GFX Labs - Delegate Communication Thread

Delegates 🏛 Delegate Updates
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2 Polls Closing September 18, 2024

Rolling Mission Requests
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support allowing more Mission Requests for this season. This is possible due to an authorized budget for Mission Requests that exceeds the maximum budgets of all previously approved Mission Requests.

Recommendation: Vote Abstain. We fully recommend that this be approved, but because GFX Labs is on the Grants Council, which collectively proposed this poll, we are required under updated rules to abstain for our own vote to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

Rolling Mission Requests: Voting Cycle 27
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which, if any, of the following Mission Requests they approve.

Choices are:
Request 1: Subsidized Audit Grants V2, 250.000 OP
Request 2: Experimentation of Infrastructure Subsidies 250.000 OP
Request 3: Superchain Borrow/Lend Aggregator 30.000 OP
Request 4: Crosschain alert monitoring 60.000 OP
Request 5: Optimism Dominance in Yield-Bearing Assets - DEX Liquidity for YBAs 500.000OP
Request 6: Decentralized Solvers and Aggregators on OP Mainnet / Superchain 250.000 OP
Request 7: Targeted extension of Superfest 350.000 OP
Request 8: Optimism Full Financial Audit 20.000 OP

Recommendation: Vote Request 1: Subsidized Audit Grants V2, Request 5: Optimism Dominance In Yield-Bearing Assets, Request 6: Decentralized Solvers and Aggregators on OP Mainet/Superchain, Request 7: Targeted extension of Superfest.

These all are needs or experiments we find compelling – in particular the very successful and in-demand audit grants. The other Mission Requests are helpful for business development and attracting new users and protocols to Optimism.

Others simply seemed like they needed more clear scope or different budget sizing to be effective. Or were low priority because they are largely done but not easy to find in one place (e.g. auditing the financial holdings of governance), so don’t require an entire Mission Request.

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1 Poll Closing October 9, 2024

Rolling Mission Requests: Voting Cycle 28

Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support creation of new Mission Requests. There is only one proposed Mission Request this cycle:

Mission Request Request 1: Increase Prevalence of Non-USD/EURO Stablecoins

Recommendation: Vote Mission Request Request 1: Increase Prevalence of Non-USD/EURO Stablecoins. This mission targets a vertical that has not yet become established, much less dominated by a competing chain. The total budget is 15,000 OP, which also makes this a low-risk RFP to craft.

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2 Polls Closing October 30, 2024

Governor Update Proposal #3: Enable Onchain Treasury Execution
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support moving the treasury to onchain execution rather than management by a multisig. This new capability extends only towards OP portion of the treasury.

This includes 3-day timelock; audit report can be found here.

Recommendation: Vote For. This is a tiny step, and certainly not sufficient to satisfy ourselves or the other delegates who, combined, signed a petition to accelerate decentralization. 17,000,000 OP currently stands in support of that petition. This proposal still requires Foundation permission to post a proposal, allowing them to keep a de facto veto. It also does not address the much more valuable ETH owed to governance.

Overall, we find it disappointing that this appears to be the single item granted (if it even counts, given the permissioned nature of how it will work) on the extensive list that delegates requested. It’s beyond frustrating that Foundation feels the need to oversee governance spending, but governance is not allowed to oversee Foundation spending. It’s also ironic, given that governance is by far the smaller spender of OP tokens.

Season 6: Standard Rollup Charter Ratification
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support ratifying changes to the Standard Rollup Charter (full text found here).

Recommendation: Vote For. We don’t think this charter is as clear on some points as it should be, such as revenue sharing details, but we also acknowledge that it is an aspirational document, and has no legal, social, or other binding obligations on governance. Just like the Law of Chains more broadly, these are more guidelines to begin and maintain conversations with potential partners, and to our reading, in no way constrains the degrees of freedom of Optimism governance.

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We voted on the Onchain Treasury Transfer Test. This was a test to send a de minimus amount of OP via the new onchain governance mechanism.

