Governor Upgrade Proposal: Onchain Controls MVP

Technical Proposals 📃
1

Proposal Title: Governor Upgrade Proposal: Onchain Controls MVP

Proposal Type: Governor Upgrade

This proposal will go to vote during voting cycle 44

Executive Summary

This proposal introduces the Onchain Controls MVP, a smart contract upgrade that transfers critical controls from off‑chain processes to on‑chain governance. By assigning the Optimism Governor’s admin role to the Security Council and introducing an onchain authorizedProposer role, the Token House gains enforceable, on‑chain authority while the Optimism Foundation retains safety controls. All contracts have been audited and are ready for deployment.

Motivation

Today, the Optimism Foundation can unilaterally upgrade governance contracts. As Optimism matures, the Token House should wield greater hard power. This upgrade moves certain execution paths on‑chain in order to:

  • Align authority with tokenholder vote outcomes and remove OF as a single‑party upgrade authority in the spirit of increased decentralization.
  • Preserve OF flexibility over in-development metagovernance and safety parameters without regressing the above.

Specifications

Under this upgrade, the Governor proxy is updated to a new implementation that introduces the authorizedProposer role, which will be initially controlled by the existing Optimism Foundation Governor.manager address. This authorizedProposer role can be set via setAuthorizedProposer, giving the OF abiltiy to incrementally migrate proposal power onchain. For early development of such onchain migrations, see (design‑docs PR #260).

At the same time, control of the Governor proxy itself is transferred to the Security Council’s L2 alias, making all future Governor Upgrades subject to governance direction and requiring they be implemented by the Security Council

Contracts Added / Changed

Contract Change Notes
Optimism Governor (Proxy) Ownership Transfer Transfer admin role from OF to Security Council via changeOwnership
Optimism Governor (Code) Upgrade New implementation at 0x2759E14AC4f1FC268931034955b62764eB9A1151; Foundation keeps manager role and serves as initial authorizedProposer.

Implementation PR: Cumulative Governor changes and L2 canceller role by corydickson · Pull Request #44 · voteagora/optimism-governor · GitHub

Governance Controls

Actor Power Mechanism
Token House Execute treasury moves & contract upgrades Governor Upgrade votes direct Security Council
Phase 0 Security Council Upgrade Governor implementation Holds admin on Governor
Optimism Foundation Cancel malicious transactions, adjust ProposalValidator parameters, and set or update Authorized Proposer Holds manager role on Governor (can call setAuthorizedProposer) and direct cancel role on Timelock
Authorized Proposer Submit proposals that have been authorized (follow metagov procedures), initially set to Optimism Foundation Address stored in Governor; initially the pre-existing OF Manager address; updatable by Manager or via Timelock proposal

This approach enables Optimism Governance harder assurances around its control of voting, while retaining the ability for the Optimism Foundation to continue iterating on metagovernance by setting new ProposalValidator smart contracts to hold the authorizedProposer role directly.

Security Considerations

  • Full audit performed by OpenZeppelin found 8 Low-severity findings, all of which have been addressed.
    • Note that the timelock script also audited in the above report is reserved for future use and not a part of this upgrade.
  • See Action plan for rollout-related risk mitigation efforts.

Impact Summary

  • Minimal direct user impact (no UI changes, no downtime).
  • Significantly increases on‑chain power of the Token House.
  • Separates the ability to upgrade protocol-level parameters and pass votes from ability to adjust metagovernance parameters affecting proposal acceptance.

Action Plan

  1. :white_check_mark: Deploy & Verify New Governor Implementation: 0x2759E14AC4f1FC268931034955b62764eB9A1151
  2. Security Council Test Transaction
    1. Transaction verification tools have been updated to allow for the Security Council to take L2 actions from L1 safely.
    2. Foundation will coordinate a practice no-op transaction on mainnet to confirm it works in the production environment.
  3. Governor Upgrade
    • Optimism Foundation upgrades Governor to latest implementation at 0x2759E14AC4f1FC268931034955b62764eB9A1151.
    • Transfers admin to Security Council L2 Alias.
    • Grants Optimism Foundation the ProposalValidatorAdmin and cancel roles.
  4. Security Council Key Transfer
    • Once the Governor has been upgraded and Security Council test transaction is complete, Optimism Foundation calls changeOwnership to set Security Council as new owner.

Conclusion

The On‑Chain Execution MVP shifts real authority to governance while retaining essential safety valves. With audited contracts, phased deployment, and robust cancel mechanisms, this upgrade strengthens Optimism’s governance without disrupting users.

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