Thanks to members of the Feedback Commission for providing input and feedback on Season 6 drafts.
Guide to Season 6 
Season 6 begins on June 27th and runs through December 11th. Grant applications open on July 18th and run every 3 weeks through December. You can find all dates on the public governance calendar.
All details about what happens between now and then are in the Reflection Period Voting Guide.
Don’t want to read? Watch the Season 6 Overview from the Token House Community Call on 5/14.
Time stamps
06:50 - Lavande gives S6 overview
28:55 - Ben gives overview of Blockspace Charter Framework
52:32 - Brief Q&A at the end
Acknowledging Season 5 Contributions
Delegates are rewarded retroactively for their participation in the Token House. You can find retro rewards for Season 5 here. Rewards are made in accordance with a new Collective Rewards Framework, which is the first step in transitioning this responsibility to a Budget Board, likely to be elected in Season 7.
How did we get here? Seasons 1 - 5
- Season 1 Theme: Genesis and unstructured community grants
- Season 2 Theme: Establishing structure with grant committees
- Season 3 Theme: Refining structure with the Grants Council
- Season 4 Theme: Working as a Collective (Introduction of Missions, Intents, and Trust Tiers)
- Season 5 Theme: Governance resiliency (Introduction of the Security Council, Law of Chains, Developer Advisory Board, and Anticapture Commission)
Season 6 Theme: Optimizing to support the Superchain 
As you can see above, Season 5 introduced many new programs. In Season 6, we’ll pause to reflect and refine these programs, optimizing them to support strategic goals for the Superchain. Throughout Season 6, we also aim to provide more transparency into key milestones for transferring more control over the governance system to the community via various public roadmaps.
These proposals are based on 100’s of pieces of feedback documented by the Foundation throughout the Season, reports and analysis conducted by the community, periodic feedback surveys, public feedback threads, the Collective Feedback Commission, retrospectives conducted by community representatives, etc.
Intents
Intents are high level strategic goals the entire Collective works towards. Each Intent has a target metric indicating what success looks like for each Intent.
- Season 5: Intents applied to the entire Collective but specified that the Governance Fund was only meant to support OP Mainnet. The Foundation set 3 out of 4 Intents, and the community set Intent #3: Improve the Consumer Experience.
- Season 6: The Foundation will propose all Intents, which will now be ratified by governance. Intents will apply to the entire Collective. The Governance Fund will support the Superchain but will no longer support technical decentralization under Intent #1.
- You can see the Foundation’s Suggested Mission Requests under each Intent here.
Intent 1: Progress Towards Decentralization
In Season 6, Intent #1 encompasses both governance and technical decentralization. In Season 5, it only encompassed technical decentralization.
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Developer Advisory Board Renewal (DAB):
The Developer Advisory Board was created to help the Collective evaluate technical decisions.
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Season 5: The DAB reviewed all technical Missions under Intent #1 (Progress Towards Technical Decentralization) and helped the Grants Council assess any technical milestones.
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Season 6: If renewed, the DAB will help the Grants Council assess all technical grants and milestones. They will also provide plain english explanations of all protocol upgrades and be required to provide 1/4 delegate approvals on Protocol Upgrade drafts.
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Anticapture Commission Amendments (ACC):
The anticapture commission was created to empower a group of high context delegates with 10M OP in delegation with the mandate to inform the Citizens’ House of any capture in the Token House.
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Season 5: The anticapture commission was delegated 10M OP in delegation to counter the voting power of other large stakeholder groups (investors, OP Chains, etc.) and mandated to prevent capture in the Token House.
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Season 6: The ACC was initially authorized through the end of Season 6. To date, the ACC’s primary impact has been in pushing the Foundation (a key stakeholder in the Collective) to provide more transparency into technical governance parameters and to reduce our control over those parameters. Governor Upgrades require governance approval as a result of these efforts. Amendments are proposed to make minor changes based on learnings in Season 5.
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Code of Conduct Rescoping: The Code of Conduct has been rescoped multiple times since the end of Season 4, based on continuous learnings. Please reference CoC Rescoping #2 to understand the option to renew the Code of Conduct Council for an additional Season.
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NEW in Season 6: Continuous Transition of Governance Power to the Community:
- Stage 1 Decentralization: A variety of protocol upgrades will help Optimism reach Stage 1 decentralization. See the Season 6 Reflection Period Guide for more details.
- Blockspace Charters: Introducing Blockspace Charters, a practical implementation of the Law of Chains! The Standard Rollup Charter will be ratified during Season 6.
- On-Chain Execution: In Season 6, we plan to share a roadmap outlining the path to on-chain execution. Delegates may also be asked to approve multiple Protocol Upgrades that bring us closer to on-chain execution throughout Season 6.
- Security Council Election: The Security Council enacts Protocol Upgrades and is comprised of a group of trusted community members. The first Security Council election for Cohort A will occur in August!
Intent 2: Bring Chains to the Superchain
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Chain Delegation Program Amendments (CDP):
The Chain Delegation Programs enables OP Chains to become active participants in Optimism Governance.
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Season 5: The Chain Delegation Program approved 10M OP to be used to grant temporary delegation of 1M OP to any OP Chain joining the Superchain.
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Season 6: The program was initially approved to run through Season 6. The program wasn’t utilized in Season 5, due to a variety of factors. Amendments are proposed to rescope and extend the program to support our strategy of onboarding new OP Chains to governance (more details here)
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Intent 3: Grow Application Developers on the Superchain
Missions grants are made out of the Governance Fund and support the Collective’s strategic Intents. Select delegates can make a Mission Request outlining the specific types of grants they’d like the Governance Fund to make.
- Mission Requests v2.5:
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Season 5: We iterated on the Mission Request process in Season 5. You can read the full retrospective here.
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Season 6: Members of the Grants Council and Collective Feedback Commission will be able to create Mission Requests, subject to Token House approval. The application process will be simplified and refined based on grant applicant user research and closer collaboration with the Grants Council. As always, v2.5 will be treated as an experiment to re-assessed at the end of Season 6. See also:
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As last year, the Foundation will share an Annual Budget Report and delegates may choose to put forward proposals for Inflation Adjustment.
Some other changes you might notice in Season 6:
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- An impact-focused framework (non-binding) to standardize rewards across the Collective. The primary use case will be in the Token House’s evaluation of prospective budgets, but these guidelines can also help ensure more consistency and predictability for voter rewards (delivered retroactively at the end of each Season, based on governance participation.)
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Trust Tiers
- We will improve the Trust Tiers, based on user research, and transition them from a conceptual minimal viable product to an attestation based mechanism for building reputation within the Collective. More information will be provided before the start of Season 6.
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Open Design Process
- We’ve embarked on Phase 1 on the Path to Open Metagovernance, launching the Collective Feedback Commission, which informed early drafts of Season 6 designs.
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The govNERDs
- govNERDs facilitate community understanding and participation in more governance processes. In Season 6, we will transition this program from a Foundation Mission Request to an open contribution path, enabling more community members to get involved (more details at the start of Season 6!)
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Steady State Governance Calendar
- As our governance system matures and we grow the number of external contributors interacting with it, we need more predictability in our governance calendar. Seasons are now standardized into 6 month periods broken up by 6 week Reflection Periods. There will be no downtime for Protocol Upgrades and we strive to limit the downtime for the grants program to 9 weeks, twice per year.
See the Season 6 Reflection Period Guide for detailed outline of what you’ll need to do during the Reflection Period!
Citizens will be asked to opt-in to participate in governance in Season 6, more details soon!
We understand delegates have other commitments and may need to step away. Please see the Delegate Resignation Process.