Fast-Track Proposal

A fast-track proposal drastically reduces the total voting period, often from several days or weeks to a matter of hours or a single day. This is achieved by bypassing the typical temperature check and consensus check phases, moving directly to an on-chain vote with a shortened voting window. For example, a standard 7-day governance process might be compressed to a 24-hour fast-track execution.

The scope of a fast-track proposal is strictly limited to non-controversial, urgent matters. Common use cases include:

• Emergency security patches for discovered vulnerabilities.
• Parameter adjustments (e.g., collateral factors, liquidation thresholds) in response to market volatility.
• Time-sensitive treasury actions, such as deploying funds for a strategic opportunity. Protocols explicitly exclude major upgrades or tokenomics changes from the fast-track process.

To compensate for the reduced deliberation time, fast-track proposals require significantly higher approval thresholds to pass. While a standard proposal might pass with a simple majority (e.g., >50% of votes), a fast-track may require a supermajority (e.g., 66% or 80%) and/or a higher minimum quorum of participating voting power. This ensures broad consensus for accelerated actions.

The ability to create a fast-track proposal is usually permissioned and restricted to a trusted entity, often called a Guardian or a Security Council, which holds a multisig wallet. This prevents spam and ensures only genuinely urgent, vetted proposals enter the fast-track queue. The multisig members must reach their own internal consensus before submitting the proposal to the broader community.

This table highlights the core differences between standard and fast-track governance flows:

Facilitates swift implementation of non-controversial technical upgrades, such as routine library updates, minor bug fixes, or oracle feed additions. These are changes with clear community consensus and minimal dispute over their necessity or implementation.

• Example: Compound's governance using a fast-track to update a price oracle for a new asset.
• Purpose: Ensure protocol stability and data accuracy with minimal downtime.

Executes investment or deployment strategies that have already received broad community approval in a prior, comprehensive governance vote. The fast-track vote merely triggers the execution of the pre-defined action.

• Example: A DAO treasury using a fast-track to deploy a pre-approved amount of funds into a specific yield-generating vault.
• Purpose: Capitalize on time-sensitive opportunities without redundant debate.

Used to amend the governance framework parameters, such as adjusting the fast-track threshold, voting delay, or quorum requirements for future proposals. This meta-governance function allows the system to adapt its own rules efficiently.

• Example: Increasing the proposal threshold for standard proposals via a fast-track to reduce spam.
• Purpose: Continuously optimize the governance process based on experience.

The core technical enabler for speed is often the bypass or reduction of the standard timelock delay. While standard proposals have a mandatory waiting period (e.g., 2 days) after passing a vote, fast-track proposals may execute immediately or after a significantly shorter delay.

• Critical Trade-off: This reduces the window for community reaction to a malicious proposal, requiring higher trust in delegates or a higher voting threshold.
• Security: Often paired with a multisig guardian or elevated quorum requirement.

Fast-track mechanisms concentrate proposal power in a small group (e.g., a multisig council, core developers). This creates a single point of failure and contradicts the decentralized ethos of many protocols. Key risks include:

• Council Capture: A malicious actor compromising the fast-track authority.
• Voter Apathy: Dilution of community oversight, leading to rubber-stamp approvals.
• Emergency Abuse: Using 'emergency' justification for non-critical changes.

The primary security risk is the drastic reduction in the time-lock and community audit period. Standard proposals allow days or weeks for whitehat hackers and analysts to scrutinize code. A fast-tracked proposal may only have hours, increasing the chance a critical bug or malicious logic goes unnoticed before execution. This is a direct trade-off between speed and security diligence.

Fast-tracking can be exploited as part of a governance attack. An attacker who gains temporary control of the fast-track authority (e.g., via a token flash loan to vote in a new council) can immediately pass malicious proposals without the standard defensive delay. This makes the protocol's treasury and upgrade keys highly vulnerable during the attack window.

Protocols implement safeguards to balance speed and safety:

• Multisig Requirements: Mandating a high-threshold multisig (e.g., 5-of-7) for fast-track approval.
• Scope Limitation: Restricting fast-track use to specific, pre-audited module upgrades or parameter tweaks, not arbitrary code.
• Execution Delay: Implementing a short, mandatory time-lock (e.g., 24-48 hours) even for fast-tracked proposals as a final safety net.
• Transparency: Requiring all fast-track proposals and their rationale to be publicly documented on-chain and in forums.

