Voting on LAMINA1

As mentioned in the LAMINA1 Governance and Tokenomics Whitepaper, the LAMINA1 network is governed by a combination of council-based and direct representation mechanisms to govern its ecosystem and economy.

Marquee decision-making is largely organized around two elected bodies: The Open Metaverse Monetary Authority (OMMA) and the Open Metaverse Arts Council (OMAC), which will begin opening up seats to the community in elections in Q1 and Q2 2025. As mentioned in the LAMINA1 Tokenomics & Governance section above:

The Open Metaverse Monetary Authority is responsible for controlling the inflation schedule of the network, and can make changes to token issuance and update the unlock rate of all locked RL1 and LL1 tokens on the network.
The Open Metaverse Arts Council is responsible for overseeing the economic health and curation of community rewards participants, helping to organize and allocate funding to specific creators, projects, or proposals on the network.

On LAMINA1, participating in staking will earn you locked Rewards L1 or RL1 tokens, which unlock back into liquid/usable L1 on the network at a rate of 0.1% per day or 10% per quarter. They are awarded based on the amount and length of time you opt to lock tokens on the network. Whenever you stake, you will also receive a set amount of STAKE and VOTE tokens, which enhance your rewards earning power, and allow you to weigh in directly on OMMA and OMAC elections, creator grants, builder initiatives, and other key platform decisions on the network.

When voting rolls out on LAMINA1 in Q1 2025, VOTE tokens will be airdropped to individuals in a direct 1:1 ratio to the number of STAKE tokens they hold on the network. As such, voting will only be available to community members who participate in staking, and their voting power will be commensurate with the staking power they have accumulated thus far on LAMINA1.

During the launch of staking, the LAMINA1 Rewards Contract was set to pay 40% of all tokens staked on the network to the staking contract, designed to distribute RL1 tokens back into the hands of users who lock up L1 on the network; 25% will go to the creators contract, which will be used to directly fund projects based on the community votes they receive via a new proposal/upvoting mechanism launching to the community alongside the OMAC election in Q2 2025; The remaining 35% will go to a dedicated ecosystem fund managed by the OMAC, the LAMINA1 Core Team, and the Open Metaverse Foundation to fund future mergers, partnerships, integrations, and acquisitions for the network.

The OMMA will have two seats going up for election in 2025 — one in Q1 and one in Q4. Shortly after the first community seat election, RL1 and LL1 unlock/issuance schedules will be reviewed and adjusted by the OMMA council, and can be re-adjusted by the board on a quarterly basis.

The OMAC will hold its first community-wide election in Q2 2025, after which additional details will be released about its council structure, upcoming community seat elections, and the direct proposal/funding process mentioned above.

Election Cycle Details

Moving forward, all upcoming elections on LAMINA1 will adhere to the following roll-out schedule:

1 week sign-up/nomination window: Where users can go to the Governance tab to nominate candidates for the upcoming election, browse nominees’ profiles, addresses, and campaign information.
2 week campaign window: Where nominees will be invited to fill out an official candidate entry form, host a dedicated campaign thread on the LAMINA1 Discord, and participate in a community-wide Town Hall AMA explaining why they think they should be elected.
1 week voting window: Where community members can spend their VOTE tokens to upvote their preferred candidates in the election, and view live election results as they roll in on-chain.
1 week results window: Where we’ll announce the official winner of the latest election, and community members can view key election data before the page resets and gets ready for the next election.

In the LAMINA1 Network’s first two elections, the minimum requirement for nominating a candidate will be set at 20 Million Staking Power. This threshold essentially limits the number of potential nominators to the top 50 staked individuals on the network. Anyone intending to run in an upcoming election who does not yet meet this threshold is encouraged to find someone on the network with enough staking power to nominate them, or to stake enough L1 prior to the beginning of the nomination window to nominate themselves.

Participants can either nominate themselves or someone else on the network for an upcoming election as long as they know their address/username and meet the above threshold. Note that VOTE tokens do not get spent when submitting a nomination on the network (only when submitting a vote in the election itself). Users can only nominate one candidate per election and cannot revoke a nomination once submitted.

Voting will be tallied via a Ranked Preference/Cumulative Voting system, where community members can dedicate any % of their VOTE tokens to as many eligible candidates as they want. As with nomination, users cannot revoke a vote once it has been submitted. Users can also abstain to save up VOTE tokens for other upcoming elections if they’d prefer.