1 Like
46

11 Polls Closing December 18, 2024

Onchain Treasury Transfer Cancellation Test
Summary: This poll is a test of the emergency cancellation measure for malicious or erroneous funds transfers.

Recommendation: Vote For. This is a test of the emergency cancellation functionality.

Upgrade Proposal #11: Holocene Network Upgrade
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support implementing the Holocene Network Upgrade.

This upgrade includes several components, the first of which is a change to block derivation. Span batches will now be strictly ordered, and invalidation occurs only from the point of invalidity, allowing for partial span batch validation.

It also adds EIP-1559 configurability.

The final change is a simplification of fee scalar configuration.

Recommendation: Vote For. The changes to derivation are primarily focused at removing code that appears to be unnecessary based on experience, and simplifying the code base in this area. From a practical standpoint, this places more emphasis on the Sequencer to keep the chain running smoothly, but does not empower the Sequencer with anything it does not possess today. OP Labs has communicated that the Sequencer software already is capable of handling this increased burden.

EIP-1559 allows for elastic gas limits, which scale costs towards a target. This was developed at the request of other OP stack operators, and we’re not sure we understand the argument that Optimism itself needs or wants this change, but will defer on this subject since it should not impact Optimism until/unless a future proposal changes the parameters for this.

More generally, only one portion of this update was audited. This is consistent with the OP Labs Audit Framework, but is still not a best practice, and is a clear case of being pennywise and pound-foolish. We would support governance stepping in to provide audit subsidies to developers authoring network upgrades if OP Labs and OP Foundation feel they cannot afford to audit every upgrade by default.

Season 7: Intent Ratification
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support ratification of a single Intent for Season 7, which is encouraging and improving interoperability. Formally:

A set of interoperable Stage 1 chains doing $250m per month in cross-chain asset transfers.

Recommendation: Vote For. Optimism has bet the farm on interoperability. Supporting that should be the top priority.

[Season 7: Anticapture Commission Amendment

](Season 7: Anticapture Commission Amen...)Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support amending the Anticapture Commission charter. Full details can be found here.

Recommendation: Vote For. These changes seem acceptable, and from a practical perspective will not alter much, except requiring the ACC participate in discussions where the Citizens’ House may consider a veto. In the future, providing a budget for the ACC, rather than relying upon retroactive funding, would be preferred.

Season 7: Grants Council Operating Budget
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support a Grants Council operating budget of 400,000 OP. Of that, 50,000 OP is a reserve budget, in case demand is high and additional reviewers are needed mid-Season.

This is a 210,000 OP reduction from Season 6, mainly in response to a smaller number of total reviewers, and splitting the Milestones & Metrics Subcommittee out into its own structure.

Recommendation: Vote For. This budget is, on a per-item basis, in line with expectations, and does not present any major surprises.

Season 7: Developer Advisory Board Operating Budget
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support a DAB operating budget of 190,000 OP.

This is a 100,000 OP increase from Season 6. The difference is largely driven by the addition of two new roles to aid with Foundation Missions, and modest increases to the compensation of all members in OP.

Recommendation: Vote For. The DAB has generally demonstrated a high level of usefulness, both to the Grants Council, and in community understanding and evaluation of protocol upgrades.

Season 7: Milestones and Metrics Council Operating Budget
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support a M&M operating budget of 170,000 OP.

Recommendation: Vote For. This is the first time the M&M has been under its own budget, so there is little to compare it to. The total combined budgets of the M&M and the Grants Council is still less than the total last season, which suggests that it is reasonable. Even if there is additional cost in spinning it out into its own body, there is a strong argument that the M&M should be independent of the Grants Council, since it is in many ways checking the work of the Grants Council’s chosen grantees.

Code of Conduct Council Dissolution Proposal
Summary: This poll asks if OP holders support dissolving the Code of Conduct Council.

