Konubinix' opinionated web of thoughts

Five Stages of Tezos Governance

Fleeting

It looks like the Cooldown period is also called the testing period.

The self-amendment process is split into 5 periods: Proposal Period, Exploration Vote Period, Cooldown Period, Promotion Vote Period, and Adoption Period. Each of these five periods lasts five baking cycles (i.e. 40,960 blocks or roughly 14 days, 5 hours), comprising roughly 2 months and 10 days.

https://www.tezosagora.org/learn

any failure to proceed to the subsequent period reverts the network back to a Proposal Period. In other words, failure to proceed restarts the entire amendment process.

https://www.tezosagora.org/learn

Tezos amendment process begins with the Proposal Period, during which bakers can submit proposals on-chain using the proposals operation,

https://www.tezosagora.org/learn

In the Exploration Period, bakers may vote on the top-ranked proposal from the previous Proposal Period using the ballot operation

https://www.tezosagora.org/learn

At the end of the Exploration Period, the network counts the votes. If voting participation meets the quorum, and an 80% supermajority of non-abstaining bakers approves, the proposal proceeds to the Testing Period.

https://www.tezosagora.org/learn

Cooldown Period

On-chain nothing specific happens during this period. Off-chain the delegates can read the proposal with more scrutiny, the community can discuss finer points of the proposal, the developers can perform additional tests, etc.

https://www.tezosagora.org/learn

tezos protocol is active at the end of the adoption period

Adoption Period provides a “cool-down” allowing developers and bakers some additional time to adapt their code and infrastructure to the upgrade based on the results of the Promotion Vote Period. Adoption period: at the end of the period the proposal is activated as the new protocol and we go back to a proposal period.

https://www.tezosagora.org/learn

Notes linking here