Did @GFXlabs specifically set the end date until 2026? So that this voting would always be in progress?
The motivation for this proposal is clear to many, there are a lot of questions about management over a long period of time. In particular - disclosure of information - to whom and at what price were hundreds of millions of OP tokens sold and where are these funds now?
Voting is a basic right and giving delegates the opportunity to speak out, including by initiating a vote - should be an inalienable right (with an adjustment for the presence of a certain number of OP tokens)
Itâs a petition, not a proposal. All proposals must be approved by the Foundation, which should illustrate the need for this slate of reforms.
We agree, and the ability to push a proposal to a vote is one of the main points of contention where discussions broke down before presenting this plan publicly.
At SEEDGov, we appreciate that the conversation around the current state of governance in Optimism is being debated. Like everyone here, we value and believe itâs important for all voices in the Collective to engage in order to ensure that decisions and expectations are aligned with the ultimate goals of the protocol.
First impression observed: we notice that the way this petition has been framed might not fully reflect or reference certain aspects of Optimismâs current vision -both from a technical and social perspective- which have been discussed in various instances. As we have shown support for Optimismâs current thesis, we wonder if this validation is shared by others.
Here are our thoughts:
âOP Token Contract Ownershipâ
Since OP is the flagship asset of the Optimism ecosystem, the way itâs proposed to implement it across OP Chains might not fully account for some of its implications, as thereâs currently no way to bridge OP without encountering certain pain points in order to obtain a usable representation early on. This is what we understand interop will eventually solve. On the other hand, we recognize that it may be perceived as an organizational oversight to have launched a grants program for OP Chains, considering this limitation would arise.
âGovernance Contract Ownershipâ
We believe this is a necessary step in the right direction. This topic has been discussed on previous occasions, highlighting the importance of implementing it appropriately. For example, the future governor should ideally include the Citizen House to ensure both houses operate in harmony and avoid one overtaking the other. In our view, thereâs still much to explore in this broad design space. Therefore, forcing the governor to be controlled solely by the Token House might not be the most suitable approach under current expectations, in our opinion.
âGovernance Fund Ownershipâ
We believe this approach is reasonable, as governance is in a position to take greater control of its own funds, assume responsibility for its actions, and develop a relevant framework to consolidate its autonomy regarding its own expenditures.
âBridge L1 Escrow Comes Under Governance Controlâ
Upon reviewing this, our main impression is that itâs essential to prioritize the protection of user rights and the security of funds from a technical perspective. The discussion on revenue opportunities for the Collective, beyond sequencing revenues (which remain unresolved), warrants deeper analysis considering the design of Superchain. It would be wise to take the necessary time to debate this, considering all implications, should part of the Collective be willing to follow this path. Ultimately, Optimism is a set of blockchains scaling Ethereum, and this neutrality has been a fundamental expectation emerging from the Ethereum community regarding how a Layer 2 is defined.
âSequencer Decentralization Roadmapâ
This is a recurring topic in X circles and is part of many teamsâ pursuit of the holy grail of solutions. However, we believe this point should be considered alongside the other technical improvements and new designs planned for the upcoming Superchain phase. This represents a significant shift for any rollup stack design. In our opinion, the Collective should eventually have the right to choose the entity behind the sequencer and be able to make the switch itself, under a voted framework.
âPhase III (concluding Q2 2025)â
We are excited about the interest and desire for the technical decentralization of the Optimism Protocol in less than 12 months. However, from a realistic perspective, this is unlikely to happen, given the vision and goals of the Optimism Collective and their implications for implementation. Each previous phase involves numerous rounds of discussions, and itâs clear that consensus among all interested parties will happen with back and forth. On our part, we will actively participate in the discussions without the need to set a specific timeline if the current roadmap suggests a different appreciation.
Other comments:
Certainly, we believe that the current state of other ecosystemsâconsidered competitorsâshould not be a reason to condition our decision-making models. Existing models are far from perfect, and particularly, the Optimism Collective has followed a markedly different process, with each iteration and restructuring over the seasons, making its process unique.