Recommendation: Vote For. While we think the CoCC held value as a contribution path for junior members of governance, we agree that it is unnecessary and governance can be minimized in this area.

Season 7: Security Council Operating Budget [Onchain]
Summary: This poll asks if OP holders support an operating budget of 295,000 OP for the Security Council.

This is around 200,000 OP increase from the previous Season, which was funded by the Foundation.

The proposal will execute on-chain to the following multisig address: 0x42415E7D47Fb8080eb42f870BC2e04Ab0852a264

Recommendation: Vote For. The Security Council should answer to governance, so it needs to be funded by governance, rather than the Foundation.

Grants Council Mission [Onchain]
Summary: This poll asks if OP holders support transferring 10,000,000 OP to the Grants Council for the purposes of funding grants supporting the Season 7 Intent. The Grants Council would have full discretion in executing this mission.

This is an 8,500,000 reduction in grants budget from Season 6.

The proposal will execute on-chain to the following multisig address: 0x1795652665fAa2dfeF9865544ae8D3c65f9643A8

Recommendation: Vote For. This is the first time that the Grants Council will directly control funds it grants. The budget is smaller, which mostly reflects the decision not to continue the Superchain Grants program from Season 6.

Decision Market Mission [Onchain]
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support providing 500,000 OP to support projects utilizing the Decision Market. Butter, the Uniswap Foundation, and the Optimism Foundation are ineligible.

The proposal will execute on-chain to the following multisig address: 0x1795652665fAa2dfeF9865544ae8D3c65f9643A8

Recommendation: Vote For. It’s not entirely clear how these funds will be distributed, except that it will be done algorithmically, tied to market outcomes. It would be nice to know more about what that algorithm will look like, but it’s recognized that some liquidity or incentives will be needed to seed this decision market experiment. Whether it succeeds or fails will inform whether further funding is warranted in the future.

1 Like
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9 Polls Closing January 15, 2025

Security Council Elections Cohort B Members
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidates to elect to the Security Council. There are 6 open seats.

Candidates:
World Foundation

Andrey Petrov
OP Labs
L2BEAT
Alchemy
Maggie Love
Gauntlet
Test in Prod
Yoav Weiss
Ml_sudo
Kris Kaczor
Martin Tellechea
Ink
Coinbase
troy

Recommendation: Vote L2BEAT, Test in Prod, Yoav Weiss, Kris Kaczor, Martin Tellechea, Alchemy. L2Beat is a widely respected L2 watchdog group with plenty of technical expertise and multiple personnel available. Test in Prod, Yoav Weiss, Kris Kaczor, and Martin Tellechea previously served as Security Council members successfully. Test in Prod and Yoav Weiss make/have made technical contributions in the past to OP stack as well. Alchemy is included as another organization with deep technical expertise and multiple personnel available in the event of an emergency.

Grants Council Operations Elections
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidates to elect to the operations role for the Grants Council. There is 1 open seat.

Recommendation: Vote Bunnic. Nic is the only candidate, and also successfully served in this role in Season 6.

[Developer Advisory Board Foundation Mission Team Elections

](https://vote.optimism.io/proposals/89373814096940749239399795696169676931497831019947431093522618314329883874987)Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidates to elect to the Developer Advisory Board (Foundation Mission Team). There are 2 open seats.

Candidates:
Ed
Skeletor
Danyal

Recommendation: Vote Ed, Skeletor, Danyal. These are all three fantastic candidates and the DAB would be lucky to have all of them. Ed (aka wildmolasses) successfully served on the DAB last season, and, in our capacity as a Grants Council reviewer, we found their input useful. Skeletor is a co-founder of Wonderland, and Danyal is a core contributor hailing from the Base team.

Developer Advisory Board Governance Mission Team Elections
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidates to elect to the Developer Advisory Board (Governance Mission Team). There are 3 open seats.

