Optimism Gov Summary | July 15 – August 1st
We’ll share the latest activity in the Collective. You’ll find:
- Voting updates
- Commissions & Councils updates
- Forum highlights
- What’s New in the Collective?
- Upcoming Calls
Season 8/9 kickoff
Season 8 has officially begun! 
It kicked off yesterday, on July 31, with one Intent: $100M/month in cross-chain transfers across Stage 1 chains, a concrete goal to drive Superchain adoption and reduce platform risk for the Collective’s stakeholders. To support this, governance has been redesigned with a more minimalist structure. Delegates are no longer incentivized to vote, optimistic approvals are now used for upgrades, and both the Collective Feedback and Anticapture Commissions have been sunsetted. All council budgets were approved following Budget Board guidelines and ETH/OP stipend repricing. New council members have been elected, and the Citizens’ House now formally represents chains, apps, and end-users.
Voting Updates
Special Voting Cycle 39c wrapped up with the final pieces of the transition into Season 8. Here are the results:
-
Anticapture Commission Dissolution Proposal
: This proposal recommended not renewing the ACC for Season 8. Designed to prevent early capture, it mostly served an advocacy role without needing voting power. As protocol upgrades are now optimistically approved, its function became less relevant. Future risks should be addressed through more adaptable, transparent mechanisms. -
S8 Governance Fund Mission: Grants Council and S8 Governance Fund Mission: Developer Advisory Board
(both Optimistically approved): The S8 Governance Fund Missions were approved, allocating 6.29M OP to the Grants Council and 949k OP to the Developer Advisory Board to boost interop TVL, transaction fees, and verified developer adoption (down from ~9M OP and 1.285M OP in Season 7, respectively). -
Season 8/9 Operating Budgets
(Approved as a bundle)- Developer Advisory Board Operating Budget Seasons 8 and 9 : The 974k OP operating budget, proposed by Lead Ed, was approved for Seasons 8 & 9, covering stipends, stewardship roles, retro rewards, and multisig costs over a 12-month term.
- Grants Council Operating Budget for Season 8 and 9: Led by Gonna, the Grants Council’s 980k OP budget for S8 & S9 was approved: 490k OP per season, with 450k for stipends, 39k locked for ops, and 1k for multisig.
- Milestones & Metrics Council Operating Budget: This budget proposed by Juanbug Lead, was approved at 984.7k OP for S8 & 9 (492.35k OP per season) covering stipends, multisig ops, bridge periods, and a data analytics mandate.
- Security Council Operating Budget : The budget proposed by Lead Alisha was approved at 1.51M OP for Seasons 8 & 9—752.22k OP per season to compensate 14 members, plus ~5.8k OP for multisig management.
-
Milestones & Metrics Council Election: Reviewers:
- SEEDGov
- Brichis
- V3naru
-
Grants Council Election: Final Reviewer:
- Mattgov.eth
- Michael
- GFX Labs
- MasterMojo
-
Grants Council Election: Operations:
- Bunnic
-
Developer Advisory Board Election: Members:
- devtooligan
- blockdev
- Odysseas.eth
- m4rio
- Vectorized
- wbnns
- shazow
The following two proposals were voted on only by the Citizens’ House:
- S8 Retro Funding Mission: Developer Tooling (Optimistically approved)
- S8 Retro Funding Mission: Onchain Builders (Optimistically approved)
Forum Updates
- Season 7 Impact Analyses and Season 8 Budgeting:
- Foundation created a central hub to consolidate all Season 7 accountability updates and Season 8 budget decisions.
- Season 7 Retro Funding – Early Evidence on Onchain Builders Impact:
- Open Source Observer presents an analysis on the measurable impact of Onchain Builders in Retro Funding.
- Season 7 Retro Funding – Early Evidence on Developer Tooling Impact:
- A second evidence report from Open Source Observer, this time focused on Developer Tooling.
What’s New in the Collective?
- Superchain Upgrade 16 is now live
: approved by OP Governance and already deployed, brings key improvements to the OP Stack. It includes smart contract changes to enable future interoperability across the Superchain, meets L2Beat’s updated criteria for Stage 1 decentralization on chains like OP Mainnet, Base, Ink, and Unichain, and raises gas limits to 500M per block. - OP claims are now open for SuperStacks participants: This experimental pilot was designed to test incentive mechanisms for accelerating DeFi and interoperable assets across the Superchain, and it exceeded expectations
. Now, it’s time for participants to claim their well-earned rewards. - Base is ushering in a new era of innovation and utility for the Superchain, all built on Ethereum and the OP Stack: Announced at A New Day One, Base becomes Base Chain , introducing major upgrades like Flashblocks for faster transactions, new Base Build tools to help developers grow and monetize, and the transformation of Coinbase Wallet into the Base app—a super app combining social, chat, payments, and trading.
- Retro Funding results
: Retro Funding distributed 2.6M OP in June to 154 onchain apps and 89 developer tools. By recognizing both apps and the infrastructure behind them, Retro Funding continues to empower developers to keep building across the Superchain.
Next Calls
No official calls announced for early August yet—stay tuned in the Optimism Calendar for updates.
Congratulations to all newly elected Council members for Seasons 8 and 9 We’re excited to see this cohort bring their talent and values.
Are we missing something? Feedback and suggestions are always welcome