In line with Carl here, we believe the request adds a number of initiatives and substantial changes that may be unrealistic to achieve. It is more appropriate, and evidently clear, that asking delegates about their interest in advancing Optimismâs decentralization is one thing, while specific objectives, order, and timing are issues that should be addressed at a later stage. Keeping the latter as a separate draft would have been a better approach.
On a Final Note:
To GFXLabs, once again, we thank you for this push, as all these topics deserve to be discussedâfrom goals and design to implementationâsomething stakeholders should have the opportunity to provide their input on.
To the Foundation, we appreciate your time dedicated to responding extensively to this request, disclosing several of the future next steps to propose to governance. This attitude should be a common practice, and we hope the conversation about the future of Optimism will reach its peak of intensity by the end of Season 6.
For us, the most critical part is found right here: how to move forward with the decentralization discussion, split into its various parts, following what was described to be presented. For example, the next step mentioned by @lavande:
This step shouldnât take long, as the Foundation is one of the main stewards of Optimismâs vision.
the transfer of powers and resources to community governance is a bold step toward true decentralization, its success will depend heavily on the Governance ability to organize, govern effectively, and handle increased complexity. With proper safeguards, in place, this move could propel Optimism forward as a decentralized governance, planning and execution will be critical to ensure it strengthens rather than weakens the ecosystem.
Iâm not in favor of this proposal, as I believe that while it comes from a good place with positive intentions, it doesnât address all the complexities involved.
We have a unique governance model, and weâve achieved a lot in a short period of time. The two-pillar governance structure has been, and continues to be, an experiment that evolves with collective feedback. Each season brings challenges, but we consistently overcome them, emerging stronger on the other side.
To reframe the question: full decentralization may be necessary if people feel restricted, isolated, or censored in any way. However, at present, anyone can submit a proposal in this open forum. The grant distribution framework is transparent, algorithms are accessible, and anyone can become a delegate and contribute. In fact, you donât even need to be a delegate to share your thoughts here.
Ours is the only DAO with dedicated support from the protocol team, and at least in terms of headcount, the contact information for representatives of the OP Foundation is public. And this is coming out from soneone virtually unknown outside of this governance, from Jonas to Carl, they listen every single time.
We have various councils, with dedicated and motivated delegates working to ensure we remain unbiased and sustainable in the long term. This process is not controlled by the Foundation. We, the collective, are responsible for writing proposals, approving and distributing fundsâall in a distributed and decentralized manner. The Foundation takes a backseat, while we lead the way.
Additionally, I donât think weâre quite ready to take full control of the DAO. We havenât yet onboarded other members of the superchain, which I believe will happen in the next season. Onboard them, their project, dev and community. DAO budget will run out one day, only way to make sure we are sustainable long term, RPGF is to flourish and support positive contributions is highly dependent on members of superchain . Issues like projects capturing grant tokens to increase their voting power, the concentration of power, conflicts of interest, and misalignment are still concerns, especially in this fast-moving space.
There are clearly many open questions and points of failure. Just because one DAO is doing something does not necessarily mean we should do it too, the current working model and end goal play an important role.
We are progressing towards a sustainable DAO that is run, controlled, and managed by the collective. We should continue on this path, taking cautious but deliberate steps and iterating based on feedback.
Congratulations to GFXLabs for bringing up this topic, although these proposals can sometimes come across as combative as our industry values trust-minimization, the route to that goal often requires removing trust from even people who are of high-credibility. Thus friction can arise. Regardless, the conversation itself is extremely important and gauging community sentiment is always positive when done professionally.
Decentralization and trust-minimization is a means to an end, not the end itself, and GFX clearly states that âWhile there was some early value in the Foundation and OP Labs having all system access powers, that time has passed as both the promised decentralization of power and the business strategy of Optimism have underperformed expectations.â
I would be curious for GFX to provide comparisons on how more trust-minimized DAOs such as Arbitrum are performing in key categories against Optimism, including as mentioned above. Is the writing truly on the wall that Arbitrum is more successful? It would be great to try and compare? Others like Lido, Aave, Maker seem to be the darlings of DAOs but are of course not chains.