In this upcoming system, nomination and vote token submissions will all happen on-chain. The tallying of votes themselves will likely happen off-chain — however, the LAMINA1 core team will do their best to show a proof of how votes were distributed in addition to the live results feed mentioned above.

For more information, see L1 Education Series Presents: Voting, Elections and Governance on LAMINA1

Participating in LAMINA1 Elections

In Q1 2025, a new Elections page will officially go live on the LAMINA1 Hub at https://lamina1.com.elections.

Here is where users will be able to participate in and check on the status of community-wide elections for the LAMINA1 Network’s two governing bodies –– the Open Metaverse Monetary Authority (OMMA) and the Open Metaverse Arts Council (OMAC), with a brief overview of available features below:

See your VOTE token balance
Nominate candidates
Explore candidate profiles, addresses, and campaign information
Spend your VOTE tokens to help elect eligible candidates
See the results and data from past L1 elections

As mentioned above, elections will roll out in phases on the LAMINA1 Hub, beginning with nomination and ending with results. New phases will unlock in the Election page UI according to the election schedule above.

To check whether or not there is an active election on LAMINA1 and what phase the election is in, you can visit https://lamina1.com/elections anytime.

Additionally, the Elections Help Drawer (which you can access by clicking “More Information” or the Question Mark button at the bottom of the page) will contain up-to-date information about the current election cycle and resources for orienting yourself with LAMINA1 governance.

Phase 01: Nomination

Every election on LAMINA1 will kick off with a 1-week nomination round. In this phase, LAMINA1 community members can access the Election tab to do the following:

Nominate themselves for the upcoming election
Nominate others for the upcoming election
Accept/Reject nominations from other users
Submit/edit candidate applications
Check out a list of active candidates for the upcoming election

As mentioned above, to nominate a candidate, an account must hold at least 20 million VOTE tokens on the network, which can be achieved by staking L1. Candidates do not need to meet the 20 million threshold to be nominated, however, and can run either as individuals, or as contracts (for example, if community members want to run as a collective or DAO).

To nominate yourself or another profile for an upcoming election, simply go to https://lamina1.com/elections and select “Nominate Candidate” at the top of the page. From there, enter the address or username of the person you’d like to nominate (making sure you have enough VOTE tokens first to do so), then click the “Nominate” button in the modal.

If you submit a nomination, note that nominations are final and cannot be revoked or changed. If you are nominated by someone else, you will need to accept/reject your nomination and fill out a candidate application form before you can move on to the next phases of the election (a pop up should appear alerting you if you have been nominated when you log into the LAMINA1 Hub). If you nominate yourself, you will skip this step and be automatically added to the list of Current Nominations on the Elections page.

From there, all nominees will need to fill out/edit their candidate applications before they are marked as an official candidate on their Profile. Technically you have to put SOMETHING in the form to accept someone else's nomination, but if you nominate yourself you do not technically need to fill out the form to accept the nomination (however, the LAMINA1 team will probably reject your candidacy at the end of the campaign phase if you fail to provide adequate information in your application).

Users who aren’t interested in submitting nominations or nominating others can use this page to check out the Profiles, addresses, and campaign applications of upcoming candidates prior to the campaign window by clicking on the Profile Picture, username, and View Application buttons within the nomination list.

In this phase, users can only nominate one candidate per election. Nomination is “free” and does not use up any L1, VOTE tokens or voting power on the network. If your nomination is rejected, you will be given back the power to nominate one candidate, as long as you meet the 20M VOTE token threshold.

Note that anyone nominated for the election will appear on the public Nomination page, as well as information on whether or not they accepted or rejected the nomination in this list, or if their acceptance of the nomination is still pending.

Phase 02: Campaigning

Once the one-week nomination window is up, the Campaign tab on the Election timeline will open up and allow LAMINA1 community members to:

See a final list of candidates who have accepted nominations for the current election
Access candidates’ Profiles, Applications, and Discord Campaign Channels where they’ll be invited to share more information about their platforms and policies
Update their candidate applications (Nominees only) through the end of the campaign window\

The campaign phase will last two weeks and will largely take place in the LAMINA1 Discord server, where a dedicated election section under ‘GENERAL’ will provide election updates and give candidates a place to share their campaign platforms and rally voters around their cause.

If you are having issues seeing this section, go to Channels & Roles > Browse Channels and select ‘Follow Category’ under OMMA Election for access.

