Delegating voting power to a trusted community member can be an effective way to participate in the decision-making process of Polkadot OpenGov. It allows you to empower others who share your values and vision for the ecosystem to represent you and vote on your behalf. This article will explore how to delegate and undelegate your voting power to another account.


⛔ READ THIS FIRST! 

This article provides instructions on how to delegate your voting power using the Delegation Dashboard. However, the Delegation Dashboard has limited funcionalities, so please refer to the article "Polkadot OpenGov: How to Participate" to learn how to use Polkassembly and Subsquare.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Conviction locks


When you vote in a referendum, you can increase your voting power by locking your tokens for a longer period of time. This is known as the "conviction lock." Similarly, you can choose the duration of the conviction lock you wish to apply to your delegation. Read about conviction locking in the wiki article "Voluntary Locking."


It's important to highlight that the duration of the locking period of your balance depends on the conviction lock you chose when you delegated your vote, not the conviction used by your delegate. For example, if you delegated with a 1x conviction and your delegate votes with a 6x conviction, your balance will be locked for a duration equivalent to a 1x conviction.


‼️ IMPORTANT

Undelegating your voting power does not mean that your funds will be immediately accessible, even if your selected delegate never voted. Your voting balance will become available after the conviction lock period you applied to it has expired and only once you unlock it.

Learn how to unlock your referenda locks in "Polkadot JS-UI: How to Remove Expired Referenda Locks".

Delegate on the Polkadot Delegation Dashboard


The Polkadot Delegation Dashboard has been developed to facilitate vote delegation by anyone who wants to participate in Polkadot OpenGov. This section will describe how to navigate and use everything the Polkadot Delegation Dashboard offers.


‼️ IMPORTANT

Any delegates appearing in the screenshots below are for demonstration purposes only and their appearance does not constitute any type of endorsement.


1. Connect your wallet to the Polkadot Delegation Dashboard. Click on the "Connect" button on the top-right corner. If you have installed one of the supported wallets (e.g., Polkadot extension) in your browser, you can select it from the panel and choose which account will act as a delegator.



‼️ IMPORTANT

You might encounter the error "Call vector exceeds limit" when delegating from Ledger on more that 5 tracks simultaneously. This is caused by hardware limitations related to the call size. To avoid this error, split your delegations into multiple transactions.



2. Delegate all votes to a top voter. Once you have selected your delegator account, you can browse through the profiles of the volunteer delegates. You can quickly choose to delegate to one of those delegates on all tracks right from this screen. If you want to make a more granular selection, proceed to the next step.


3. Select tracks to delegate. This sub-section lists all the tracks and their active referenda grouped by topic (i.e., Admin, Governance, Treasury, and Fellowship). You might delegate on individual tracks, all tracks on any topic, or  "All tracks" simultaneously.


‼️ IMPORTANT

If you voted on a track, you won't be able to delegate on the same track until the locking period has passed (or you remove and unlock your vote).


4. Browse and select delegates. Once you have selected the tracks you want to delegate on, you must now choose the delegate by clicking the 'Select' button next to their name or entering their public address.


ℹ️ GOOD TO KNOW

If you want to delegate to different accounts for different tracks, you will need to repeat the process for each delegate and their corresponding tracks


5. Summary of your delegation. Before continuing, you should review and confirm your delegation is as you intended. Once you click "Delegate now" and sign the extrinsic from your wallet, that's it, you just delegated your voting power!


⚠️ ATTENTION

The Polkadot Delegation Dashboard will automatically delegate with no conviction all your lockable funds (transferable and already locked) except fees required to undelegate.

Funds in nomination pools cannot be used for delegation, but funds that are locked in staking will be delegated.


Undelegate on the Polkadot Delegation Dashboard


Your active delegations will appear on the top left corner of the dashboard after delegating. If you want to retire your voting power, you can undelegate it from the same panel.

If you prefer visual instructions, the following video explains how to use the Delegation Dashboard to delegate your voting power.