I first think itâs extremely important to categorically separate control of permissions between the technology and money. Itâs become evident over time that separate governance processes and bodies can perform more effectively apart. So far this hasnât been achieved on a large scale in any DAO beyond a committee format. Thus Iâd recommend one of 2 options: separating the phases and permissions by technology and money, i.e. removing the ETH collected temporarily. The progressive transfer of permissions is sensible.
I believe there is a middle ground on the way to becoming fully trust-minimized and decentralized which is a newer governance primitive we are working on with Polygon and a few other rollups soon launching. More info can be found here and the PIP to activate this is now live here.
In short: the foundation and/or a council are the only ones to put a proposal onchain, but token holders have the ability to veto this change. This allows for a more streamlined governance process but puts hard-power in the hands of token holders. When these training wheels are ready to be taken off they can be more easily. It also places proper checks-and balances in the hands of token holders rather than the reverse methodology we often see when a committee or multisig, somewhere, has the hard power to block any proposal. The outcome = more efficiency with actual checks and balances.
Why we continue to launch the same broken and misaligned vanilla token-weighted delegate voting is beyond me. There are lots of safe ways to govern and OP has already showcased its governance leadership in RPGF.
Overall, I am very are happy to see these amazing conversation happen for some of the most important projects in the industry and happy to help where and when necessary. Thank you!
We want to point out that this is not correct. Proposals are permissioned by the Foundation and also are subject to fitting within certain categories of approved proposal type.
Also, these two statements are contradictory:
Superchain members often receive substantial grants of OP tokens from the Foundation, and neither membership nor those initial grants is not subject to governance approval.
This would be a very long conversation in and of itself, but we would characterize Arbitrum as more nimble and energetic since it can capture bottom-up ideas quickly and act on them, but this does come at the cost of substantial waste in spending. Optimism would have the benefit of already having a structured governance system in place, while Arbitrum started largely from the primordial ooze and has had to evolve in real time.
GFXâs time at Maker is one of the main drivers of the desire to decentralize while we can. Maker is as tightly controlled as any centralized company, and is a perfect example of why decentralization is needed.
From Optimism Chinsese Community, we voted in favour of the petition, but that doesnât mean we support the proposal, we would like to initiate some communication agenda about Token House and the Foundation
What I think is bad about this proposal is
Decentralised governance is a long and arduous process, which is full of many explorations, and we donât think that accelerated decentralisation will give a big boost to the Optimism collective at this point in time, on the contrary, a lot of the work that the Optimism Foundation and Op labs have done, in terms of superchain scaling, upgrading of Op stacks, etc., is something that we think is very good, and some of the rights of the The lower part of the Council and the Anti-Capture Committee have given Token House some decision-making power.
What we donât think is good at the moment is
Optimism Foundationâs long-term roadmap for decentralisation is not clear, we think the foundation needs to have some sort of long-term roadmap, including the process of transferring the governance fund contract, and the application scenarios of OP tokens (at present, there are no other application scenarios except governance).
Through this petition, we hope to suggest a cyclical dialogue where the Optimism Foundation can make some clearer governance roadmap based on community feedback.
Iâve been inactive as a delegate for exactly the reasons quoted in this post. I couldnât agree more and this has my full support. Iâd be happy to start participating in governance again if this goes through.
Wow, this is a big bold move by @GFXlabs and I fully respect it. It very clearly demands for progress on a few vital elements of the OP ecosytem in particular, and the crypto industry in general - otherwise, what are we here for?
Itâs difficult for me to support the whole petition as it is currently written, for a few key reasons. I will try to be succinct because they mirror things that people like @katie@Gonna.eth@ccerv1 and others have voiced in this thread
1. We need tight, war time organizations
While we have been one of the leading ecosystems in recent history, I believe that we are still in âwar time.â We are still fighting for long term relevance and dominance. In my experience (and according to business and military history), spreading decision-making out at this stage to a wide swath of people who arenât necessarily full-time committed to a vision is overly risky. We need a war time organization, one that can move quickly and nimbly in the face of strategic and tactical challenges (credit: Ben Horowitzâs distinction between wartime and peacetime CEOs)
2. Story time: an live anecdote to help us learn from otherâs mistakes.
I contribute to Synthetix like @MattL. Just yesterday, a referendum was proposed to bring back the original founding team to re-invigorate the protocol. If it passes, the 17 people sitting on 3 councils will be âfired,â and a new council will be formed, consisting of only 7 people (primarily OGs who founded the protocol). The team will also concentrate new hires in Sydney, a slight reversal of our fully remote/global operations.
