Governor Framework

Tally is a frontend for Governor contracts.

Governor is the DAO standard. The Governor contract is battle-tested, audited and trusted by DAOs like ENS, Uniswap and Compound. Supported by OpenZeppelin, it’s modular, composable and extensible.

What is Governor?

DAOs typically use DAO governance frameworks to empower token or NFT holders with direct control over treasuries, protocols, or smart contracts. Tally supports OpenZeppelin Governor, the most popular DAO governance framework.

The Governor contract pattern, a widely adopted open-source smart contract, enables token holders to exercise control over a DAO through fully onchain voting. Token holders use Governor to make, pass and execute proposals.

These proposals can encompass a wide range of onchain actions, including disbursing funds from a treasury, adjusting parameters of a DeFi protocol, altering permissions of sub-DAOs, minting NFTs, or even modifying the rules of the Governor contract itself.

What is a token contract?

A token contract is a prerequisite for a Governor contract. It supplies the Governor with the voting power associated with different addresses. Tally supports Governors that operate with both token contracts (ERC20) and NFT contracts (ERC721).

Why do DAOs use Governor?

The main benefit of the Governor pattern is that the DAO's decision-making happens completely onchain. This means that token voters don’t need to trust a third party to count their votes or to execute their transactions. Instead, the smart contract autonomously manages these processes on the blockchain, ensuring a trustless and transparent governance system.

Is Governor customizable?

Yes! Tally's application requires a specific interface (Governor), but it offers considerable flexibility within that framework. OpenZeppelin's version has several different modules, and their deployment wizard allows for full customization of the code. If you make changes to the contract, you can test them on Tally by deploying to a testnet.

To learn more about how to deploy a Governor, head over to Deploying Governor DAOs.

If you're curious about which modifications will be compatible with Tally, please refer toTally Contract Compatibility.