Governance & Stewardship
No single entity holds central bank-like power over the VOW ecosystem. Ownership was deliberately relinquished so that governance could rest with the community.
Decentralisation and Governance
There should exist no single entity with central bank-like powers over the token ecosystem. The nature of Ethereum smart contracts means the public address of the user making the deployment is the ‘contract owner’.
This means that Vow Limited, as the entity which deployed the initial contracts, needed to relinquish ownership control of the network in order to be properly decentralized. This happened on the 5th of August 2023. The VOW Ecosystem Foundation now holds multi-sig keys over the VOW token, and governance is distributed via a snapshot voting system. Over 1,800 people have registered to vote via the Snapshot protocol.
Governance Proposals
Updates to the Vow protocol or changes to network parameters should not be decided by any central entity, but rather by a Vow community vote. The mechanics are as follows:
Vow governance has been deployed using Snapshot.org. At this time over 1,800 people have registered to vote.
The $VOW contract was updated at VowUP ’23. It is now decentralized.
Relevant contracts here are specifically anything with the ‘onlyOwner’ permission structure for methods. The VOW Ecosystem Foundation will now be able to authorise all ‘onlyOwner’ permissions, but such permissions can only be amended by community vote.
Voting Mechanics
Vow community members are able to vote for changes in contract code by linking their wallet and clicking Join on Snapshot.org. The proposal structure for each vote is set by the VOW Ecosystem Foundation prior to each vote, depending on the nature of the vote. The current voting structure is described below.
On your desktop
On your phone
You can also join the voting community through a Web3 browser such as MetaMask on your phone.
Votes are calculated as 1 VOW = 1 Vote. If you hold VOW in multiple wallets you can link them all. When a community vote is required — for example, a new MVD wishes to join the network — the code to run the specific procedure can be submitted to the contract and the vote is then opened for community members to engage with.
The nature of carrying out decentralised voting is complex, and certain procedures must be followed to ensure votes remain secret until the vote concludes. Snapshot calls this “Shuttered” voting. Because of this, each new proposal follows a three-phase timeline:
- Voting delay — 7 days for everyone to consider the proposal.
- Voting phase — 7 days for the community to cast votes.
- Reveal phase — votes are decrypted and the result is finalised.
A quorum of 10,000,000 VOW is presently required to validate a vote.
Previous Votes
There has only been one previous vote conducted on the VOW token. This followed the August 2024 attack on VOW. The full proposal can be viewed on Snapshot: View proposal on Snapshot.
Dec ’24 / Jan ’25 Community Update
This information mainly concerns Vowclaim.com.
As per the decisive community vote, it is now confirmed that 344,352,915 VOW were minted on 8.11.24 and deposited to the VOW Ecosystem Foundation MSW address in this transaction.
The agreed vUSD to VOW swap contract is now live, buying as much vUSD as possible at the agreed swap rate of 0.29 vUSD per VOW, and will stay live until 31st March 2025. You can find it here: vowclaim.com.
The burn rate of vUSD was returned to the standard 1.6% on Ethereum.
All Token Manager and Order Book minting rights on the following deprecated vCurrency contract addresses were removed:
- vUSDManager — 0x184497031808F2b6A2126886C712CC41f146E5dC
- vEURManager — 0xA3Ce8A6FcBC9DC073284e0DCf03eB3Bd3074b052
- vGBPManager — 0xDd5717E7F95a3b78166f8891895F887B35C16Fa4
- vDKKManager — 0x05E8562F4EaAd0e3BC73C4e6ee3f1a1F4CA888eb
- vINRManager — 0x2BC24c768C19051daB1cb1959A7ed151d59F2bdC
- vZARManager — 0x27dB17E41f646b91d0B2D6651058De24653331B6
- vZWLManager — 0x07618f2214E5Cfa3FabA9Dd0459dBe805327b3BA
- vUSDOrderbook — 0x071d1bcA10aF031f2f32B610B05581fa60A1caf1
- vEUROrderbook — 0x03Fd73Aa892C1a81fFF973EfE7fBf6Cc338D734C
- vGBPOrderbook — 0x5369e76EaDf5044fE2250F093B7C42AeE09c32E6
- vDKKOrderbook — 0xF62FDf31811FAECAF828E86e534b70335a706D76
- vINROrderbook — 0x3348364081C58FE4B2f10420d7385BC171379d18
- vZAROrderbook — 0x96b686f9e6CE837F8dfB541969F14AD553863684
- vZWLOrderbook — 0xDC6E053851FbfA37ABAe89e262EA6Ac88BC89607
Following this, all owner permissions were relinquished for the old vCurrency contracts below. Owner set to: 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD
- vUSD — 0x0fc6C0465C9739d4a42dAca22eB3b2CB0Eb9937A
- vEUR — 0xbf686dA68323d0425f2B0D7e33d3fA11B1239132
- vGBP — 0x6364d4f283601d4Beb170DcDF0080b84E056389A
- vDKK — 0xBB337937b31eF383d6782BFA9E88A131B7Fcf531
- vINR — 0x36eFD50912E8BBDCfdDB71344cA1C28B53347BC0
- vZAR — 0x0E7F502E5e4FBa9C65c59989B68D31E5F5093F50
- vZWL — 0x663cBf0F8ac632ff6eEa2A249e2f6e147e65a04B
The intention of the community vote was to remove additional vUSD from the market and allow anyone to swap vUSD to VOW at a consistent rate for a given period of time. If you hold vUSD, we encourage you to swap your tokens at the pool at the market rate, or via the vowclaim.com contract at the rate of 0.29 VOW per vUSD sent in. This rate will be maintained until the end of March 2025. If the contract remains available after that date — from the 1st of April 2025 onwards — the swap rate may be re-adjusted upwards or downwards depending on open market conditions. If vUSD supply is reduced, Uniswap and PancakeSwap Liquidity tokens are also expected to find a new balance.
