Firstly, a personal update. I had announced resigning from OP governance in Jan 2025 with 1 yearâs notice. In Jan 2026, I hadnât shed enough votes, so I âsoft-resignedâ - reserving the right to vote on important or contentious proposals. That time has come, so I will be voting on this proposal.
I have been a vocal critic of $OPâs tokenomics since day 1, in replies here, in informal chats, but also in formal discussions, everything from reducing inflation to 0%, to pausing Governance Fund to burning RetroPGF and implementing a monetary policy proposal type to voting against budget proposals. Most of my recommendations (other than inflation adjustment) were unpopular and fell on deaf ears. $OP price was $1-$4 during much of this time, and a lot of people simply assumed I was a delusional doomer about $OPâs monetary policy. Indeed, my failure in convincing people about the matter was one of the reasons I resigned - there was simply too much of a gap between my interest in fiscal prudence and the indiscriminate mismanagement of $OP.
Given that context, it will be no surprise that I think this is an irresponsible and dishonest proposal and I have voted against.
To be clear, the strategy of appealing to enterprise is fine. Cancelling the airdrops also has some merit, given they failed to increase the userbase adequately after a point. However, this proposal fails to address past evidence, learnings, and risks - plenty of which suggests the Foundationâs handling of $OP and incentives has been a mixed bag at the very best. Appropriating 24% of circulating supply or 12.5% of total supply with vague handwaving is unacceptable at this stage.
Instead, there should be a detailed, transparent, well-justified proposal for how exactly the funds will be used, and how they might lead to a different outcome than the failures of the past. Iâd recommend a different proposal for each âdealâ.
Lastly, I will point out the real issue is OPâs tech hasnât kept up to where it needs to be in 2026, the decentralisation I had asked for in 2022 still hasnât materialised, but most importantly of all, demand for applications simply hasnât been there, and ecosystem-wide, there have been inadequate efforts to stimulate that. I wonât even mention the $OP token.