How to create a Metadata Anchor?

Guide to adding context to your registration and voting transactions

1. Create a .txt file and populate it with context for your governance action

2. Create a GitHub repository (repo)

3. Push the .txt file to your repo

4. Make a note of the url of your .txt file

What Metadata is

As a participant in the on-chain governance of Cardano, you will be submitting governance transactions, if you want to explain something about this transaction to other participants you will need to also provide human readable context. This might be about why people should delegate to you as their DRep, or explaining to the people who have delegated to you why you voted a given way.

Metadata is a file within which you can supply this context. You will write your context into a file, save it in a web location and then reference this unique url in the transaction. This metadata can then be found by other participants in governance and read.

2 - Creating a Hash

1. Open a free online hashing tool

2. Upload your txt file to the tool and hash it

3. Make a note of the hash

Why a Hash is Included

You need to provide a Blake2b-256 hash alongside the url to your metadata because it will allow other governance participants to test whether or not you have changed your metadata since you registered the governance transaction on-chain. To do this they will simply hash your metadata and compare it with the original on-chain hash, if they are the same then the metadata was unchanged.

This will ensure for example that as a DRep you will not be able to change your rationale for voting a given way if it becomes inconvenient.

3 - Creating a Metadata Anchor

1. Enter the url of your metadata into the relevant input box in GovTool

2. Enter the hash of your metadata into the relevant input box in GovTool

3. Press Confirm

4. Submit the transaction

What a Metadata Anchor is

The web address (url) of your metadata and the hash of that metadata provided with your metadata transaction. It is optional to provide an anchor with your governance transaction (DRep Registration or vote); doing so will give context to other participants in governance.