Release crowdloan funds before lease expires?

Question

would it be possible to deregister a parachain and release tokens locked from crowdloan using governance in relay chain?

Answer 1

Governance in the relay chain can do this, yes.

There are Root level functions in both the Crowdloan pallet and the Parachain Slots pallet which would enable both the crowdloan to dissolve earlier than intended, and for a parachain to lose it slot.

These actions would need to be agreed upon by majority of token holders.

Answer 2

According to this PR:

A para becomes locked automatically when it is upgraded to a parachain or is part of a crowdloan.

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To unlock the parachain, either ROOT or the parachain itself must call the remove_lock function.

While the parachain is unlocked, the parachain registration owner has access to the following functions:

1. deregister - Which registers a parachain from the system.
2. swap - Which signals that a parachain is willing to trade leases with another parachain.
3. schedule_code_upgrade - Which allows a new runtime code to be scheduled at a future block, just like if the parachain were to schedule an upgrade.
4. set_current_head - Which allows new head data to be set for a parachain.

While a parachain is unlocked, the chain should be considered the same as if the Sudo module was installed on that chain. For many parachains, there will be a period where being unlocked will be helpful for onboarding, and at a future point, the chain can be locked. Until then, the lock status of a chain should be a consideration for any users participating in crowdloans, using that chain, or even other parachains seeking to interact with that chain.