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.

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.

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, 788ff4c6-d65a-451f-bb33-575fe056b411

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:

• cid : A CBOR Encoded IPLD Content Identifier ( AKA an IPFS CID ).
• Others may be added when further storage mechanisms are defined.

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.

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

A minimal payload indicating the intended status of the delegation. 'active' creates or affirms the delegation. 'revoked' withdraws the delegation.

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

Copyright	2024-2025 IOG Singapore, All Rights Reserved
License	This document is licensed under CC-BY-4.0
Created	2024-12-27
Modified	2025-06-19
Authors	Alex Pozhylenkov alex.pozhylenkov@iohk.io
	Neil McAuliffe neil.mcauliffe@iohk.io
	Steven Johnson steven.johnson@iohk.io

Changelog

0.01 (2025-06-19)

• First Published Version