Why did this happen? While Synthetix has always been âdecentralization maxis,â it became clear that decentralizing code architecture is one thing, while decentralizing planning is another. With decentralized planning, we had too many actors, so accountability was tricky to pin on anyone. Decision-making lacked tightness, making it hard for partners to do business with us. As a result, despite having broken ground on defi with Optimism at the start of defi summer, we have been languishing for ~18 months now, with our competitive position and token price reflecting this state of affairs. I am proud to contribute to Synthetix, but this is a change that I welcome.
In line with some of the other comments on this thread, is there another way to blend your desire for greater governance participation together with these practical realities?
In response to GFX Labsâ recent post to accelerate Optimism Decentralization, Anthias Labs has conducted the following risk analysis to make clear the current state of OP governance attack risk. This analysis is not intended to endorse or reject GFXâs proposal but rather to share the state of risk objectively so that Optimism stakeholders may make the most informed decision on how to proceed.
Disclaimer: Anthias Labs has signed GFX Labsâs Snapshot petition.
Phase 1 - OP Token Ownership Analysis
In this initial analysis, we will focus primarily on transference of the OP token contract ownership as that is the first step proposed.
The following is an excerpt from what GFX Labs proposed above:
âOP Token Contract Ownership Unlike some competitors (like Arbitrum), the OP token has no established rights to execute code, make proposals, share in revenue, or anything else. This manifests itself as a lack of interest in OP as a governance token, making it a struggle to convince some users to delegate or vote. In some circles, OP is actually referred to as a meme coin, and not jokingly so. Of particular embarrassment is that the OP token does not even own its own contract. Transferring ownership of the token contract to governance is an essential first step in a credible plan to make the OP token serve its intended purpose of governing Optimism. Putting the token contract under onchain governance oversight also ensures that basic tasks will get done, like deploying standardized OP token contracts on Superchain member chains and a reliable, quick mint-burn bridge between those chains. This is of particular urgency with the Superchain grants program scheduled to dispense 12,000,000 OP tokens to member chains, but with no way to reliably get those tokens to those chains.â
What does contract ownership mean?
It is defined here in the following Optimism contracts:
The function transferOwnership is called to transfer the ownership of the contract from its current owner which is this address 0x5C4e7Ba1E219E47948e6e3F55019A647bA501005 to an address owned by the governance council.
The owner of the OP Token contract has rights to all the functions present in the contract as well as access to all the functions which have onlyOwner access. Below are some of those functions:
Only the owner of the contract can renounce their ownership when they wish to, and only they can transfer their ownership to whomever they wish to and whenever they wish to.
Only the owner of the contract has the right to mint the governance tokens which is a restricted privilege. Transferring ownership requires just calling a function. But the risk of this transfer is a governance attack, which we will now provide some context around.
What is the current state of OP token decentralization, and what risks might its current state pose or mitigate? This is what we will now explore.
Data on the OP Token and How this Data Connects with Governance Attack Risk
Comparing OP with ARB data as a point of governance decentralization comparison
The above plot shows the number of delegates required to cross 50% of the voting power. This is an important parameter as it tells how decentralized & distributed the voting power actually is. The number of such delegates for OP lies in the range of 10-15 which is moderate. This number has a higher magnitude in the case of Arbitrum.
This plot shows the ARB delegated for Top 50 delegates vs the other remaining delegates. We see that the Top 50 delegates are together needed to achieve 56% voting power. The top 240 delegates control two-thirds of the total voting power for Arbitrum DAO & around 15% of all the available ARB is being delegated compared to OPâs 9.8%.
The plot below shows the distribution of voting power among the Top 50 delegates for Arbitrum DAO. Hopefully, this plot serves as a point of reference between the two DAOs given this discussion to decentralize.
