Season 7 Anticapture Commission Charter Amendment

Governance Design 📐 Metagovernance
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Season 7: Anticapture Commission Charter Amendment Proposal

The Anticapture Commission was conceptualized and formally introduced as a Meta-governance structure in Season 5 of Governance, with a view towards preventing capture across the Optimism Collective, while simultaneously representing the interests of key individual delegates. Originally, the Anticapture Commission Charter was authorized to operate for two seasons. It was further amended and carried forward into Season 6. Now at the completion of Season 6, the Anticapture Commission Charter is being proposed for renewal. If approved by the Token House, the Anticapture Commission would be delegated 10M OP from the Governance Fund in Season 7 and 8. The Anticapture Commission will not have an operating budget.

If this proposal is approved, it will supersede any earlier Charter for the Anticapture Commission.

Goals of the Anticapture Commission

  1. Act as a governance structure composed of high-context delegates, with an aim towards preventing capture in the Token House and across the Collective: The main goal of the Commission is to prevent capture across the Optimism Collective. The Commission’s activities are performed in furtherance of this main goal.
  2. In furtherance of Goal No. 1, the ACC shall provide alerts to the Citizens’ House when concerns arise over significant imbalances in power between groups of stakeholders. Any member of the Collective may flag a concern to be considered by the Anticapture Commission via the commission’s email or through the governance forum. The Commission is expected to brainstorm and identify areas of capture occurring in the collective, and proactively discuss ways in which capture can arise and how to mitigate such circumstances, including exploring and conducting dry run scenarios to identify and mitigate capture. In alignment with the Season 7 Intent, the Commission can monitor the progress in the decentralization objectives for the Season, and verify that the interoperability volume objectives among chains part of the Superchain are met fairly.
  3. Vote on all proposals that are subject to a Citizens House veto: Exercising the Commission’s delegation is important to passing Protocol Upgrades and other proposals subject to Citizens’ House veto. Hence, the Commission is expected to cast its vote on all such proposals. KPI for this Goal: The Commission is expected to vote in 100% of governance upgrade proposals.
  4. Vote on other proposals that are not subject to a Citizens House veto: In situations where the Delegate Members of the ACC believe a capture is occurring or is likely to occur, or it would be in the interest of the Optimism Collective for the ACC to signal its voting intention, the Commission may also cast its vote on proposals that are not subject to a Citizens House Veto.
  5. Act as a communication bridge between the Token House and the Citizens House: While the Anticapture Commission provides its duties in service to the token house, its alerts during instances of capture form an important input for any Citizen’s House Veto. Hence, the Anticapture Commission will seek to act as a bridging governance structure between the two houses of Governance, and in furtherance of this goal, the Anticapture Commission and its Delegates will seek to be part of Citizens House discussions in instances where the Citizens House considers a veto during the veto period. KPI for this Goal: The Commission is expected to participate in all discussions where the Citizens House is considering a veto.
  6. Evaluate decentralization progress across the Collective and hold the Collective accountable to its various decentralization objectives, including the milestones in the Foundation-proposed Decentralization Model, the Season 7 Intent and in discussions around Phases II and II in the Accelerated Decentralization Proposal.

Commission Structure

The Anticapture Commission would be composed of high impact delegates. Anticapture Commission votes would be cast based on the process finalized by member delegates which will be outlined in the Commission’s Internal Operating Procedures (IOP) at the start of the Season.

Signing Structure

The Anticapture Commission will operate a X of Y Gnosis Safe Multisig, where X represents the threshold as agreed to by the Members of the Commission in the IOP for the season, and Y represents the total number of Delegate Members who are part of the Commission.

Presently, the ACC Multisig is deployed on the Optimism Network with the contract address: 0x3EEe61B92C36e97Be6319BF9096A1ac3c04a1466 as a 10-of-25 Multisig, and this is subject to change as per future season’s membership, and as per the IOP approved by members of the Anticapture Commission.

The Anticapture Commission will also operate a Snapshot Space for achieving internal quorum on various decisions and proposals.

Signing Actions

The Commission’s Multisig and Snapshot Spaces will be operated in accordance with the Internal Operating Procedure agreed to by the members of the Commission. The Commission’s Multisig will be solely used to exercise its vote or signal on Governance proposals, using the OP tokens delegated to the Multisig. The Commission shall not be authorized to make other transactions from its Multisig such as transfers or grants of any kind.

Membership

Membership will be determined based on the below criteria at the beginning of each Season.

