For Validators

The svmgov CLI provides validators with commands to create and manage governance proposals, support other validators’ proposals, and cast stake-weighted votes.

New to governance terms? Read Terminology first, then continue with command guides.

Requirements

Solana validator identity keypair
Minimum 100,000 SOL staked to create a proposal
Any active stake to support a proposal or vote
Access to a Solana RPC endpoint
Operator API URL for fetching Merkle proofs. The CLI defaults to the main NCN router: https://ncn-governance.solana.com.

Quick Setup


# Install svmgov
cd svmgov/cli && ./install.sh
 
# Run interactive setup
svmgov init
 
# Optional: override the default operator API URL
svmgov config set operator-api-url https://your-operator-api.example.com

Available Commands

Initialize Index Create Proposal Support Proposal Cast Vote Modify Vote Finalize Proposal List Proposals View Proposal

Global Arguments

All validator commands support:

Option	Short	Env var	Description
`--keypair <PATH>`	`-k`	`SVMGOV_KEY`	Path to validator identity keypair JSON
`--rpc-url <URL>`	`-r`	`SVMGOV_RPC`	Solana RPC endpoint
`--network <NETWORK>`	`-n`	—	Network for verifier/proof fetching

Resolution order: explicit flags → environment variables → config file → built-in defaults

Configuration File

~/.svmgov/config.toml — set once via svmgov init:


user_type = "Validator"
identity_keypair_path = "/path/to/validator.json"
network = "mainnet"
rpc_url = "https://api.mainnet-beta.solana.com"
operator_api_url = "https://ncn-governance.solana.com"

The operator_api_url defaults to the main NCN router, https://ncn-governance.solana.com, for commands that fetch Merkle proofs (support-proposal, cast-vote, modify-vote). Override it with svmgov config set operator-api-url <URL> only if you need a different verifier/router.