In preparing for mainnet deployment, which of the following steps should be validated?

• A. Governance workflows.
• B. Bypassing governance workflows.
• C. Only unit tests.
• D. Ignoring cross-subnet messaging.

Answer: (A)

Validating governance workflows before a mainnet deployment ensures that proposals, voting, and activation of upgrades operate smoothly in real conditions. In this ecosystem, important changes—like feature activations, parameter adjustments, or subnet configurations—are governed on-chain and must pass through a defined sequence: proposal creation, community voting, and a timelocked activation. Testing these steps end-to-end confirms that the governance mechanism enforces the correct thresholds, respects timing, and activates upgrades reliably, so the network doesn’t stall or drift from the community’s intent. It also helps verify that system components respond correctly to governance events, applying updates consistently across the network.

Why the other options don’t fit: bypassing governance workflows would skip essential safety checks and could introduce unsafe or unauthorized changes; relying only on unit tests misses the end-to-end flow and the interactions between governance, upgrade activation, and network state; ignoring cross-subnet messaging leaves critical inter-subnet communications untested, risking failed messages or inconsistent states across the network.