Ratification refers to a Governance Action. A Governance Action gets approved (or ratified) if it reaches the defined thresholds.
Governance actions are ratified through on-chain voting actions. While different kinds of governance actions have different requirements, ratification always involves two of the three governance bodies (DReps, Constitutional Committee and SPOs), with the exception of a hard-fork initiation, which requires ratification by all governance bodies.
Depending on the type of governance action, an action will be ratified when a combination of the following occurs:
- the Constitutional Committee (CC) approves of the action (the number of 'Yes' votes meets the CC’s threshold)
- the DReps approve of the action (the stake controlled by the DReps who vote 'Yes' meets a certain threshold of the total active voting stake)
- the SPOs approve of the action (the stake controlled by the SPOs who vote 'Yes' meets a certain threshold over the total registered voting stake)
The ratification period is the time that elapses between a governance action being submitted and its ratification.