Candidates:
Will

[Jepsen

](Season 7 Nominations: Governance Mission Team on the Developer Advisory Board - #3 by Jepsen)Blockdev
Godspower
Cooper01
Beskay
Shubham
Iain

Recommendation: Vote Will, Jepsen, Blockdev. Will and Blockdev successfully served on the DAB in Season 6. Jepsen successfully served on the DAB in Season 5. We would enjoy working with them again.

Developer Advisory Board Audit Request Team Elections
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidates to elect to the Developer Advisory Board (Audit Request Team). There are 2 open seats.

Candidates:
M4rio.eth
Noah.eth
Sujith
Gjaldon
Vagner
0x73696d616f
Shogoki
Unsafe_call

Recommendation: Vote gjaldon, 0x73696d616f, m4ario.eth, noah.eth. Gjaldon has successfully located bugs in Optimism itself, and 0x7369 has an impressive background as the former head of Three Sigmas. M4ario and Noah both also have exceptional experience through Spearbit.

[Milestones and Metrics Council Reviewer Elections

](Milestones and Metrics Council Review...)Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidates to elect to Milestones and Metrics Council. There are 3 open seats.

Candidates:
mel.eth (StableLab)
LauNaMu
AnthiasLabs
Mmurthy
Pavel
v3naru_Curia
Takeshi (Tané)
Pumbi (SEEDGov)
Angela

Recommendation: Vote Takeshi (Tane), AnthiasLabs, v3naru_Curia. Takeshi and AnthiasLabs both served on the Grants Council in Season 6, which means they will have a good understanding of how grants were awarded and will be measured. v3naru_Curia is an experienced member of the Milestones & Metrics Committee in Season 5 and 6 when it was part of the Grants Council.

Grants Council Final Reviewer Elections
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidates to elect to the Grants Council as final reviewers. There are 4 open seats.

Candidates:
MattGov.eth
GFX Labs
Michael
Jackanorak
Areta
MoneyManDoug
JashFi

Recommendation: Vote GFX Labs, MattGov.eth, Michael, Jackanorak, MoneyManDoug. Matt, Michael, Jack, and MoneyManDoug have successfully served on the Grants Council for multiple seasons. Jack served with us on the Superchain Grants subcommittee last season as well. We have also successfully served for the entire existence of the Grants Council and vote for ourselves to advance Optimism.

Grants Council GrantNerd Elections
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidates to elect to the Grants Council as GrantNerds. There are 3 open seats.

Candidates:
Megalod
Kumahada
Ramadhan
Brichis
Jrocki
Mastermojo
Sov
Marcus01
Debbie
Ugbuericsam
Liliop.eth
glory_Sherlock

Recommendation: Vote Jrocki, Mastermojo, Brichis. All three of these candidates successfully served on the Grants Council in Season 6. While we can only fill three seats, we also want to recognize Sov, who successfully served last season as well.

Season 7: Chain Delegation Program Amendment
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support amending the Chain Delegation Program to prioritize satisfying the Standard Rollup Charter criteria as the most important criteria instead of the last criteria. The Standard Rollup Charter can be found here.

Recommendation: Vote For. This is a reasonable amendment and should encourage chains to migrate to more technically robust features in some cases.

9 Likes
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1 Poll Closing Feb 5, 2025

Protocol Upgrade: Superchain Registry 2.0
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support amending the Superchain Registry requirements. Changes are largely putting emphasis on new members deploying via the OP Contracts Manager (OPCM) and having the most current, substantively unaltered code base.

Recommendation: Vote For. While the OPCM has not yet been audited, it has been in use for 4 months. The increased emphasis on standardization across OP chains is appropriate, given that interoperability probably depends on consistent assumptions about technical and security risks. While this is considered a protocol upgrade for governance purposes, no onchain action need be taken by governance, since the changes are for deployments of new chains.

1 Like
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1 Poll Closing March 4, 2025

Maintenance Upgrade: L1 Pectra Readiness
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support a protocol upgrade to harmonize OP stack with the Pectra mainnet upgrade.

