Creating a Referendum on Polkadot.JS

How to start a Referendum? (using Polkadot-JS UI)

Submitting a Preimage​

The act of making a proposal is split from submitting the preimage for the proposal since the storage cost of submitting a large preimage could be pretty expensive. Allowing for the preimage submission to come as a separate transaction means that another account could submit the preimage for you and pay the fee for it. The example below demonstrates the creation of a preimage on Kusama (the same procedure applies when OpenGov is live on Polkadot). To propose that a remark "Expect Chaos!" be added to the blockchain, the preimage hash would be 0x8ac3f722caf7677254e25ca4ad77d533ca893c7d2ad4009e258d749f2004ef94.

After the preimage is submitted successfuly on-chain, Polkadot-JS UI lists it under the tab of Governance > Preimages.

Submitting a Proposal​

Submitting a proposal requires you to bond some tokens. On Polkadot-JS UI, you can navigate to the Governance -> Referenda to make a new proposal. In order to submit a proposal, you will need to submit what's called the preimage hash. The preimage hash is simply the hash of the proposal to be enacted. The easiest way to get the preimage hash is by clicking on the "Submit preimage" button as shown in the previous section.

The proposal will be registered from the account selected and the balance lock will be applied to it. An appropriate origin must be chosen, as each origin has different privileges, and acceptance criteria. After entering the hash of the preimage for the proposal, the preimage length field is automatically populated. The enactment delay can be specified either as a block number, or as a specific number of blocks after the referendum is approved. The deposit for this proposal will be locked for the referendum duration.