2 levels

  • Example: Alice → Bob → Carol (valid)

  • Example: Alice → Bob → Carol → Dave (invalid, Dave gets 0 power)

Your rewards and voting power inherit the decay factor of your delegate. This means:

  • If you delegate to an active participant, you maintain higher power

  • If your delegate becomes inactive, your power decays

  • You can change delegation at any time

Let’s use an example with Alice and Bob:

:one: Initial State

  • Alice has a decay factor of 1.0 (100%)
  • Bob has a decay factor of 1.0 (100%)

:two: Alice Delegates to Bob

  • Alice’s voting power now uses Bob’s decay factor
  • If Bob stays active in governance, his decay factor stays high
  • Alice’s inherited decay will be the same power as Bob’s (inheriting his decay factor)

:three: The Hidden Decay

  • While Alice is delegated to Bob, her personal decay factor continues to decay
  • This decay happens silently in the background
  • Alice isn’t performing governance actions, so her personal decay factor keeps dropping

:four: The Catch
If Alice later:

  • Undelegates (sets to address(0))
  • OR delegates back to herself

She’ll suddenly be using her own heavily decayed factor!

:key: Key Takeaway
Delegation lets you temporarily “borrow” someone’s decay factor, but it doesn’t prevent your own decay factor from deteriorating through inactivity. To maintain voting power long-term, you need to either:

  • Stay active in governance yourself
  • OR remain delegated to active participants
  • BUT you can’t just delegate temporarily to “reset” your decay
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