NB: This is an optimistic poll, where voting is only required if OP holders oppose the proposal.

Recommendation: Do Not Vote. This is an optimistic proposal, and we do not oppose upgrading OP mainnet to be compatible with Pectra.

2 Likes
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1 Poll closing March 19, 2025

Upgrade Proposal #13: OPCM and Incident Response improvements
Summary: This upgrade includes several improvements for upgrading L1 contracts across the Superchain, and a Superchain-wide pause function accessible by the Optimism Foundation Safe. These changes have been audited by Offbeat Labs and Spearbit.

Recommendation: Vote For. These changes are primarily ways to streamline existing functions to make them less cumbersome and more able to respond to time-sensitive incidents.

NB: We missed this vote, but are publishing our prepared comment for the record.

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2 Polls Closing April 9, 2025

Upgrade Proposal #14: Isthmus L1 Contracts + MT-Cannon
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support upgrading L1 contracts to support a hard fork for the Isthmus upgrade (see Upgrade Proposal #15), as well as upgrades to the fault proof VM (Cannon). The Cannon upgrade is designed to remove memory constraints and alters how multi-threading occurs. New operator fee parameters were also introduced.

We strongly recommend voters read the full summary of technical changes here.

Recommendation: Vote For. These changes are prerequisite for Isthmus, and also implement changes expected to improve the fault proof challenge system. The operator fee changes allow for different OP stack chain operators to better customize fees to suit their own provability stack if they so choose, as well as provide flexibility for other ways to utilize the fee. External audits or reviews for this and Upgrade Proposal #15 were completed by Coinbase and Spearbit.

Upgrade Proposal #15: Isthmus Hard Fork
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support implementing the Isthmus upgrade. This upgrade introduces support for eight new EIPs associated with Pectra, and changes to the fault proof VM and operator fee parameters mentioned in Upgrade Proposal #14. Operator fees will be disabled by default.

We strongly recommend voters read the full summary of technical changes here.

Recommendation: Vote For. This upgrade is required to fully take advantage of and harmonize Optimism with the Pectra update on mainnet. External audits or reviews for this and Upgrade Proposal #15 were completed by Coinbase and Spearbit.

2 Likes
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2 Polls Closing April 30, 2025

Season 8 and 9: Budget Board Member Ratification
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support the creation of a Budget Board, which would be tasked with making recommendations on annual budgets for Citizens’ House and Token House, as well as make recommendations on how to proceduralize the staking of more ETH collected by the sequencer on behalf of Optimism governance.

Board member terms would be 12 months, with half the board elected in the future by Token House and half by Citizens’ House, and one nonvoting board lead.

An inaugural board has been submitted by the Foundation (affiliations in parentheses):

Lead:
Dane Lund (Alliance DAO)

Token House Representatives:
Xochitl Cazador (Optimism Foundation)
Michael Silberling (OP Labs)
Katie Garcia (UDHC)

Citizens’ House Representatives:
Carl Cervone (Open Source Observer)
Divya Siddarth (Collective Intelligence Project)
Eva Beylin (Optimism Foundation; The Graph Foundation)

Operational expenses are expected to be 220,000 OP for Seasons 8 and 9, but will be covered by the Foundation.

Recommendation: Vote For. Overall, this is a solid slate of initial members. Over time, we would like to see a steady movement away from Labs and Foundation affiliates given the potential for conflicts of interest that creates, since representatives are supposed to represent Citizen and Token Houses. Dane Lund, the proposed lead, was the inaugural lead for the Optimism Grants Council, which has generally been a success and has become the template for many grants programs outside Optimism.

Maintenance Upgrade: Absolute Prestate Updates for Isthmus Activation & Blob Preimage Fix
Summary: This poll asks OP holder if they support setting May 9th as the date to hard fork into the previously approved Isthmus upgrade. This update also includes a fix for a bug. Full details can be found here, and delegates are encouraged to review it.