The monetary costs of a governance attack over the OP ecosystem.
Case 1: Attack takes place using the already delegated supply
Procedure:
We take the total votable supply of the OP ecosystem.
We multiply the value by 0.51 to obtain the 51% voting supply.
We multiply the obtained voting supply with the historical market price of OP token to obtain the cost of executing a 51% attack on the ecosystem at various points in the past plotted as a curve.
We ignore dex slippage for the moment, considering the ideal cost. True cost would be actual cost added with dex slippage.
Case 2: Attack takes place using the currently undelegated supply
Procedure:
We take the total available supply of the OP ecosystem.
Above is the fundamental equation for a governance attack. The only way to avoid a governance attack is to make the profit of the attacker negative. This can be done by one or more of the following:
Decreasing the value of attack.
Increasing the cost of acquiring voting power.
Increasing the cost of executing an attack.
To be fully clear: What is a governance attack, and how can Optimism avoid them?
A governance attack is when a malicious actor or a group of actors gain enough voting power to overthrow the existing governance structure of a DAO & cause a hostile takeover of the governance, taking the protocol into the direction they wish to for their personal benefits.
Below are two governance attacks with details on how exactly they occurred:
Beanstalk: Beanstalk is a lending platform that allowed its governance contract to change the address of the owner of the collateral of the platform. It was attacked by an exploiter who transferred all of the collateral of the platform (estimated at just over 182M USD) to themselves, collapsing the platform as a result. The attack was issued by an individual who was able to take a flashloan of Beanstalkâs governance tokens and in doing so became a majority holder of governance tokens, allowing them to make dictatorship decisions in the governance contract. To overcome Beanstalkâs wait time safety feature, the attacker uploaded a seemingly innocent governance suggestion (donating funds to Ukraine) while hiding the actual functionality using Ethereumâs Diamond standard (which is a sophisticated version of the proxy mechanism). This is how the attack was not detected prior to the beginning of the voting period. The attacker also utilized the emegrantCommit() method to transfer to himself a sum that covered his flashloan, alongside over 180 M USD in profits from the attack.
Compound DAO passes $24 million in alleged governance attack: Two months ago, a controversial proposal in front of the Compound Finance DAO narrowly passed, allocating 499,000 COMP (~$24 million, approximately 5% of the projectâs treasury) to an outside group. The proposal was introduced by a Compound Finance whale known as âHumpy,â who pushed for the tokens to be granted to a protocol created by a group called the âGolden Boys,â which Humpy also leads. This marked the third attempt to secure funding for the Golden Boys, following two unsuccessful votes in May and earlier in July. Humpy had previously been accused of engaging in governance attacks on other protocols, including Balancer and SushiSwap. Before the proposal passed, some members of the Compound Finance DAO raised concerns. Compound Finance security adviser Michael Lewellen stated at the time, âIn my personal opinion, the actions of Humpy and the Golden Boys can be considered a governance attack if they persist in their attempts to take funds from the protocol in clear opposition to the will of all other Compound DAO delegates.â Lewellen further described the proposal as âa malicious attempt to steal funds from the protocol.â After the proposal passed, Lewellen wrote that âOpenZeppelin is working with all active delegates and Compound contributors to assess our options for protecting the protocol. We see serious risks to the future decentralization of the DAO as a result of Proposal 289 passing, and we are exploring options to mitigate or reverse this outcome.â This event, now two months past, remains a significant moment in Compound Financeâs history, as it exposed vulnerabilities in decentralized governance and raised ongoing concerns about the control of protocol resources.
Conclusion
Risk abounds in any decentralized system, but there are immense rewards to be had as well with decentralization, as GFX Labs outlines in their original post. OP stakeholders must weigh those risks and rewards in order to come to their own conclusions about the best path forward for the Optimism Collective. Additionally, there may be adjacent middle-ground solutions here that find the optimal value for the Collective. Our team at Anthias Labs will have more work here shared to the forum soon.
