Understanding the Process of Blockchain Upgrades: From Concept to Implementation

Blockchain technology is constantly evolving. Whether it's changes in fee markets, updates to validator sets, or the introduction of new modules for privacy and cross-chain messaging, every upgrade starts with a simple idea penned down by someone passionate about improvement.

Key Takeaways

Blockchain upgrades are initiated by ideas generated within the network through observations and discussions.
The CTDG Dev Hub acts as a centralized environment for proposal submissions and discussions.
Upgrades go through structured stages: from idea formation to formal submission, community discussion, development, governance voting, and eventual deployment.
The process encourages transparency and collaboration among various contributors, providing a space to track the evolution of upgrade proposals.

Understanding the Process of Blockchain Upgrades: From Concept to Implementation

To provide these ideas with a structured environment, Cointelegraph Decentralization Guardians (CTDG) was established. This initiative operates high-performance validators and engages in governance across various networks such as Solana, Injective, Chiliz, Polkadot, Coreum, Canton, and Mantra. This helps enhance decentralization and security at the protocol level.

In collaboration with blockchain infrastructure provider Boosty Labs, the CTDG Dev Hub was launched to improve the development process. It functions as a public coordination space where contributors can submit, discuss, and track upgrade proposals, avoiding the confusion often caused by fragmented communication channels or closed documentation.

This article clearly outlines the journey an idea takes within the CTDG Dev Hub—from its inception to its implementation on a live network—demonstrating how informal discussions can lead to transparent and verifiable changes.

The Origin: Where Upgrade Ideas Flourish

Ideas for upgrades in decentralized ecosystems often emerge from within the network itself, rather than from a centralized authority. They are typically sparked by everyday interactions, like when a validator notices slow block propagation during peak loads or when a core developer sees a chance to streamline a module.

At the CTDG Dev Hub, insights can be generated from various situations, including:

Day-to-day operations performed by validators and node operators who keep an eye on performance metrics and reliability.
Community or governance discussions that pinpoint ongoing issues with network features like fees, staking rules, or user experiences.
Experiments conducted on testnets, where developers can test new configurations and features without risking real capital.

While these insights hold potential, they are just patterns in logs or complaints at this stage. They only become actionable when documented and submitted as a proposal in the CTDG Dev Hub.

Formalizing the Idea

In the CTDG Dev Hub, proposals are the first formal step for any potential upgrade or governance change. Contributors, including developers, validators, researchers, or network representatives, create a new proposal that ties their idea to a specific network.

Proposal Submission

Each proposal focuses on three essential questions:

What problem does it aim to solve?
Why is it important for the network or ecosystem?
What are the anticipated technical or governance outcomes?

Once a proposal is submitted, moderators and network teams assign relevant tags and review the text for clarity and scope.

The Review and Discussion Phase

The review phase transforms an individual idea into a collaborative design project. Validators, protocol developers, ecosystem teams, and other stakeholders can comment directly on the proposal page. They raise edge cases, request more data, or suggest alternative solutions.

Public upgrade discussions are common across many ecosystems—from open improvement proposal processes to governance forums in DAO frameworks. The CTDG Dev Hub echoes this approach but concentrates these activities into one environment connected to live validator operations.

During this stage, both technical and governance considerations are exposed early on. Reviewers can flag potential compatibility risks and seek benchmarks from testnet trials or inquire how the changes fit within existing governance models.

Successful proposals that clear this phase evolve into implementation-ready specifications.

From Proposal to Implementation

Once there is a consensus that a proposal is valuable, it enters the development phase within the CTDG Dev Hub. The process mirrors any serious protocol upgrade in the industry, where engineers write and review code, integrate new modules into existing systems, and create tests to simulate real network conditions.

Participants can follow the progress during the build phase through implementation notes, commit references, and status updates attached to the proposal entry. The platform's design includes persistent records of accounts, proposals, and moderation actions for future governance or security audits.

Preparing for Submission to the Network

Once testing, documentation, and internal evaluations are completed, the proposal reaches the "Ready for Network" stage. At this point, the concept includes code implementation, testing evidence, and a clear summary of expected changes. The proposal transitions from CTDG’s coordination layer to its network's native governance pipeline.

In CTDG-connected networks, a Ready-for-Network proposal can transform into a Technical Improvement Proposal (TIP) or equivalent governance draft, set for submission through each chain’s established channels, including validator councils, DAO forums, or on-chain proposal modules.

Governance Voting and Final Approval

The governance phase ultimately determines whether an upgrade is integrated into the network’s functioning or remains merely an experiment. When a proposal is marked as "On-Vote" in the CTDG Dev Hub, it signifies that the change has entered the formal decision-making process on its target chain.

The CTDG Dev Hub provides validators, developers, and community members a coherent view of which proposals are currently under discussion, outlining potential trade-offs and their relationship to prior upgrades. Proposals marked as “Approved” signify that the network governance has reached a decision to implement the changes.

Deployment and Post-Implementation Review

Approval signifies the most critical moment in an upgrade's lifecycle: deployment. The initial idea now becomes a part of the network's code and operational parameters.

During and after deployment, monitoring tools assess performance, error rates, and consensus metrics associated with the live implementation. Any anomalies observed feed into post-deployment evaluations, which may include lessons learned, follow-up fixes, and ideas for future upgrades.

The Importance of This Process

Public blockchains depend on structured change processes, such as Ethereum's EIP catalog or Tron’s TIP and DAO-driven governance. However, the work leading up to these formal procedures often remains scattered across various communications and private documents.

The Proposal Process

For instance, an operational insight on Tron might begin in the CTDG Dev Hub before transitioning into the TIP workflow as laid out in TIP-1, culminating in formal DAO discussions. This preserves the early reasoning and trade-offs from disappearing into private channels.

The CTDG Dev Hub bridges that gap by combining validator insights with a collaborative proposal process, resulting in a framework where:

Every upgrade idea has a designated starting point, distinct ownership, and traceable discussions.
All contributor groups, including infrastructure teams, protocol engineers, and governance participants, can see and influence the same proposal history.
Changes to the network connected to CTDG’s validators become simpler to audit and compare, yielding valuable insights over time.

As CTDG already provides validators and analytical insights across various ecosystems, the Dev Hub also creates a shared understanding of how different chains manage upgrades, which features are most frequently altered, and where coordination often encounters challenges.

Engaging in Future Upgrade Cycles

The CTDG Dev Hub is currently operational and already hosts early test proposals and validator documentation, allowing its workflows to be tested in nearly live environments. Developers, validators, and network representatives engaged in governance can use this platform to uncover issues, draft solutions, and monitor how ideas transition through the stages of build, voting, and deployment.

The Proposals section of the CTDG Dev Hub lists both active and historical proposals organized by network, status, and topic. Combined with CTDG’s validator activities across multiple chains, this platform aims to make decentralized development more observable and collaborative.

Each upgrade that moves through this process leaves a permanent record documenting how Web3 infrastructure evolves: which issues were significant, the trade-offs agreed upon by the community, and how the final code was deployed on the mainnet. Over time, these records contribute to transforming blockchain governance from a series of isolated occurrences into a growing, openly-documented discipline.