NB: This is an optimistic proposal and will pass unless defeated.

Recommendation: Do not vote (optimistic approval). This is a bug fix and sets a specific time and date for the Isthmus hardfork, which was already approved.

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1 Poll Closing June 11, 2025

Season 8 and 9 Milestone and Metrics Council Selection
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support altering the selection process for Milestones and Metrics Council. The new selection process would become use of sortition (randomly choosing) amongst a pool of candidates that must meet one or more of the following criteria:

  1. Analytics Skills
  • Previous M&M Council service
  • Completed relevant analytical Foundation Mission
  1. Reputation in the Collective
  • Contributor above wannabe level
  • Held a governance role in Season 6 or 7
  1. Operational Security
  • Completed OpSec training by Opsek

Recommendation: Vote Against. As we extensively argued during the governance call where this idea was first introduced, sortition has few successful examples in history, and relies upon an unshakeable belief that the process will be fair and transparent.

Sortition was famously used in Ancient Greece and some of the Northern Italian city-states like Venice and Genoa as a way to combat corruption and nepotism. Notably, even processes with multiple rounds of sortition failed to prevent the sons of previous rules being elected based upon their bloodline and political connections.

Greek and Italian sortition, however, had a major advantage over Optimism: the sortition was simple and performed physically in public (e.g. drawing colored stones out of a jar). In an industry that says to verify everything, the Foundation has not presented a method of sortition that would be transparent to observers, and would effectively be the Foundation stating they performed the random selection in private and then reporting the results.

Sortition, at its core, is about transparency and fairness. There is little reason, based on the information presented in the call and on the forum, that the sortition process for selecting this technocratic role would be transparent – and so it follows, also no guarantee of fairness.

Critically, sortition makes people unaccountable – there is no impact on chances of serving a new term unless a person is so negligent as to be disqualified in the next round – and also is blind to competence. The qualification criteria presented is generally just previous experience in governance, which is confusing because it locks in incumbents from a practical perspective – not a traditional goal of sortition, which is typically trying to remove them.

More broadly, this is part of a long history of experimentation with public choice in Optimism (futarchy, retro funding rounds, bicameralism). In general, these have all been interesting but ultimately wasteful (a large share of retro funding) or not impactful (bicameralism). At this point, we are requesting the Foundation pause conducting political and public choice experiments, so that resources can be focused on value-additive contributions to Optimism and the Superchain.

These are all generally points we raised on the governance call, and have not seen a response that satisfies our questions and criticisms of using random selection to fill a technocratic role.

1 Like
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5 Polls Closing July 2, 2025

Season 8/9 Grants Council Charter
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support an amended charter for the Grants Council to cover both Season 8 and Season 9. The main substantive effect is renewal of the Grants Council as an entity and re-election of Gonna.eth as the Lead.

Recommendation: Vote For. GFX Labs has served on the Grants Council since its inception, including the Seasons where Gonna has been the Lead. He has done an excellent job to date, and we have full confidence in his ability to continue to deliver value to OP holders through an organized, publicized, and thoughtful grants program.

Season 8/9 Milestones and Metrics Council Charter
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support an amended charter for the Metrics and Milestones Council to cover both Season 8 and Season 9. The main substantive effect is renewal of the Metrics and Milestones Council as an entity and re-election of PGov as the Lead.

Recommendation: Vote For. GFX Labs has worked closely with PGov, both during the time that Metrics and Milestones was internal to the Grants Council and during collaboration at other protocol governances. PGov operates in a professional, low-drama manner, which is exactly what is needed for the Metrics and Milestones Council.

Governor Update Proposal: Removing Abstain Count from Quorum
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support removing abstentions from quorum calculation. The update to the governor has been tested and audited.

