Institutional governance for on-chain organisations.

The Publius Project is the organisation dedicated to the development, maintenance, and evolution of the Powers protocol. We build trustless, role-based governance infrastructure that allows decentralized organisations to move beyond simple token-voting and into complex, institutional frameworks.

Powers v0.4 (and beyond) provides the architecture for the Rule of Mandate. Unlike traditional governance systems that rely on monolithic voting, Powers allows a single decision to travel along multiple stakeholders through modular, asynchronous, and trustless governance paths.

• Rule of Mandate: Actions are executed through role-restricted contracts called mandates. These mandates define exactly who can do what, and under what conditions.
• Separation of Powers: Distribute decision-making across roles to create checks and balances—similar to legislative, judicial, and executive branches.
• Minimalistic Core: The protocol is designed to be lean. Any complexity (timelocks, weighted votes, staking) is integrated through modular mandates rather than bloated core logic.
• Accountability: Every action is logged and can be challenged, ensuring that devolved responsibilities remain accountable to the community treasury.

The Publius Project ecosystem is split into three primary pillars:

The core smart contracts. Includes the Powers.sol protocol, Mandate.sol base classes, and various implementations:

• Executive Mandates: For calling external functions and managing treasury assets.
• Electoral Mandates: For assigning and managing roles within the organisation.
• Async Mandates: For multi-step, conditional governance paths.

A Next.js application designed to interact with Powers organisations. It provides interfaces for:

• Deploying new organisations and constitutions.
• Interacting with specific mandates.
• Proposing and voting on on-chain actions.

Comprehensive guides for developers and architects:

• Powers Protocol Guide
• Mandate Implementation Guide
• Deploying your Organisation

Powers enables governance patterns that solve common on-chain challenges:

• Devolved Responsibilities: Create accountable working groups or grants councils that manage specific domains without risking the entire treasury.
• Institutional Upgrades: Gradually transition existing organisations to role-based governance without abandoning established structures.
• Complex Checks & Balances: Require a proposal from one role, a veto window for another, and execution by a third.

We welcome contributions to the "Rule of Mandate." Whether you are a security researcher, a frontend developer, or a governance architect, we value your input.

1. Explore the issues in our main repository.
2. Review our Solidity implementations.
3. Join the conversation regarding on-chain institutional design.

All Publius Project code is distributed under the MIT License.

Note: The current protocol (v0.4) is a proof-of-concept. While it has undergone internal review and community testing, it should be used with caution in production environments.

The Powers protocol represents a significant evolution in role-based governance, building upon the foundational work of OpenZeppelin, the Hats Protocol, and the generous support of contributors from the Arbitrum DAO and RnDAO communities.

Seven Cedars | Github | Documentation