Optimism Gov Summary | May 2nd - May 23th
Yesterday started the last cycle of Season 7, Cycle #38 will run til June 11th.
Here’s a quick summary of the Collective’s latest activity. You will find in this brief:
- Voting updates
- Commissions & Councils Updates
- Forum updates
- What’s New in the Collective?
- Upcoming Calls
Voting Updates
No votes took place during voting cycle #37.
Commissions & Councils Updates
Grants Council
If you read the last post, you already know that the Grants Council closed its application window at the end of Season 7 and will reopen submissions in Season 8. A Season Reflection may be published soon—stay tuned on the forum!
Anti-Capture Commission
The Future of the Anticapture Commission
This discussion document was created internally by the Anti-Capture Commission (ACC) to map out possible paths for the Commission as it heads into Season 8. As a fully initiative-driven meta-governance body its future role depends entirely on the Collective’s decision.
Key highlights include:
- Only ~14.33 % of OP’s ~1.66 billion total supply is currently votable (≈115.6 million OP; https://static.optimism.io/tokenomics/circulatingSupply.txt), with roughly 1 billion OP scheduled to unlock over the next two years (see [PUBLIC] OP Token Unlock (Estimated)).
- Core capture risks are identified as technical (blocking or approving proposals to harm protocol integrity) and financial (draining treasury funds or misusing emissions), with specific vectors such as single-entity dominance, multi-entity collusion, and abuse of privileged rights.
Some open questions were shared, from streamlined voting processes to onchain powers and research-oriented roles—and now invite the Collective to weigh in with their perspectives in the forum post. Head over to the forum post to share your thoughts!
Milestones & Metrics Council
Looking ahead to Season 8, Foundation plans to introduce a new member selection method—replacing open elections with a stratified random sortition among pre-vetted, publicly attested contributors, prioritizing expertise and impartiality over popularity. We’ll be watching the forum for more details as these updates roll out.
Forum Updates
New proposals and announcements on the forum:
- Superscan Metrics Overview: Retro Funding Season 7
- Block explorers are widely regarded as public goods—open ledgers that anyone can consult at no cost. Yet behind the familiar transaction tables lies a sophisticated, developer-first SaaS layer: high-throughput APIs, analytics dashboards, and smart-contract verification pipelines. This tooling is where explorers create both economic value and network leverage, and it is precisely why protocols invest in giving them ever-richer data interfaces.
What’s New in the Collective?
- In April, Retro Funding awarded 2.6 M OP to 206 projects—8 M OP over three months—and leaves 8 M OP still available this season. Go check the results here: Retro Funding Recipients - OP Atlas
- @WakeUp_Labs shared updates about a mission they are working on to provide hands-on technical and strategic support, helping projects go from concept to onchain deployment faster on Optimism. More here: Optimism as Venture Studio: Mission Updates
- Superchain spotlight @World_Foundation mini apps are in-app Dapps inside the World App, and is a way to seamless identity verification, instant onboarding, and direct access to its global user base: Mini Apps | World Docs
- After a month with 100M+ TVL and rising activity, SuperStacks is updating XP multipliers—6× for lending markets, 4× for productive fee/TVL pools, 1× for balanced pools, and 0.25× for stable pairs—to focus rewards on real economic impact; track your rates at app.optimism.io/superstacks.
- Welcome @EthereumTGU to the collective: Ethereum TGU - Delegate Communication Thread
Last Joint House
We had the Joint House Community Call on May 20th were Lavande walked us through the public Optimism Working Models for Decentralization facing Season 8, explaining that the team is close to locking in the onchain citizenship rules, has been strengthening the veto process to avoid stalemates, and is laying the groundwork for permissionless proposals and more automated operations in future .
Also Gonna recapped Season 7’s Grants Council performance, sharing that 8.3 million OP was allocated across 19 projects and generated $291 million in TVL—nearly three times the conservative $100 million forecast.
Recordings and a full recap by @alexsotodigital are available here: Joint House Community Calls Summaries - Season 7 - #8 by alexsotodigital
Next Calls
- Budget Board Community AMA on May 27th 18:00 UTC.
- govNERDS Community Office Hours on May 27th
- Next Joint House Community Call will be on June 17, 2025 18:00 UTC
All Optimism governance events can be added to your calendar here
Are we missing something? Feedback and suggestions are always welcome, please leave them here