Recommendation: Vote Against. On the one hand, quorum tends to be harder to maintain over time, and this exacerbates that problem. On the other hand, that is a larger issue that requires a comprehensive solution. Referring to practices in governmental and corporate settings, presence is typically counted towards quorum, rather than active vote. Stretching that analogy to DAOs, a vote to Abstain is effectively attendance without voting, which does count towards quorum in most settings.

As additional context, we have seen other major DAOs, like Uniswap, now struggle to achieve quorum. We also view this as a low-stakes issue, since abstentions are relatively rare in Optimism DAO votes.

Season 8/9 Developer Advisory Board Charter
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support an amended charter for the Developer Advisory Board to cover both Season 8 and Season 9. The main substantive effect is election of the Developer Advisory Board as an entity and re-election of Ed (aka wildmolasses) as the Lead.

Recommendation: Vote For. Our past interactions with wildmolasses and the DAB in our capacity as grants reviewers have found him to be helpful and thoughtful.

Season 8: Intent Ratification
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support the following high-level goal for Season 8:

A set of interoperable Stage 1 chains doing $100m per month in cross-chain asset transfers

Recommendation: Vote For. This overall goal for Season 8 is consistent with the emphasis on the to-be-shipped interop upgrades. Note that the Intent for Season 7 was a set of interoperable Stage 1 chains doing $250m per month in cross-chain asset transfers, despite interoperability not shipping during Season 7. This new Intent marks a significantly more conservative goal.

1 Like
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2 Polls Closing July 9, 2025

Upgrade 16 Proposal: Interop Contracts, Stage 1, and Go 1.23 Support in Cannon
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support a bundle of protocol upgrades. The main portion of the upgrades is to prepare OP stack chains for interoperability. Additionally, the permissioned DeputyGuardianModule is removed, in order to maintain a Stage 1 rating according to the L2Beat rollup categorization method. Other changes to keep OP up to date with Ethereum are also included, as well as a maximum gas limit for OP stack chains.

In addition to internal reviews at OP Labs, the code was reviewed via contest on Cantina and audited by Spearbit.

Recommendation: Vote For. None of these are controversial changes, and only concerns about security would cause us to vote against.

Budget Board Advisory Proposal for the DAO Operating Budget for Seasons 8 and 9
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support an annual operational budget cap of 4,440,000 OP.

Recommendation: Vote For. The Budget Board revised this number up from 2,300,000 OP after delegate feedback, including our own. This budget cap doesn’t have to be spent, but is enough that it will prevent council leads from being overly competitive for resources, and better reflects that governance needs operational budget to expand to take over some activities currently run by the Foundation.

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8 Polls Closing July 30, 2025

Anticapture Commission Dissolution Proposal
Summary: This proposal would formally dissolve the Anticapture Commission.

Recommendation: Vote Abstain. While we have consistently been of the view that the Anticapture Commission did not play a vital role, it has also evolved into one of the few “junior contributor” roles for delegates and stakeholders looking to become involved in governance. The ACC’s activities generally enforce a certain level of context amongst its active members, and a position on the ACC has served as a stepping stone to more senior roles in the past. So the ACC has value as part of the pipeline of building a more diverse and deeper bench of governance participants. However, we cannot bring ourselves to vote against its dissolution simply on the basis of being make-work.

Grants Council Election: Final Reviewer
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidates should fill the four seats for Final Reviewer on the Optimism Grants Council.

Candidates:
Ale77.eth
Brainstorm
Doug sugma
GFX Labs
Glory-eth
Maksym
MasterMojo
Mattgov.eth
Michael
Mignenkoff.eth
Re7 Labs
Teamforce.eth
vwtao.eth

NB: This is approval voting, and voters may select more candidates than there are seats.
NB: GFX Labs is a candidate

Recommendation: Vote GFX Labs, Mattgov.eth, Michael, Doug Sugma, Mastermojo. Including ourselves, we are confident that all of the incumbent members of the Grants Council can continue to build out a more active and impactful role for the Grants Council in reviving Optimism’s DeFi ecosystem and supporting members of the Superchain.

