Amendments

We believe a constitution that cannot change is a constitution that will eventually break. The BR1J Constitution is designed to evolve. Unlike static governance documents, it includes explicit amendment mechanisms that allow the Citrate community to update foundational rules as the protocol matures and as lessons are learned from operation. This page details the amendment process, requirements, and safeguards.

Amendment Process Overview

Constitutional amendments follow a heightened version of the standard proposal lifecycle with additional requirements at each stage:

1. Discussion (14 days minimum, vs. 7 for standard proposals)
2. Formal Submission (5,000 SALT deposit, vs. 1,000 for standard)
3. Multi-body Review (14 days, vs. 7 for standard)
4. Voting (14 days, vs. 7 for standard)
5. Cooling Period (7 days after passing, before execution)
6. Ratification (multi-sig confirmation)
7. Observation (90 days post-mortem period)

The entire process takes a minimum of 49 days from initial discussion to execution. This deliberate pace ensures that constitutional changes are not made impulsively.

Supermajority Requirements

Constitutional amendments require significantly higher participation and approval than standard proposals:

Requirement	Standard Proposal	Constitutional Amendment
Quorum	10-20% of staked SALT	33% of staked SALT
Approval threshold	50-67%	75% supermajority
Deposit	1,000 SALT	5,000 SALT
Discussion period	7 days	14 days minimum
Voting period	7 days	14 days
Review period	7 days	14 days

Additionally, constitutional amendments require majority approval from at least two of the three governance councils (Technical Council, Council of Oracles, Ethics Board). This prevents any single council from blocking or forcing constitutional change unilaterally.

# Submit a constitutional amendment proposal
citrate-cli governance propose --title "Amendment: Reduce validator minimum stake to 16,000 SALT" --body-file amendment-proposal.md --deposit 5000 --category "constitutional-amendment" --rpc https://rpc.cnidarian.cloud --private-key $PRIVATE_KEY

Cooling Period

After an amendment passes the voting stage, it enters a mandatory 7-day cooling period before execution. During this period:

The amendment text is published in its final form on-chain
Community members can review the exact changes one last time
The Technical Council performs a final security review
Any critical issues discovered can trigger a "cooling veto"

A cooling veto requires 7-of-9 Technical Council votes (higher than the standard 6-of-9 execution veto) and is limited to security-critical concerns. If vetoed during cooling, the amendment returns to the review stage for the specific issue to be addressed.

# Check cooling period status
citrate-cli governance amendment-status --proposal-id 7 --rpc https://rpc.cnidarian.cloud

Example output:

Status: Cooling Period
Passed vote on: 2025-03-15
Cooling period ends: 2025-03-22
Execution scheduled: 2025-03-22T00:00:00Z (next epoch boundary)

Emergency Amendments

In rare circumstances, the network may need to amend the constitution urgently -- for example, to patch a governance exploit or respond to a critical security vulnerability in the constitutional contracts themselves.

Emergency amendments bypass the standard timeline but impose stricter approval requirements:

Requirement	Standard Amendment	Emergency Amendment
Discussion period	14 days	48 hours
Review period	14 days	48 hours
Voting period	14 days	72 hours
Quorum	33%	50% of staked SALT
Approval threshold	75%	90% supermajority
Council approval	2 of 3 councils	All 3 councils unanimously
Cooling period	7 days	24 hours

The emergency path is intentionally difficult to trigger. The 90% approval threshold and unanimous council requirement ensure that only genuinely critical situations warrant bypassing the standard process.

# Submit an emergency amendment (requires council pre-approval)
citrate-cli governance propose --title "EMERGENCY: Patch governance contract vulnerability CVE-2025-001" --body-file emergency-amendment.md --deposit 10000 --category "emergency-amendment" --council-preapproval 0xAPPROVAL_HASH --rpc https://rpc.cnidarian.cloud --private-key $PRIVATE_KEY

Constitutional Review Cycle

The BR1J Constitution includes a built-in review cycle. Every 12 months, the General Assembly conducts a scheduled constitutional review:

The governance forum opens a "Constitutional Review" discussion thread
Community members propose amendments or affirm existing provisions
All proposed amendments are batched and voted on during a 30-day "amendment season"
Approved amendments take effect together at the end of the review cycle

This periodic review ensures that the constitution stays relevant and that accumulated small issues are addressed regularly rather than through ad-hoc proposals.

Between review cycles, individual amendments can still be submitted through the standard process. The review cycle supplements, rather than replaces, the ongoing amendment mechanism.

Immutable Provisions

Certain provisions of the BR1J Constitution are marked as immutable and cannot be amended:

The right of participants to exit and withdraw their stake
The right to fork the protocol
The requirement for constitutional amendments to pass by supermajority
The maximum supply cap of SALT (1 billion tokens)
The existence of the amendment mechanism itself

These provisions are enforced at the smart contract level -- the governance contract will reject any proposal that attempts to modify them.