What Is the Elastos DAO?
The DAO That Governs Elastos
The Elastos DAO is Elastos' decentralized autonomous organization. It is not a company, not a foundation, and not a committee in the traditional sense. It is a governance system encoded directly into the ELA main chain's consensus rules.
Every ELA block that is mined creates new ELA tokens. Thirty percent of those tokens flow into the Elastos DAO treasury. The Elastos DAO exists to decide how that treasury is spent: funding development, marketing, partnerships, infrastructure, and any initiative the community deems valuable.
How the Elastos DAO Fits Into Elastos
Bitcoin Mining Network
│
│ merged mining (AuxPoW)
│
ELA Main Chain
│
├── 35% → PoW Miners (block reward)
├── 35% → BPoS (validators & voters / pledged stake)
└── 30% → Elastos DAO Treasury ◄── THIS IS WHAT THE ELASTOS DAO GOVERNS
│
├── Proposals (community-submitted projects)
├── ELIPs (protocol upgrades)
├── Secretary General operations
└── Emergency measures
The Elastos DAO is not an overlay or a side system. It is part of the chain's consensus rules. The 30% treasury allocation is enforced at the coinbase transaction level in pow/service.go → AssignCoinbaseTxRewards(). No miner, no validator, and no developer can redirect those funds. They go to the CR Assets address (CRASSETSXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX2qDX5J), and only the governance process can move them out.
The Three Pillars
- Council: 12 elected members who review and vote on proposals
- Community: All ELA holders who vote for council members and can submit suggestions
- On-Chain Rules: Transaction types and validation logic in the ELA node that enforce governance decisions
From idea to funded work
Suggestions and portal workflow are only part of the story: formal proposals, council review, optional community review periods, milestone tracking, and withdrawals are all defined by on-chain rules and transaction types. For the full lifecycle (stages, time windows, and CRCProposal / review / tracking / withdraw flows), see How governance works. For proposal type codes, payloads, budget stages, and the on-chain state machine, see Proposal system.
Key Addresses
| Address | Purpose |
|---|---|
CRASSETSXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX2qDX5J | CR Assets: the treasury |
CREXPENSESXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX4UdT6b | CR Expenses: operational budget |
ELANULLXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXYvs3rr | Burn address (destroyed ELA) |
8ZZLWQUDSbjWUn8sEdxEFJsZiRFpzg53rJ | Legacy CRC consensus reward (pre-committee era; superseded by CR Assets) |
Timeline of Governance Activation
Governance features were activated at specific block heights on mainnet:
| Height | Event |
|---|---|
| 290,000 | VoteStartHeight: BPoS validator voting begins |
| 343,400 | CRCOnlyDPOSHeight: Elastos Council-only consensus starts |
| 402,680 | PublicDPOSHeight: Public consensus opens to elected validators |
| 537,670 | CRVotingStartHeight: Elastos Council candidate voting begins |
| 658,930 | CRCommitteeStartHeight: First Elastos Council seated |
| 751,400 | CRClaimDPOSNodeStartHeight: Elastos Council members can claim BPoS validator nodes |
| 932,530 | NoCRCDPOSNodeHeight: Elastos Council nodes no longer guaranteed validator slots |
| 1,405,000 | DPoSV2StartHeight: BPoS staking system activates |
Glossary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Arbiter | Software run by the 12 Elastos Council members as part of the full supernode stack; coordinates cross-chain operations between the main chain and sidechains (distinct from BPoS validators) |
| AuxPoW | Auxiliary Proof of Work: merged mining with Bitcoin |
| BPoS | Bonded Proof of Stake: the current consensus mechanism with time-locked staking |
| CID | Contract ID: derived from an Elastos Council candidate's public key |
| CR | Elastos DAO: the DAO governing Elastos |
| Elastos Council | Elastos DAO Council: the 12 elected council members |
| CVote | Council Vote: internal name for formal proposals in the web app |
| DID | Decentralized Identifier: self-sovereign identity on the EID chain |
| DPoS | Delegated Proof of Stake: the original consensus mechanism, now superseded by BPoS |
| ELIP | Elastos Improvement Proposal: protocol change proposals |
| ESC | Elastos Smart Chain: the EVM-compatible sidechain (chain ID 20) |
| EID | Elastos Identity Chain: the DID sidechain (chain ID 22) |
| Fixed64 | 64-bit fixed-point number representing ELA amounts in Sela |
| Sela | Smallest unit of ELA (1 ELA = 10^8 Sela, like satoshi to Bitcoin) |
| StakeTicket | NFT on ESC representing a main chain staking position |
| UTXO | Unspent Transaction Output: ELA's transaction model (like Bitcoin) |