Legal Disclaimer
Anthias LLC (D.B.A. Anthias Labs) does not provide financial advice. Any information accepted here is accepted on the behest of the protocol/DAO team. Anthias Labs is not permitted to give financial advice, and nothing in this documentation should be considered as such. Anthias LLC (D.B.A. Anthias Labs) will not be held liable for any economic or otherwise monetary loss brought about by statements made in this document. This is not financial advice, and any third party reading this document should do its own research into any statement made.
Hi everyone, itâs great to see this conversation happening on the forum. We wanted to give an update on the other conversations that have been happening throughout the Collective on this topic:
The Foundation has received feedback on a framework for decentralization milestones from the Collective Feedback Commission and joined a call to discuss it with members in more detail last week.
The Foundation discussed this petition on the Token House community call last week.
The Foundation joined a call with the Anticapture Commission to discuss this petition and some of the potential roles the ACC might play in regards to this conversation.
To reiterate, we remain fully committed to full decentralization, using the initial approach and timeline outlined in the Working Constitution, and will continue to have ongoing conversations about this path with the community. We understand that governance participants want more transparency around the path towards decentralization and regular opportunities to hold the Foundation accountable to making progress on this path and we are supportive of both.
Immediate next steps on our side:
Incorporate CFC feedback on our framework for decentralization milestones and publish (along with other resources) for broader community feedback. We are targeting early Voting Cycle #29 for this.
To address specific aspects of the Phase 1 suggested in the above petition:
The Token Contract is already owned by governance. A concrete example of the process to upgrade the token contract will occur as part of the upcoming interop upgrade.
Agora plans to post a governor upgrade proposal that would transfer keys to the Security Council and move the full governance contract onchain to be voted on in Voting Cycle #29.
The conversation about sequencer ETH remains ongoing, but should include Citizens, as sequencer ETH defaults to Citizen management (it goes to Retro Funding), as outlined here.
The Foundation recommends we focus on completing the above milestones and revisit the path forward from there. We expect many OP Chain delegates to begin participating in governance between now and 1Q25 and itâs important that their perspectives be represented in this conversation. The same goes for Citizens, as they play a critical role in protecting the long term interests of the Collective. This is foundational to our bicameral design but absent in the process around this petition.
We expect this conversation to be ongoing throughout this iterative process. As several people have highlighted above, many projects have decentralized quickly only to realize that they hadnât laid the foundations to support that decentralization properly, and then resorted to re-centralization. We believe we can avoid this pattern by taking the time to lay the foundation that can support full decentralization for the long term.
ACCâs Statement on the Proposal for Accelerated Decentralization for Optimism
On 26th September 2024, the Anticapture Commission (ACC) held an Internal Meeting where one of the key agenda items was the discussion on the Petition for Accelerated Decentralization for Optimism. Along with the Delegate members of the ACC, we also invited GFX Labâs PaperImperium and members of the Foundation to discuss the petition.
There was wide agreement among all parties that the proposal represented a step in the right direction, in pushing for the decentralization of key components of Optimism. The issues raised in the proposal were well received, and have ignited a healthy conversation within the Optimism community on our path towards decentralization. Delegates stressed a need for moving towards decentralization by ceding more power to token holders and delegates. The Foundation reaffirmed their full commitment to decentralizing the protocol and working with the community to iron out a more granular path forward. The Foundation will publish concrete proposals, which are already in audit, in the coming weeks as part of Phase 1 of the path towards decentralization. Recently, the development process has been opened up to a good extent with public specs published in repositories. This has enabled external groups, beyond OP Labs and the Foundation, to contribute to the OP Stack development process. External teams like Flashbots, are now able to propose features related to the OP Stack, and have the designs reviewed and merged into the codebase.
The ACC members discussed with Foundation that there are concrete proposals for decentralization coming up in the next few Voting Cycles and gradually but surely, more control is being ceded to governance in a progressive manner. To this effect, the Petition for Accelerated Decentralization felt like a timing issue while we are all on the same path towards decentralization. As per the bicameral nature of Optimismâs Governance, one of the main mandates of the ACC is to alert the Citizenâs House if there is a possibility of capture in the Token House. However, the Citizens are not involved in this conversation that is currently before the Token House. To this effect, the ACC will seek to facilitate the role or voice of Citizens in this discussion such as creating standards for signaling proposals.
