# Governor technical design

| Specification | Implementation    | Last revision |
|:-----------:|:--------------:|:-------------:|
| WIP         |  WIP           | v0.1 2022-02-03 |

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**Specification ownership:** [Jack Hodgkinson]

**Authors**:

-   [Jack Hodgkinson]
-   [Emily Martins]

**Implementation ownership:** _unassigned_

[Jack Hodgkinson]: https://github.com/jhodgdev

[Emily Martins]: https://github.com/emiflake

**Current Status**:

First draft.

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The governor is a simpler component than others in the system but still provides an invaluable role.

### Governor responsibilities

The governor acts as the central authority through which all governance proceeds indirectly. You can think of it as the single point for issuing rights to actors.

#### Minting of authority tokens

The main responsibility for the governor is allowing the minting of [authority tokens](authority-tokens.md), and ensuring they are sent to [effects](effects.md). The governor needs to check that this happens as a result of a proposal finishing its voting phase.

#### Guarding creation of proposals

The governor is also responsible for allowing the _creation_ of proposals. There are a few rules for the creation of a proposal, and the governor ensures these rules are followed.

In order for proposals to have sequential IDs, the governor keeps track of a counter which it uses to ensure an ID has not been taken yet. The governor also needs to keep global settings that influence how proposals behave: thresholds for state transitions, how long each phase lasts, etc.

The governor, in-line with other Agora components, allows its state to be mutated, subject to the burning of an authority token.