In this phase, all candidates who accept a nomination and successfully fill out their application form will be:

Marked with a special banner on their LAMINA1 Hub Profile page identifying them as a candidate
Provided a special badge/role on the LAMINA1 Discord identifying them as a candidate
Invited to manage their own individual campaign channel nested under the elections section in the LAMINA1 Discord server –– which they can use to provide FAQs, share more information about their campaign platform, and communicate directly with L1 community members.\

Note that managing this campaign channel is optional (though highly recommended) for securing support within the LAMINA1 community during the campaign window. Candidates will not be able to delete messages or ban/remove users from their designated campaign channels — however, they will be given special privileges to create threads, embed links, attach files and other actions that can help out with campaigning if they choose to use them.

Additionally, one week into voting, the LAMINA1 core team will host a Town Hall for all nominated candidates to submit materials and/or step up on the official LAMINA1 AMA Stage to share more information about their campaign platforms and why they’re running. For access to this AMA, visit the Events section at the top of the LAMINA1 Discord server anytime during the campaign window.

If you are a nominee and want to update your application during the campaign window, you can do so by clicking on the Application icon next to your name in the official candidate list in the Campaign section of the Election flow, or by going back to the Nomination tab in the flow and selecting ‘Edit Application’ from there.

At the end of the campaign phase, all candidate application forms will be locked and can no longer be updated by those running for the election. At this point, the LAMINA1 team reserves the right to reject/remove any candidate from the running who does not properly fill out their application form, and/or any candidate that breaks LAMINA1 server or community rules in the lead-up to the election.

From there, the official voting window will commence.

Phase 03: Voting

Following the campaign phase, the next phase in the timeline on the Elections page will unlock — opening up a one-week voting window open to anyone who has staked and received VOTE tokens on the LAMINA1 network.

In this phase, users can:

Access the campaign info, threads, and Profiles of all active/accepted candidates
Spend their VOTE tokens to elect representatives
See the live count of votes for each candidate
See the total number of votes cast so far in the election

As noted above, voting will be tallied via a Ranked Preference/Cumulative Voting system, where community members can dedicate any % of their VOTE tokens to as many eligible candidates as they want.

To do so, simply click on top of the line next to your selected candidates’ name(s), and type in the amount of vote tokens you’d like to spend to help them get elected. Once you are satisfied, click the VOTE button next to your balance and confirm the amounts.

You can see your total VOTE token balance at the upper right corner of the page, or in your LAMINA1 Wallet at https://lamina1.com/wallet.

As with nomination, users cannot undo/revoke a vote once it has been submitted. Users can also abstain to save up VOTE tokens for other upcoming elections if they’d prefer not to participate in certain elections.

Once the one-week voting window is over, the candidate who receives the most votes in the election will be declared its winner, and will be announced/showcased on the Results tab of the Election page immediately following the closure of the voting period.

NOTE: VOTE tokens spent during this phase of the election will be burned and removed permanently from your wallet as soon as they are cast. Casting VOTE tokens in an election does NOT affect your staking power or rewards on the network — they simply reduce your voting power for upcoming elections.

To earn additional VOTE tokens following or in the lead-up to another election, you can stake unlocked or purchased L1 tokens anytime at https://lamina1.com/staking.

Phase 04: Results

Finally, once the one-week voting window is closed, the results tab will unlock to showcase the winner of the election, a ranked list of candidates and their Profiles/election applications, and reveal a graph/timeline of votes for each candidate who was active in the election.

You can also use this page to verify your votes via merkle proof in order to increase community-wide confidence around the results of the election.

To do so, simply click ‘Verify Votes’ at the top of the Results page when it unlocks at the end of every election. This will pull up a modal that 1) verifies the totals and signatures of the votes you submitted in that election, then 2) verifies those votes went to the right candidate(s).

For more information about how merkle trees/proofs work and how they are used by blockchains to verify transactions on a network while preserving user privacy and ensuring efficiency, visit: https://incubity.ambilio.com/a-complete-guide-to-blockchain-merkle-tree/

Every time a LAMINA1 community member verifies a vote, the ‘Votes Verified’ meter will go up on the left side of the page. As such, we encourage all LAMINA1 community members who vote in an election to do this final step in the days/weeks following an election.

\ Once the winning candidate is announced, they will be officially inducted into the Open Metaverse Monetary Authority or Open Metaverse Arts Council boards, where they will work alongside repressentatives from the Open Metaverse Foundation and the official LAMINA1 Core Team to make key governance decisions on the network.