Ratification: Law of Chains

Technical Proposals 📃
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Ratification: Law of Chains

The proposal constitutes a ratification of the Law of Chains. The Law of Chains is one of the most important governing documents of the Optimism Collective. The Law of Chains is not a procedural specification or playbook for Optimism Governance to enact decisions in a multi-chain context. Instead, it is a neutrality framework intended to reliably inform governance decisions.

You can reference the full draft of the Law of Chains here.

A section-by-section summary can be found here.

Thank you to the delegates for leaving valuable community feedback on the draft over the past several months. We’ve responded in a series of responses starting here.

What does the Law of Chains mean for governance?

The Law of Chains forms the basis for many processes and accountability structures in governing the Superchain. In upcoming Seasons, community members can expect to apply the Law of Chains in the following ways:

  • Season 5 will introduce an Allowlist of acceptable sequencers for OP Chains to use. This Allowlist will be maintained by governance: sequencers can submit a proposal to the Token House to be added to this Allowlist.
    • Token House voters should evaluate the proposed sequencers’ commitment to upholding the Law of Chains in deciding whether to approve them or not.
    • Token House voters may also vote to remove a sequencer from the Allowlist if the sequencer is in violation of any part of the Law of Chains (for example, if the sequencer is impermissibly censoring user transactions).
  • Future protocol upgrades should be evaluated to understand their impact to each stakeholder in the Superchain (users, chain governors, and chain servicers), along with the platform as a whole, so voters can make sure each protocol upgrade continues to uphold the Law of Chain’s assurances.

Ratification

If ratified, the Law of Chains will be appended as an addendum to the Working Constitution. Procedures for Optimism Governance to implement the Law of Chains will then be added to the Operating Manual (for example, a process for sequencer additional or removal).

As outlined in the Operating Manual, Token House Ratification requires a 51% approval threshold (30% quorum).

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Will be voting for ratification. Document looks fine and seems to evolve nicely with time

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The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking and ideation of the two.

Having had the questions we asked in the thread that introduced the Law of Chains V0.1 answered, we vote in favor of the proposal, as we see it as a very good first step to codify and hold accountable the dynamic relationship between different stakeholders in future superchain ecosystems.

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Voted For,
The law of chains will be instrumental for the growth of the Superchain. I am glad to see constant adjustments in our attempt to making a complete and neutral/fair document