New Tokens
VOW DOLLAR USA is now available on Ethereum via Uniswap.
- VOW DOLLAR USA (v$) — 0xba7fe208e0167e4047a996e1efea830515f433f8
- Uniswap USDC / VOW DOLLAR USA pair — 0xb9FF2FFF0a78D0087E9FDb12325dc30655Ac5A1A
On Binance Chain, VOW DOLLARS USA are bridged to VOW DOLLAR ETH. VOW DOLLAR ETH is not used on BSC — instead, it serves as the maximum supply of the v$ BSC token, and is the token used on Ethereum.
- VOW DOLLAR ETH — 0x6c559D849F70477723dC94405018a436fa9FdC12
- v$ BSC token — 0x9C23942Ca2C35e06d1d20747F33705983A18d2AB
- PancakeSwap VOW / v$ BSC pair — 0xc51c99af9d5c31d0c37d028500b2b344debdf188
Voucher Ledger
The VOW contract has been updated to allow interaction with the Voucher Ledger — a layer-two solution which allows the buying of Voucher Currencies using Vow Currency, and using Voucher Currency to discount Vow Currency by up to 100%. Voucher Ledger contracts have been audited by Hacken. Although the use case of Voucher Ledger is by its nature centralised (someone needs to chase real-world businesses that do not keep their “vow”), decentralisation remains effective, as all major changes exist under the power of community governance.
vCurrency (New) Tokens
The following regions have been set up with corresponding contracts:
- Vow Dollar USA (v$) — 0xba7fe208e0167e4047a996e1efea830515f433f8
- Vow Pound (v£) — 0x72bf018df20fbacf542f5ec159c6a7f0d7850967
- Vow Euro (v€) — 0x448fa53be5b9f792d6f799428df8d4c89eb9f04a
- Vow Dollar AUS (v$) — 0x547649976443cd3b6ad8c9781f17f8ad6f061f2f
- Vow Rupee (v₹) — 0x047128bf54f643403864cb37a5df134e3ecf1bf4
- Vow Kroner (vkr) — 0x40a07abd0da20d9ec859c564727c10ce5cb7600e
- Vow Rand (vR) — 0xc669b1920bb901292c11020d27d1bf7168e49eac
Useful URLs
- Block explorer — explorer.voucherledger.com
- Lifting Dapp — lift.voucherledger.com
Responding to the August 13th Attack on the VOW Ecosystem
On August 13, 2024, an attacker exploited the vUSD Rate Setter function in the v$ contract, creating approximately 2.4 billion vUSD in a planned and coordinated attack. The attacker sold the exploited vUSD into the vUSD/VOW liquidity pool, causing the price of VOW to drop sharply and escaping with approximately $1.3 million worth of ETH.
This attack left a much larger issue — a highly inflated vUSD supply in the market. This devaluation indirectly hurt liquidity providers by reducing the value of their PC LP tokens.
Many supporters and opportunistic buyers purchased large amounts of VOW and vUSD at drastically reduced prices, further complicating the situation. The result was a “big mess.”
A hard fork was considered but rejected by the VOW Ecosystem Foundation. Forking would have been unfair to those who purchased VOW and vUSD after the attack, and would have required rebranding — undermining the project’s spirit and community values.
The VOW Ecosystem Foundation is determined to resolve this issue, proving VOW’s resilience. Facing this challenge head-on reflects a long-term belief in the project’s potential, despite some community members choosing to leave and ongoing rumours.
The VOW Ecosystem Foundation’s Actions to Restore Stability
To address the problem, the VOW Ecosystem Foundation initially bought back approximately 1 billion vUSD from the pools. However, progress was limited because each purchase triggered sales by individuals or bots holding vUSD in private wallets. The VOW Ecosystem Foundation urged holders to sell their vUSD back to the pools, but many refused. Despite significant buybacks, the situation could not be fully resolved this way.
The main challenge is that the drop in VOW and vUSD value reduced the worth of PC LP and Uni v2 liquidity tokens. Since these tokens were staked in the TLN Protocol, the VOW and vUSD within them can only be recovered from the pools, not from individual holders.
To fix this, the community voted to mint more VOW (up to its original supply). The newly minted VOW would be used to buy back vUSD through swap contracts at a fixed rate, alongside continued direct purchases from pools.
The VOW minting occurred as voted for, and many holders have been swapping their vUSD daily. Those who participated in the swap have done an incredible service to the community, and the VOW Ecosystem Foundation thanks them. However, a significant number of holders have yet to join.