# OpenGov Components

### Governance Paries

Here are several groups of organizations with some specific authorities in the governance.

#### Fellowship

A mostly self-governing expert body with a primary goal of representing humans who embody and contain the technical knowledge base of the Bifrost, Kusama and/or Polkadot networks

This is accomplished by associating a rank with members to categorize the degree to which the system expects their opinion to be well-informed, of a sound technical basis, and in line with the interests of Bifrost.

The concept of Fellowship came from: <https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/learn-opengov#fellowship>

**Fellows level and corresponding permission settings**

| Rank | Authority                                                                               |
| ---- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 1-2  | Only officially supported fellowshipReferenda of the corresponding level can be issued. |
| ≥3   | Can initiate some authority & business with low risk level fellowshipReferenda.         |
| ≥6   | Can initiate all supported fellowshipReferenda.                                         |

**Ranking System**

To prevent a small group of participants from gaining effective control over the network, this system will adhere to three main principles:

* The Fellowship must never have hard power over the network: it cannot change the parameters, conduct rescues or move assets. Their only power in governance is reducing the effective timeline on which a referendum takes place through [whitelisting](https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/learn-opengov#whitelisting).
* The Fellowship weights those with a higher rank more in the aggregate opinion. However, the weight should not be so high as to make a small number of higher members’ opinions be insurmountable compared to a coherent opinion from lower-ranked membership.
* The Fellowship should be designed to grow and develop its membership, aggregate levels of expertise and ensure that its overall decision-making capacity strengthens over time.

To support these conditions, the Fellowship will have a constitution that outlines the requirements and expectations for individuals to attain and retain any given rank. Higher ranks can vote and promote lower ranks based on this constitution.

**Demotion** occurs automatically after a given period has elapsed, and the member is unable to defend their position to their peers.

**Suspension** can happen only through a referendum, which ensures that the Fellowship's bias alone does not necessarily result in expulsion.

To prevent the Fellowship from becoming a cabal (popularity with Fellowship peers alone should not be enough to gain access to a top rank), gaining access to the top tiers of the ranks will require a referendum.

**Whitelisting**

In OpenGov, it allows the Fellowship to authorize a new origin (known as Whitelisted-Root) to be executed with Root-level privileges and will only work with specified commands that have been approved by the Fellowship.

The [Whitelist](https://paritytech.github.io/substrate/master/pallet_whitelist/) pallet allows one Origin to escalate the privilege level of another Origin for a certain operation. The pallet verifies two things:

* The origin is the Whitelisted-Root (i.e. that the referendum passed on this track)
* The Fellowship has indeed whitelisted the proposal.

If both conditions are true, the operation executes with Root-level privileges.

This system enables the ability to have a new parallel Track (Whitelisted-Root Origin), whose parameters allow for a shorter voting turnaround. Through an open and transparent process, a body of global experts on the Polkadot protocol have determined that the action is both safe and time-critical.

#### Becoming a Fellowship Member

Currently, the only way to become a fellowship member is through an existing member who submits a `fellowshipCollective.addMember` extrinsic. See more information on [this Kusama SubSquare discussion](https://kusama.subsquare.io/post/6), which points to [these guidelines](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nHa-7Na4u52CTZzq87HaKNptGjyQDWm9H7s7GRjJpMU/edit). (Same as on Bifrost)

Future plans include that public members can apply to become a Fellowship candidate by placing a small deposit (which will be returned once they become members). Their candidacy will go through a referendum to be approved to become a member.

#### Council members

{% embed url="<https://bifrost.subsquare.io/council/members>" %}

#### Technical Committee

{% embed url="<https://bifrost.subsquare.io/techcomm/members>" %}