OpenZeppelin Governor protocol
Overview
OpenZeppelin Governor is a modular smart-contract system for onchain governance, maintained by OpenZeppelin as part of its Contracts library and used by a large share of DAOs to control parameters, upgrades, treasuries and protocol changes. It works from three pieces: a voting token (an ERC-20 with the ERC20Votes extension, which tracks historical voting power via snapshots so balances cannot be double-counted), the Governor contract itself, and an optional TimelockController. The Governor is assembled by inheriting modules — GovernorVotes to derive voting power from token holdings, GovernorCountingSimple for For/Against/Abstain tallies, GovernorVotesQuorumFraction to express quorum as a percentage of supply, and GovernorTimelockControl to add an execution delay. The proposal lifecycle runs creation, voting period, quorum and majority check, queueing in the timelock, then execution, with the timelock giving dissenting users a window to exit before a decision takes effect. OpenZeppelin explicitly designed Governor to be compatible with Compound's GovernorAlpha and GovernorBravo while offering 'a modular system…so that forking is not needed'. Timestamp-based governance (rather than block-number-based) was formalised in v4.9 via ERC-6372. Governor was introduced to give DAOs a maintained, modular alternative to forking Compound's GovernorAlpha/GovernorBravo, while preserving interface compatibility with them. Support for timestamp-based clocks was standardised in OpenZeppelin Contracts v4.9 through ERC-6372.
Within the DeFi Intel graph, OpenZeppelin Governor connects to 7 tracked entities, most strongly to Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base.
Relations
Top connections in the DeFi Intel knowledge graph (confidence-weighted, 7 of 7 total).
| Relation | Connected entity | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
deployed_on | Ethereum | 95% |
deployed_on | Arbitrum | 95% |
deployed_on | Base | 95% |
deployed_on | Polygon | 95% |
deployed_on | Optimism | 95% |
deployed_on | BNB Chain | 95% |
deployed_on | Avalanche | 95% |
Frequently asked questions
What is OpenZeppelin Governor?
OpenZeppelin Governor is a dao-framework tracked in the DeFi Intel knowledge graph. It is connected to 7 other tracked entities, most strongly to Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base.
What type of entity is OpenZeppelin Governor?
OpenZeppelin Governor is classified as a dao-framework (protocol) in the DeFi Intel knowledge graph.
What is OpenZeppelin Governor connected to?
In the DeFi Intel knowledge graph, OpenZeppelin Governor is linked to 7 other tracked entities, most strongly to Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base.
Live news feed, full graph, and search.