Cast Your First Validator Vote

In this tutorial, we will install the CLI and walk through the validator side of the governance lifecycle. By the end, we will have imported a proposal, reviewed its fields, and cast a signed vote that is ready to be shared with the rest of the governance committee.

Here is what we will produce:

Proposal abc123 — add 0xdeadbeef...
Status: voting (1/3 yes votes)
Your vote: YES — signed at 2026-06-04T12:00:00.000Z

Prerequisites: Node.js 20 or later. No CKB account or on-chain funds required — voting is local until execute is run.

What you need: Your secp256k1 private key (32 bytes, hex). Keep it offline; the CLI prompts for it with masked input and never writes it to disk.

Tip

Governance validators authorize registry updates. If you want to understand why the validator model uses Merkle proofs instead of on-chain pubkeys, read Governance design.

1. Install the CLI
2. Import a proposal
3. Review the proposal
4. Cast your vote
5. Share your vote and learn about execute