A time-lock is a mandatory delay between a governance vote passing and the proposal's on-chain execution. It is the primary defense against fast-track risks, providing a final window for users to exit or for the community to organize a counter-proposal if a malicious action is detected. Fast-track mechanisms often shorten or bypass this critical safety feature.

Compound's governance includes a 2-day timelock on all executed proposals. While not a traditional 'fast-track', proposals flagged as emergency can be executed by a Guardian address after a community vote. This role demonstrates the tension: the Guardian can act quickly in a crisis but represents a centralized privilege that must be managed with extreme caution to prevent abuse.

Uniswap governance has provisions for Emergency Proposals, which utilize a shorter voting period and timelock. Managed by the Uniswap Grants Program multisig or other designated entities, this process can fast-track critical changes to the protocol's Factory or Router contracts in response to security vulnerabilities or critical failures.

• Trigger: Reserved for severe threats to protocol integrity.
• Authority: Executed by a designated Emergency Guardian multisig.

The Optimism Collective's Citizen House includes a Fast Track voting process for grant funding proposals. This mechanism allows smaller, time-sensitive funding requests (under a threshold) to move through governance with a simplified, accelerated voting round, reducing bureaucracy for community-driven initiatives and experiments.

• Scope: Primarily for RetroPGF (Retroactive Public Goods Funding) and grant distribution.
• Benefit: Accelerates community-led development and deployment.

Fast-track mechanisms typically follow key design patterns:

• Privileged Roles: A multisig or guardian address with execution authority.
• Pre-approved Scope: Limits changes to specific contract functions or parameter ranges.
• Reduced Delays: Shortens or eliminates voting and timelock periods.

Key Risks include centralization of power and the potential for rushed decisions. Robust time-lock and cancellation features on standard proposals are essential counterbalances.

An Emergency Proposal is a governance action that bypasses the standard voting timeline to address critical, time-sensitive issues such as security vulnerabilities or protocol insolvency. It typically requires a higher approval threshold and may be executable only by a designated multisig or the core team.

• Key Difference: While a fast-track proposal shortens the voting period, an emergency proposal often circumposes the entire community vote for immediate execution under predefined conditions.
• Example: Activating a circuit breaker or pausing a lending protocol after a major exploit.

The Voting Period is the fixed duration during which token holders can cast votes on an active proposal. A fast-track proposal explicitly reduces this period.

• Standard vs. Fast-Track: A typical DAO might have a 5-7 day voting period, while a fast-track version could compress it to 24-48 hours.
• Mechanics: The period is defined in blocks (Ethereum) or epochs (Solana), and votes are tallied at its conclusion. Shortening it increases governance velocity but reduces deliberation time.

Quorum is the minimum percentage of the total governance token supply that must participate in a vote for the result to be valid. Fast-track proposals often have a modified quorum requirement.

• Purpose: Prevents a small, unrepresentative group from passing proposals.
• Fast-Track Impact: To compensate for the shorter voting window, the required quorum for a fast-track proposal may be lowered, or it may use a snapshot of an earlier, similar vote to meet the threshold.

A Temperature Check is an informal, off-chain signal vote (often using Snapshot) used to gauge community sentiment before submitting a formal, on-chain proposal. It is a prerequisite for many fast-track processes.

• Workflow: A successful temperature check with high participation and approval can justify using the fast-track mechanism for the subsequent formal vote.
• Function: It filters out clearly unpopular ideas and builds consensus, ensuring that fast-track resources are used efficiently.

Multisig Execution refers to the requirement for a transaction to be approved by multiple private keys before it is executed on-chain. In some governance models, approved fast-track proposals are forwarded to a multisig for final execution.

• Role in Fast-Track: The multisig (e.g., a 4-of-7 council) acts as a final, rapid execution layer, implementing the will of the vote without the delay of a time-lock.
• Security Trade-off: This introduces a degree of centralization but enables swift action in response to passed proposals.

Voting Power determines the weight of a participant's vote in a governance proposal, typically derived from the amount of governance tokens held or delegated. Fast-track proposals can alter how this power is calculated or utilized.

• Mechanisms: Includes token-weighted voting, quadratic voting, or vote delegation.
• Fast-Track Consideration: Some systems restrict fast-track proposal submission or approval to delegates or entities with voting power above a certain threshold, ensuring proposers have significant skin in the game.