  1. Members must be an individual or professional delegate and not a representative of a protocol or corporation.
  2. Members, as described above, must be in the top 100 delegates AND
  • Maintain = > 70% voting participation over the previous Season (including the following Reflection Period.)
  • Have received retro rewards for governance participation in any Season.
  1. All qualifying members must opt-in to be part of the Commission. Any qualifying member may choose not to opt-in for any reason. If less than 50% of qualifying members choose not to opt-in before the start of Season 7, the Commission may be reconsidered.

All members will need to KYC to vote as a member of the Anticapture Commission

Member Responsibilities

  1. Provide feedback, approval and/or coordinate authorship of any reports circulated to the Citizens House.
  2. Must attend the ACC Internal Meeting. Attendance can be fulfilled by making comments on the Internal Meeting agenda document and providing feedback.
  3. Maintain = > 50% voting participation on the Anticapture Commission Snapshot Space and the Anticapture Commission Safe (onchain) voting. As the ACC Multisig may have a higher number of signing authorities and a lower threshold, a Member may be considered as a participant in a particular vote if they sign or approve the proposal, or if they actively contribute to its discussion, or provide documented feedback on the particular vote.
  4. Participate in any discussion with the Citizens House during the Citizens House Veto Period, if the Commission has alerted the Citizens House to any potential capture in the Token House.
  5. Members must elect a Commission Lead for the Season. ​​Members may also elect a Commission Operations Coordinator (Ops) for the Season. In the event that no Ops is elected, the responsibilities of the Ops will be assumed by the Lead.

Lead Responsibilities

  1. Draft and enforce the Internal Operating Procedures.
  2. Host the regular Cycle Anticapture Commission Internal Meetings.
  3. Ensure that the Commission’s Multisig and other voting structures are up-to date and in consonance with the current membership of the Commission.
  4. Create onchain voting transactions from the delegation wallet, and Snapshot voting proposals for the Commission members to vote on.
  5. Author, or coordinate authorship, of any reports circulated to the Citizens House
  6. Request renewal of the program at the end of the Season, if desired and discuss future funding strategies for the ACC with various stakeholders.

Ops Responsibilities

  1. Prepare written summaries of ACC Internal Meetings, which will be made to the Optimism Governance.
  2. Coordinate Member Activities: Track and document member voting, attendance, and other activities throughout the season.
  3. Authoring drafts for Communication threads and other ACC deliverables by coordinating with the Lead, as the need arises.
  4. Facilitate Approvals: Liaise with Commission members to secure approvals for urgent votes which may arise through the Season.

Resignation process

  1. If a member wishes to resign, they should inform the Lead.
  2. The Lead will then update the quorum on Snapshot and initiate the removal of the member from the Multisig.
  3. Their resignation will be communicated to the Collective through our Communication Thread.
  4. If the total number of ACC members falls below 10, the Foundation will remove delegation.

Budget of the Anticapture Commission

The Anticapture Commission does not have any operating budget. However, Delegate Members of the Anticapture Commission can expect that their time and effort in participation towards the Commission, and maintaining a 50% voting participation in the Commission’s votes throughout the season will be considered as a contributing input towards any potential Retro Governance Participation Rewards for the Season.

Github PR

A PR has been created in the ethereum-optimism / OPerating-manual Repo for the Season 7 Anticapture Commission Charter Amendment

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A question…

The Grants Council budget recently suggested by Gonna states that the Grants Council will not be requesting Retro Funding based on their work in Season 7. I think the stated reasons are very clear and sensible. Certainly, from a citizen point of view, it is not easy to fairly evaluate “additional value” in a case like this.

I was wondering if you think the same reasoning applies to the ACC, and if a similar clause might be included in the ACC charter (in the budget paragraph)?

My thinking is that it would make sense to leave it to the Retro Governance Participation Rewards to reward ACC members - at least in the case where there has been no capture attempts and so no need for the ACC (including the lead) to go above and beyond their basic/predictable responsibilities in ‘peace times’. Is that a fair assessment?

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Thank you for the question and its a good discussion to have.

