Democracy rework in Substrate

Question

Am I correct in understanding that the governance portion of Polkadot/Kusama/Substrate is undergoing a small revolution in terms of code?

Based on what I've seen/heard:

1. Democracy is undergoing a re-development
2. Council won't be part of this going forward

I must admit that I'm not a great reader of Rust code, so pointing to the relevant MRs would be great, however a birds eye view of the envisioned changes would be absolutely better and the rationale behind them even better than that.

(It is actually great to see an integral part of what makes the chains different also evolve, hence the questions)

Answer 1

The overall tracking issue for "new governance" is substrate#10252. New pallets for governance primitives have been introduced in:

• https://github.com/paritytech/substrate/pull/10195
• https://github.com/paritytech/substrate/pull/10159
• https://github.com/paritytech/substrate/pull/10356

The new pallets are designed not to need governance bodies such as the council.

I'm working on a proposal to upgrade Kusama to use these new pallets in polkadot#5205, though this PR does not remove the old governance pallets; that, if approved, would come later.

There will shortly be an explainer article on the work and rationale behind it.