Keyholder Procedures

Bitcoin Commons uses cryptographic keyholders (maintainers) to sign governance decisions. This section describes procedures for keyholders.

Maintainer Responsibilities

Maintainers are responsible for:

  • Reviewing Changes: Understanding the impact of proposed changes
  • Signing Decisions: Cryptographically signing approved changes
  • Maintaining Keys: Securely storing and managing cryptographic keys
  • Following Procedures: Adhering to governance processes and review periods

Signing Process

  1. Review PR: Understand the change and its impact
  2. Generate Signature: Use blvm-sign from blvm-sdk
  3. Post Signature: Comment /governance-sign <signature> on PR
  4. Governance App Verifies: Cryptographically verifies signature
  5. Status Check Updates: Shows signature count progress

Key Management

Key Generation

blvm-keygen --output maintainer.key --format pem

Key Storage

  • Development: Test keys can be stored locally
  • Production: Keys should be stored in HSMs (Hardware Security Modules)
  • Backup: Secure backup procedures required

Key Rotation

Keys can be rotated through the governance process. See MAINTAINER_GUIDE.md for detailed procedures.

Emergency Keyholders

Emergency keyholders can activate emergency response classes defined in emergency-tiers.yml (see PR Process → Emergency Procedures):

  • Activation (all classes): 5-of-7 emergency keyholders
  • Critical class: 4-of-7 maintainer signatures after activation; maximum 7 days
  • Urgent class: 5-of-7 signatures; maximum 30 days
  • Elevated class: 6-of-7 signatures; maximum 90 days

Release Pipeline Gate Strength

Release Pipeline Gate Strength Figure: Gate strength across the release pipeline. Each gate requires specific signatures and review periods based on the change tier.

For detailed maintainer procedures, see MAINTAINER_GUIDE.md.

See Also