Grants Council Election: Operations
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidate should fill the one seat for Operations on the Optimism Grants Council. This is a non-voting role.

Candidates:
Bunnic

Recommendation: Vote Bunnic. Nic previously served in the Operations role last Season and did a good job.

Season 8/9 Operating Budgets
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support each of the four council operating budgets.

NB: This is a threshold-based vote. All budgets that receive at least 17m votes will be approved.

Recommendation: Vote For on all budgets. Note that the total is slightly higher than the 4.44m OP approved budget cap, which will result in a small, de minimis reduction to all budgets if all four are selected.

Developer Advisory Board Election: Members
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidate should fill the seven seats for the Developer Advisory Board. Previously there were three committees elected separately.

Candidates:

0x937…c1B
Blockdev
Denispro2015.base.eth
Devtooligan
Kalambet Peter
M4rio
𓀣 Odysseas.eth 𓀢
Shazow
Vectorized
Wbnns

NB: This is a Joint House Vote.

Recommendation: Vote Blockdev, M4rio, devtooligan, wbnns, Odysseas.eth

Blockdev is seeking reelection and served well last season.

M4rio previously served on the Audits Subcommittee for the Grants Council in Season 6, and is an active top 1% OP stack developer.

Devtooligan served on the DAB in Season 6, and served well.

Wbnns is seeking reelection and served well last season and in Season 6.

Odysseas.eth is an active top 1% OP stack developer.

Other candidates appear qualified and will no doubt serve well, but we wish to concentrate our selection on those we consider proven choices.

S8 Governance Fund Mission: Grants Council
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support providing a grants budget of 6.29m OP for Season 8.

NB: This is an optimistic proposal, which will pass unless 20% of votable supply votes against

Recommendation: Vote For. GFX Labs is running for Grants Council and believes in its ability to responsibly and materially deploy grants funding.

S8 Governance Fund Mission: Developer Advisory Board
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support providing a Developer Advisory Board grants budget of 949,000 OP for Season 8.

NB: This is an optimistic proposal, which will pass unless 20% of votable supply votes against

Recommendation: Vote For. DAB grants are for meeting highly technical, narrow goals like audit subsidies.

Milestones & Metrics Council Election: Reviewers
Summary: This poll asks OP holders which candidates should fill the three seats for Reviewer on the Milestones & Metrics Council.

Candidates:

@luhpring_
0x9B7…ce7
Brichis
Cypherbadger.eth
Padla
SEEDGov
SuperchainEco.eth
Superpuperwallet.eth
Tané
V3naru

NB: This is approval voting, and voters may select more candidates than there are seats.

Recommendation: Vote Brichis, SEEDGov, SuperchainEco.eth, Tane, v3naru. This is an extremely competitive election with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to qualified, seasoned candidates. While nearly all candidates have our confidence, we have tried to make our vote more meaningful by limiting it to those with significant experience as Optimism governance contributors.

2 Likes
57

1 Poll Closing August 20, 2025

Security Council Season 7 Retroactive Funding Request
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support providing an additional funding of 346,920 OP to Season 7’s Security Council. This would amount to 24,780 OP per signer. Members previously received 20,000 OP each.

Recommendation: Vote For. This is a case that highlights the issues with denominating pay for key roles in OP rather than dollars. At the time of initial approval OP had more than 2x the market price it enjoys today. Going forward, members of the Council should be aware of the market risk they bear by accepting OP payments, but an even better solution would be to shift towards denominating pay in currency terms rather than in-kind token terms

1 Like
58

1 Poll Closing September 25, 2025

Maintenance Upgrade: 16a
Summary: This poll asks OP holders if they support an upgrade to roll back some previously approved interoperability-related code, as well as some minor upgrades for customizability of the OP stack.

*NB: This is an optimistic poll
*
Recommendation: No vote necessary. This is an optimistic poll and the changes are minor. The DAB has also agreed that it poses little risk.

1 Like