Concerning governance, miners play a similar role as in Bitcoin, however, stakers in the PoS voting mechanism play a central role to governance. At a high level, the Decred principles for the initial structures in the network are laid out in the Decred Constitution, which can even be changed via Politeia voting.
The overall governance is predicated on a system of ticket-holder voting where users stake (lock-in) DCR — the native Decred token — to purchase multi-purpose tickets. The tickets can be applied to consensus validation via PoS, the Politeia proposal system, and consensus rule changes.
Decred’s dedication to a pure form of on-chain governance is intriguing, and live decision-making on protocol changes — such as the ongoing consensus change vote to support the Lightning Network — should serve as compelling experimentation grounds for decentralized governance.
Examples of community-driven decisions via the ticket voting system include changes to the Decred constitution and which projects to fund using the Decred Treasury. Politeia voting occurs off-chain, while on-chain judgments encompass validating blocks furnished by PoW miners and consensus rules voting.