My view is that it would be unfair to compare the Retro Funding inclusion of 2 separate Governance Structures/Entities when one has a clearly defined operating budget while the other doesnt have a budget. So if we consider the Grants Council which has a forecast budget of 390k OP, and the Lead has a proposed compensation of 35,000 OP for the season, and other members have various proposed compensations outlined as well. Whereas for the ACC, under the Retro Governance Participation Rewards framework the ACC Lead and every member of ACC gets 3000 OP, which is not much compared to the Retro Governance Participation they would receive as regular Delegates without being a member of ACC (assuming both ACC Member Delegate and non-ACC Member Delegate fulfil the respective rewards criteria), for a full season of additional responsibilities as members of ACC, which is over and beyond their regular Delegate responsibilities. Given this, there is much less incentive for Delegates to work in the ACC and especially as the Lead (since in my experience the ACC Lead puts in a lot of the work in the ACC), and even for other Delegates who have to be active and respond to a potential emergency situation throughout the season, in case there is a capture.
Whereas in Retro Funding, though any reward is much delayed (often 1+ year), the Lead can expect a higher reward for their work. Atleast this was the criteria in RPGF 6 which was the first occasion where the S5 and S6 ACC leads were compensated for additional rewards beyond the Retro Governance Participation Rewards.

So my thinking is that for Governance Entities with separate budget, they have decided to forego inclusion in Retro Rewards but for entities without any formal proposed budget such as the ACC, they may still be rewarded by Retro Rewards in a future date if the Collective feels their work has brought an advantage to Governance and to the Collective as a whole.

Infact the reason we have outlined inclusion in the Retro Governance Participation Rewards in the Charter (which was not there in the earlier ACC Charters ) is because some ACC Members felt their reward was not commensurate with the time and effort put in, and it would help to outline atleast Retro Governance Participation Reward inclusion in the Charter, so as to incentivize Top 100 Delegates to be a part of the ACC.

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Thank you for this thoughtful answer!

I agree, having a budget or not is a decisive difference.

Yes, I think I can accept that.

I’m a bit confused, though, about your assessment of the 3000 OP retroactive participation rewards for ACC members not being adequate.

It says here:

…that “While the Season 6 Collective Rewards Framework suggested 4,000 OP for the Anticapture Commission’s Impact Rating, rewards have been adjusted to 3,000 OP based on survey of ACC members about what their rewards for the Season should be. The Collective Rewards Framework has been updated to reflect this for Season 7.”

Also, an active top 100 delegate and member of the ACC might in Season 6 get 4000 OP for being an active delegate + 2000 OP for participating in reflection periods + 3000 OP for being an ACC member.

Compare that to the participation rewards of a highly engaged citizen which in Season 6 was 2000 OP for full participation in three separate retro funding rounds + 250 OP for voting on 70% or more of veto proposals.

The most hard-working reviewer (participating in all three retro rounds, reviewing more than 200 applications before the rounds) got 2120 OP for that.

It may well be a case of me simply lacking insight into the work of the ACC. Can you help me make sense of these things?

I don’t want to downplay the impact of the ACC. I’m simply trying to understand what’s fair, and how different kinds of work should be evaluated within the ‘impact = profit’ framework.

The question of how to reward leads is a separate one, I think. It is definitely worth considering, but I don’t think RPGF - given to the entire council - is the best way to reward council leads.

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Hello again ACC and @web3magnetic! As part of my role as a member of the Collective Feedback Commission, I’ve been asked to provide feedback on this charter amendment proposal.

A note on my context: I have reviewed the original charter, the season 6 amendment, and the season 6 retrospective, but I have not followed ACC activities closely.

Feedback on charter/goals/substance

Broadly, I think the goals make sense. I think there is room for improvement, however, in how they are communicated:

  • My understanding is that the primary objective of the ACC is to prevent capture across the Optimism Collective, but that is not explicitly declared as a goal. I would make that very explicit as the primary goal.
  • Where relevant and appropriate, I would like to see specific KPIs outlined for each goal, including explicit quantitative expectations. Goals 3 and 4 (as presently outlined) are good candidates here. This will help facilitate evaluation by the Collective, including in end-of-season retrospectives.
  • Generally, and especially for goals that don’t lend themselves well to quantitative KPIs, I’d recommend using more declarative language in the goals to make it clearer what is expected of the ACC. Goal 6, for example, could be improved as follows:

Alternate language for goal 6:
Evaluate decentralization progress across the Collective and hold the Collective accountable to its various decentralization objectives, including the milestones in the Foundation-proposed Decentralization Module and Phases II and II in the Accelerating Decentralization Proposal.

  • If there are any goals that are optional, stretches, or extensions of the ACC’s core responsibilities, I’d suggest marking them as such so that accountability is clear.

Something else I’d like to see the charter address is how it aligns with the Season 7 Intent. I personally think that it does — resistance to capture is an orthogonal-yet-critical component of any progress-oriented objective! — but it’s possible that that may not be clear to everybody and I would hate for the ACC to be questioned simply because those dots were not connected.

