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Contest Delegation

Description

Delegation by a Registered User to a Representative for a contest.

This delegation allows votes cast by the Representative to use the voting power of the delegating User, in addition to their own personal voting power and that of all other Users who delegate to the same Representative.

Delegation is for a specific Contest. Multiple Delegations must be published if there are multiple Contests within a Brand/Campaign or Category.

This is because different Contests may have different rules. And not all Representatives will choose to nominate for every Contest.

A Representative MAY NOT delegate to a different Representative for any contest they have nominated for. They MAY however nominate a Representative in any contest they have not nominated for.

Contest DelegationContest Delegation Document    RelationshipsRep Nomination                         Rep Nomination                    Contest Parameters                         Contest Parameters                    Contest Delegation                         Contest Delegation                    type764f17fb-cc50-4979-b14a-b213dbac5994idDocument IdverDocument VerrefRep NominationrevocationsVersion RevocationsparametersContest ParametersContest Delegation:e->Rep Nomination:w1*Contest Delegation:e->Contest Parameters:w1*

Validation

  • The parameters metadata MUST point to the same Contest as the Nomination of the Representative.
  • The 'ref' metadata field MUST point to a valid 'Representative Nomination'.
  • The payload MUST be nil.

A Representative MUST Delegate to their latest Nomination for a Category, otherwise their Nomination is invalid.

This is because Delegation points to a SPECIFIC Nomination, and it MUST be the latest for the Representative on the Contest. As the Nomination contains information that the User relies on when choosing to delegate, changing that information could have a real and detrimental result in the Delegation choice. Therefore, for a Delegation to be valid, it MUST point to the latest Nomination for a Representative.

Publishing a newer version of the Nomination Document to a specific contest will invalidate all pre-existing delegations, and all voters will need to re-delegate to affirm the delegates latest nomination.

A Voter may withdraw their Delegation by revoking all delegation documents. revocations must be set to true to withdraw a delegation, OR a later contest delegation may change the delegated representative without first revoking the prior delegation, as only the latest delegation is considered.

Business Logic

Front End

  • Allows a voter to select a Representative from a list of eligible candidates for a category.
  • The voter signs this document to confirm their delegation choice.

Back End

  • Verifies that the voter and Representative are valid and registered for the category.
  • Records the delegation of voting power from the voter to the Representative.

COSE Header Parameters

No Headers are defined for this document.

Metadata

type

Parameter Value
Required yes
Format Document Type
Type 764f17fb-cc50-4979-b14a-b213dbac5994

The document TYPE.

type Validation

MUST be a known document type.

id

Parameter Value
Required yes
Format Document Id

Document ID, created the first time the document is created. This must be a properly created UUIDv7 which contains the timestamp of when the document was created.

id Validation

IF ver does not == id then a document with id and ver being equal MUST exist.

ver

Parameter Value
Required yes
Format Document Ver

The unique version of the document. The first version of the document must set ver == id

ver represents new versions of the same document as it changes over time.

ver Validation

The document version must always be >= the document ID.

ref

Parameter Value
Required yes
Format Document Reference
Valid References Rep Nomination

Reference to a Linked Document or Documents. This is the primary hierarchical reference to a related document.

If a reference is defined as required, there must be at least 1 reference specified. Some documents allow multiple references, and they are documented as required.

The document reference serves two purposes:

  1. It ensures that the document referenced by an ID/Version is not substituted. In other words, that the document intended to be referenced, is actually referenced.
  2. It Allows the document to be unambiguously located in decentralized storage systems.

There can be any number of Document Locations in any reference. The currently defined locations are:

The document location does not guarantee that the document is actually stored. It only defines that if it were stored, this is the identifier that is required to retrieve it. Therefore it is required that Document References are unique and reproducible, given a documents contents.

ref Validation

The following must be true for a valid reference:

  • The Referenced Document MUST Exist
  • Every value in the document_locator must consistently reference the exact same document.
  • The document_id and document_ver MUST match the values in the referenced document.

revocations

Parameter Value
Required optional
Format Version Revocations

A document may include a list of any prior versions which are considered to be revoked. Only the revocation list in the latest version of the document applies. Revoked documents are flagged as no longer valid, and should not be displayed. As a special case, if the revocations are set to true then all versions of the document are revoked, including the latest document.

In this case, when the latest document is revoked, the payload may be empty. Any older document that has revocations set to true is always to be filtered and its payload is to be assumed to be invalid.

This allows for an entire document and any/all published versions to be revoked. A new version of the document that is published after this, may reinstate prior document versions, by not listing them as revoked. However, any document where revocations was set true can never be reinstated.

revocations Validation

If the field is true the payload may be absent or invalid. Such documents may never be submitted.

parameters

Parameter Value
Required yes
Format Document Reference
Valid References Contest Parameters
Linked Reference Metadata ref

A reference to the Parameters Document this document lies under.

parameters Validation

In addition to the validation performed for Document Reference type fields:

  • Any linked referenced document that includes a parameters metadata must match the parameters of the referencing document, or a parent of those parameters.

For example, a linked reference to Contest Parameters is transitively a reference to the Parameters document it references, and each parameters document they reference until the Brand parameters document is reached.

The use case here is for Templates. The profile template, or proposal templates could be defined at any of these levels, and as long as they all refer to the same chain of parameters in the hierarchy they are all valid.

  • The Document referenced by ref
  • MUST contain parameters metadata; AND
  • MUST match the referencing documents parameters value.

Payload

There is no payload.

This document has no payload. It must be encoded as a CBOR null (0xf6).

Signers

The following User roles may sign documents of this type:

  • Registered

New versions of this document may be published by:

  • author
Copyright © 2024-2025 IOG Singapore, All Rights Reserved
License This document is licensed under CC-BY-4.0
Created 2024-12-27
Modified 2025-08-19
Authors Alex Pozhylenkov alex.pozhylenkov@iohk.io
Nathan Bogale nathan.bogale@iohk.io
Neil McAuliffe neil.mcauliffe@iohk.io
Steven Johnson steven.johnson@iohk.io

Changelog

0.01 (2025-06-19)

  • First Published Version