#Vote to make a community private or public

A voting process determines whether a community is public or private. A public community appears on the Discover page in Communities, while a private community does not.

#What to expect

• Every SNT holder can participate in all voting steps, not just community members or Status users.
• Votes happen on the Community Directory Curation dApp.
• Your voting power is determined by how many SNT tokens you stake.
• You don't spend the tokens to vote but must hold the tokens you stake during the verification and finalization voting periods.
• Each time there are 400 more users (counted by wallet accounts) voting, one user or two different users need to do an extra round of verification and finalization.

Voting involves five steps. These steps are not required for every voter.

#Step 1: Connect your wallet

Make sure you open the Community Directory Curation dApp and that your wallet contains enough SNT for voting and ETH to pay for the gas fees.

This process applies to Status Wallet, but you can also try other wallets, such as MetaMask or Trust Wallet.

1. 1
   Open your wallet and select the Optimism network.
2. 2
   Open the dApp and select

   Connect

   from the top navigation.
3. 3
   Select

   Confirm

   in your wallet.

#Step 2: Initiate a voting process

Initiate a vote if there isn't an ongoing vote for the community you want to add or remove. If there is an ongoing vote, cast your vote.

#Initiate a vote for adding a community to Discover

You need the community public key to complete this step. The community link contains the community public key at the end. For example, for the community link https://status.app/cc/G8gAA[...]dy9L9, the public key is G8gAA[...]dy9L9.

1. 1
   From the top navigation of the dApp, select

   Votes

   .
2. 2
   Select

   Propose community

   .
3. 3
   Enter the community public key.
4. 4
   Choose the amount of SNT to stake and select

   Confirm vote to add community

   .
5. 5
   Select

   Create vote to add community

   .
6. 6
   From your wallet, confirm and pay the gas fee.

#Initiate a vote for removing a community from Discover

1. 1
   From the top navigation of the dApp, select

   Directory

   .
2. 2
   Find the community you want to remove and select

   Delete

   next to the community name.
3. 3
   Choose the amount of SNT you want to stake for voting and select

   Confirm vote to remove community

   .
4. 4
   From your wallet, confirm and pay the gas fee.

#Step 3: Cast your vote

The voting period lasts for 14 days.

1. 1
   From the top navigation of the dApp, select

   Votes

   .
2. 2
   Find the community you want to vote for and select

   Don't add

   or

   Add

   for adding, or

   Keep

   or

   Remove

   for removing.
3. 3
   Choose the amount of SNT to stake.
4. 4
   Select

   Vote to not add community

   or

   Vote to add community

   for adding. Select

   Vote to keep community

   or

   Vote to remove community

   for removing.
5. 5
   From your wallet, sign the vote.

#Step 4: Verify the vote

After voting, a seven-day verification period begins to identify valid votes.

1. 1
   Open the dApp and find the vote to verify.
2. 2
   Select

   Verify the vote

   .
3. 3
   From your wallet, confirm and pay the gas fee.

#Step 5: Finalize the vote

After the verification period, at least one person must finalize the vote for it to reach a result.

1. 1
   Open the dApp and find the vote to finalize.
2. 2
   Select

   Finalize the vote

   .
3. 3
   From your wallet, confirm and pay the gas fee.