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Governance

New L1 controls protocol parameters through fully on-chain, token-weighted governance, running the same Compound/OpenZeppelin Governor + Timelock engine as BNB Smart Chain. There is no admin key or externally-owned account that can bypass this process: every governed contract only accepts changes routed through the governance flow.

What’s Governable

Protocol and system parameters: staking and slashing constants, and New L1–specific configuration such as the Multi-Lane quotas in LaneRegistry. Validator-set membership itself is not a governance vote; it’s decided automatically by a stake-weighted election that runs once per day (see below), while the parameters that shape staking and elections are governable.

Voting Power

  1. Stake bridged BNB with StakeHub.
  2. Staking mints govBNB 1:1 against staked value, a non-transferable ERC20Votes token that exists purely as a voting ledger.
  3. govBNB only counts as active voting power once delegated, either to yourself or to a validator. Holding undelegated govBNB carries zero voting weight.

Lifecycle

  1. Propose. A proposer with enough delegated govBNB to clear the proposal threshold submits a proposal targeting GovHub.updateParam(key, value, target). Multiple parameter changes can be bundled atomically into a single proposal.
  2. Vote. govBNB holders cast votes during the voting period.
  3. Quorum. The proposal succeeds once quorum is reached and the voting period ends.
  4. Queue. A succeeded proposal is queued on the Timelock contract.
  5. Timelock delay. A mandatory minimum delay must elapse before the change can execute, giving the community time to react to a passed but not-yet-active change.
  6. Execute. The Timelock calls GovHub.updateParam, which forwards updateParam(key, value) to the target system contract.

Two access-control gates make this the only path to change anything governed: every governed target only accepts calls from GovHub, and GovHub only accepts calls from the Timelock.

Note

Some parameters (for example, Multi-Lane quota changes) take effect only after an additional short activation delay on top of the timelock delay, since node clients read that configuration from a slightly-lagged executed-state checkpoint rather than the very latest block.

How to Participate

  • Delegate or stake. Bridge BNB to New L1, then call StakeHub.delegate(validatorOperator, delegateVotePower=true), which also mints govBNB automatically.
  • Become a validator. Register via StakeHub.createValidator, which verifies your BLS vote key.
  • Vote. Delegate your govBNB, to yourself or to a validator, then cast votes on active proposals through the Governor contract.
  • Propose. Hold or have delegated enough govBNB to clear the proposal threshold, then submit a proposal via Governor.propose.

Governor and Timelock are compiled from the same OpenZeppelin/Compound contracts BSC uses (with New L1’s own timing constants), so tooling built against a standard OZ Governor interface, Tally for example, should work without changes. This manual hasn’t independently verified any specific third-party tool against a live deployment.

Validator-Set Rotation

Validator-set membership updates automatically (see Consensus): an election runs once per day at a designated block, reading the top validators by voting power from StakeHub and updating the active validator set on-chain, which the next epoch-boundary header then binds. No separate governance proposal is required for this routine rotation.

See System Contracts for the full list of contracts involved and their addresses.