Considering the Charter of the ACC, the members were in agreement that at this stage, the ACC will not vote directly on the Snapshot proposal with the voting weight delegated to the ACC multisig. There however, is no restriction on individual delegates who are part of the ACC in signaling their opinion on the proposal.
This petition has garnered significant attention within our community (LXDAO, a research and development-focused community with conscience as its core value).
It has sparked many reflections, such as:
To what extent can a commercial organization decentralize?
How can we determine if a community is mature enough to assume full governance responsibility?
What is the standard for balancing technical implementation and governance decisions?
From the perspective of merging business operations with community governance, Optimism serves as an excellent model. We believe this provides not only practical experience for OPâs governance but also valuable inspiration for other Web3 projects.
However, this raises another issue: is it necessary for a commercial organization to fully decentralize? Or rather, to what extent can meaningful decentralization be achieved?
For a commercial organization, decentralization is not always necessary, and at certain stages, it may not even be an effective governance approach. The goal of decentralization is to distribute power, enhance transparency, and increase community participation, but it must be balanced with practical operational needs. In some decision-making processes, a degree of centralization is required to maintain efficiency and ensure accuracy, particularly when it comes to responding swiftly to market changes.
At the same time, we also observe the significant efforts the Optimism Foundation has made to expand âdecentralized governance,â leveraging collective wisdom to accelerate operations, prevent abuse of power, while maintaining necessary flexibility and efficiency.
As for the goal of full decentralization, we are uncertain if it is achievable. However, we are pleased to see the community actively proposing such petitions, as they promote closer integration between the Optimism Foundation and the community, creating more possibilities for governance models.
This not only fosters further decentralization within Optimism but also raises important questions about how to mature a community to take on more governance responsibilities or how to objectively assess what level of governance a community can handle.
On this issue, itâs not only the Optimism Foundation that may need a âdecentralization timeline,â but the community itself may also need to form various specialized working groups in stages to ensure governance safety and accuracy. For example, in the management of funds, it might be feasible to establish co-governance teams between the community and the foundation, allowing the community to undertake governance in a protected environment, which could accelerate the communityâs maturity.
Throughout this process, transparency and mutual oversight could ensure that the Foundation maintains or even accelerates the âdecentralization process,â while also enabling the community to become more robust and secure.
The Optimism Foundation has conducted multiple decentralization experiments over time. The data and results from these processes offer valuable insights for the development of Web3. For this, we express our respect for the Foundationâs contributions to decentralized governance and are pleased to see the Optimism community remain active. As more discussions unfold, we believe that an ideal balance between business models and decentralization principles can be achieved.
After reading this thread, I realize that concrete actions are already being taken to follow up on the various proposals that have been presented. Wanting to avoid repeating what more capable people have already expressed, Iâll set the topic of âdecentralizationâ aside; understanding that we are all aligned with the intention, and itâs just the details of the implementation that differ.
And yet, I believe this conversation has highlighted a different topic: revenue opportunities for the Collective, beyond sequencing revenues.
Especially if we consider that the trend is for that revenue source to decrease over time.
And I believe that coming up with possible solutions is a responsibility of the collective rather than the foundation.
In other words, if we continue with the analogy of parenthood, Iâd say we need to demonstrate our maturity and capability by taking proactive steps in this matter, rather than waiting for someone else to solve it in the future.
What do we do about it?
For the sake of order, I suggest opening a new thread to focus on ârevenue opportunitiesâ without diverting this one from its initial focus (which is the pace at which we should decentralize operations). Iâm not aware if there are other conversations about this, but at least it wasnât evident to me when searching the forum.
I leave this post here, inviting anyone who wants to participate in a 'Collective Proposal Creationâ to brainstorm and synthesize some paths to address this concern.
I hope my suggestion is appropriate. Thank you in advance for your comments in the thread.
Hi all! Related to the topic above, weâve just published a post outlining two working models for decentralization. There is a lot of information in here but weâve linked to video walk throughs of each model and the Foundation will also host an AMA on Thursday to answer questions (check the public governance calendar!)
