Reduce governanceActionDeposit on PreProd from 100,000 ADA to 10,000 ADA
On-chain changes
- GovernanceGovernance Action Deposit1,000 ₳→10,000 ₳
Abstract
This Governance Action proposes reducing the governanceActionDeposit parameter on the PreProd network from 100,000 ADA (100,000,000,000 lovelace) to 10,000 ADA (10,000,000,000 lovelace).
The objective is to lower the barrier for governance testing and experimentation while maintaining a meaningful deposit requirement to discourage spam.
Motivation & rationale
PreProd serves as the primary environment for testing Cardano governance processes before deployment on Mainnet. The current governance action deposit of 100,000 ADA creates an unnecessary constraint for developers, governance tooling teams, DReps, SPOs, and community members who wish to submit and test multiple governance actions.
Although PreProd ADA has no direct monetary value, obtaining and managing sufficient balances to support repeated governance testing can still become a practical bottleneck. This limitation reduces the ability of the ecosystem to thoroughly test governance workflows, user interfaces, edge cases, and governance infrastructure.
Reducing the deposit requirement to 10,000 ADA would significantly improve accessibility while preserving the intended mechanism of requiring participants to commit funds when submitting governance actions.
A deposit of 10,000 ADA remains sufficiently large to discourage accidental or excessive spam submissions on PreProd, while making governance experimentation more accessible.
Benefits include:
- Lower entry barriers for governance testing.
- Increased participation from developers and governance tool builders.
- Improved ability to test multiple governance actions simultaneously.
- More comprehensive validation of governance workflows before Mainnet deployment.
- Better support for education, demonstrations, workshops, and governance-related hackathons.
Since PreProd is a testing environment, prioritizing accessibility and experimentation provides greater value than maintaining a deposit level designed primarily for production network conditions.
Proposed Change
Parameter:
govActionDeposit
Current value:
100,000,000,000 lovelace (100,000 ADA)
Proposed value:
10,000,000,000 lovelace (10,000 ADA)
Expected Outcome:
The proposed change will make governance testing more practical and inclusive on PreProd, enabling the community to submit and evaluate a larger number of governance actions while continuing to maintain reasonable protection against spam.
This proposal affects PreProd only and does not impact Mainnet governance security or economic assumptions.
Rationale highlights
Why some of the largest DReps voted for and against, in their own words. About vote rationales
Voting Yes. As this change only affects PreProd, reducing the deposit requirement will encourage governance experimentation and tooling development without impacting Mainnet security or economic assumptions.