Railgun Governance
All Questions
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Railgun Governance is the on-chain governance layer of the RAILGUN Privacy System. RAIL token holders can lock (stake) their tokens to obtain voting power and participate in shaping the protocol's future — from fee parameters to smart contract upgrades.
The system is fully non-custodial: your staked tokens remain under a smart contract you can interact with directly on Ethereum and other supported networks. No central authority controls the outcome of any proposal.
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Staking RAIL on Railgun Governance is a two-step process. First, connect a compatible Web3 wallet (such as MetaMask or any WalletConnect-compatible wallet). Then approve the governance contract to spend your RAIL tokens, and finally submit the stake transaction.
Once staked, your tokens are converted into voting power at the next governance snapshot. You will also begin accumulating governor rewards proportional to your stake size relative to the total staked supply.
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When you initiate an unlock on Railgun Governance, a 30-day cooldown period begins. During this period the tokens are no longer counted toward your voting power, and rewards stop accumulating on the unlocking amount.
After the 30 days have elapsed you can claim your RAIL tokens back to your wallet. Plan your liquidity needs in advance — the cooldown exists to protect active governance from sudden large stake withdrawals that could affect quorum on open proposals.
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Active governors on Railgun Governance earn a share of protocol fees collected by the RAILGUN Privacy System. These fees are generated every time users shield or unshield tokens through RAILGUN's zero-knowledge circuits.
Rewards are distributed proportionally to each governor's share of total voting power at each staking interval snapshot. The reward token and exact rate depend on protocol parameters set by governance itself, making participation in Railgun Governance especially valuable.
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Voting power in Railgun Governance is derived directly from your staked RAIL balance at the time of each governance snapshot. The more RAIL you have staked, the greater your influence over proposal outcomes.
Snapshots are taken at regular staking intervals. This means tokens staked after the snapshot for a given proposal will not count for that proposal but will count for subsequent ones. Monitoring the "Next Snapshot" countdown on the dashboard helps you time your stakes effectively.
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RAILGUN is a smart contract system that uses zk-SNARK (zero-knowledge) cryptography to allow users to transact privately on public blockchains such as Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, and Arbitrum.
By shielding tokens inside the RAILGUN contract, balances and transaction history become hidden on-chain while remaining fully verifiable by zk proofs. Railgun Governance is the governance mechanism that controls the parameters and upgrades of this privacy infrastructure.
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The RAILGUN smart contracts — governed through Railgun Governance — are deployed on Ethereum Mainnet, BNB Chain, Polygon, and Arbitrum. The RAIL governance token itself resides on Ethereum Mainnet.
Staking and governance actions take place on Ethereum. Cross-chain deployments of RAILGUN privacy contracts are subject to governance proposals voted on through Railgun Governance.
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To vote on proposals, navigate to the "Proposals" tab in the Railgun Governance interface with your wallet connected and tokens staked. Active proposals will be listed along with their current vote tallies and end dates.
To submit a new proposal, you must hold a minimum governance threshold of voting power. Proposal creation typically requires drafting an on-chain action (such as a parameter change) and a human-readable description. Community discussion on Discord or the RAILGUN forum before formal submission is strongly encouraged.
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The underlying RAILGUN smart contracts have undergone multiple independent security audits, the results of which are publicly available at the official audit reports page. Governance staking contracts are part of the same audited codebase.
As with all DeFi protocols, users should review the audits, understand the risks of smart contract interaction, and only stake amounts they are comfortable with. Railgun Governance does not custody your tokens — smart contracts enforce all rules transparently on-chain.
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The best place to start is the RAILGUN Wiki, which covers the full protocol in depth. For developer integrations see the Developer Guide.
Community support is available on Discord and Telegram. Follow @RAILGUN_Project on Twitter for the latest announcements and governance updates from Railgun Governance.
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Delegation features depend on the current governance contract version deployed on Railgun Governance. Token holders who cannot actively monitor every proposal are encouraged to participate as much as possible, since abstentions reduce the effective participation rate and can cause proposals to fail quorum.
Keep an eye on governance forum discussions for any upcoming delegation features or meta-governance tooling that the community may propose through Railgun Governance in future intervals.
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When you stake RAIL on Railgun Governance, your tokens are locked in the governance smart contract. You retain beneficial ownership — the contract records your stake and assigns voting power accordingly — but the tokens cannot be transferred until you complete the unlock process.
Staked RAIL continues to accrue governor rewards throughout the staking period. The tokens are never sent to a third party; the smart contract is the sole custodian, and all logic is publicly verifiable on-chain through Railgun Governance.