Finally, I don’t see any reference to the dry-run scenario discussed in the season 6 retrospective thread. I think that is a valuable activity for the ACC to conduct.

Feedback on budget

I think the ACC should have an operating budget. There are three reasons behind my thinking here:

First, the lead and ops roles have concrete responsibilities and should be compensated in order to attract and retain the right people for the job.

Second, their responsibilities are of a type that can be predicted fairly well up front. Therefore, a market rate can be determined a priori rather than relying on retro rewards.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the activities related to fulfilling the ACC’s primary responsibility to prevent capture are hard for external observers to measure. On the other hand, it would be easy to observe the ACC actively preventing an acute capture scenario. Retro rewards, therefore, are likely to under-reward the ACC in times of “peace”.

Worse, the situation would create a perverse incentive for member(s) of the ACC to manufacture a capture event for the ACC in order to be compensated handsomely for thwarting it. While this is not likely, it’s important to ensure that compensation systems are incentive-aligned so that they are robust to shifting conditions and culture over the long run.

Having an operating budget would not be incompatible with being eligible for retro funding.

Feedback on amendment structure and process

These are nitpicky, however…

  • Per the charter amendment process, please add a link to the amendment PR on github
  • Similarly, please list the changes from the season 6 charter
  • I’d also like to see links to the other proposals and sources you’re referencing, eg the Accelerating Decentralization Proposal
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I will share some context of the ACC’s role:

Ideally the ACC should have participation from very high context Delegates to share their inputs on all aspects of the collective from technical upgrades, decentralization, capture resistance mechanisms across the L2 space, etc so that the collective can benefit from their domain expertize. So for instance in S6, apart from voting on proposals throughout the season, based on inputs from various ACC members, the ACC was able to identify and document technical concerns with the removal of fraud proofs during the Graphite Upgrade proposal, and through the season also identify points of failure with Agora voting mechanism. For both these instances, the ACC documented the issues and proposed solutions. In Season 7, part of the ACC Charter is to assist with the Milestone Based Decetralization Framework, which addresses a path towards decentralization gradually decentralizing all aspects of Optimism. In this scenario, different delegates may be able to advise in domains where they have subject matter expertise.

Now based on the Season 6 Retro Participation Rewards, a non-ACC Top 100 Delegate will qualify for 6000 OP while ACC member Delegates will qualify for 9000 OP. There is a 3000 OP additional reward for being a member of the ACC for the entire season, over the retro governance participation reward for just participation in voting cycles. This may not incentivize top delegates with important contextual inputs to be a part of and contribute to the ACC.

I agree that the highly engaged Citizens reward seem on the lower end.

Future reward design space ideation could consider:

  1. Having a bigger proportion of Retro Governance Participation Rewards to top 100 delegates flow through ACC, this may incentivize current top 100 non-ACC delegates to be part of the ACC and share their input on various aspects of governance.
  2. Have a separate budget for the ACC and/or have a finders incentives for identifying points of capture and ways to mitigate capture, as @spengrah has suggested in the CFC Feedback.
  3. For Citizens, specific Retro Funding Rounds for Citizens where the High Impact Citizens are rewarded proportionally based on their work.
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Thank you.

I think what you are sharing makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain these things.

Maybe the key is that ACC members take on responsibility for the Token House similar to (while obviously also very different from) what highly engaged citizens do for the Citizens House when they do research and participate in debates and share their experiences with the process and come up with ideas.

And I recognize that more experience and knowledge is required to responsibly participate in the contexts that you describe than what is the case for citizens at this point. Taking on responsibility should definitely be rewarded.

I think there may be something to your point 1) Having a bigger proportion of GPR to top 100 delegates flow through ACC.

  • Recognizing that the true value comes from the engagement on all levels, not simply or primarily from voting.

Similarly, I guess there could ideally be a larger degree of differentiation among citizens between rewarding simply voting vs. rewarding responsible commitment and genuine engagement.

(Given the experimental nature of RPGF and the Citizens House, I actually think ‘responsibility’ and ‘genuine engagement’ are fairly good descriptors of what a citizen should ideally contribute - expertise is good for many things, and we DO need experts wrt RPGF as well, but for democracy and ongoing experimentation there should be a different kind of diversity along with openness and responsible engagement).

It is hard to objectively measure true responsible engagement, though.

It makes sense to me that, in the context of the Token House, membership of and participation in the ACC could well be one way to go about it.

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The Anticapture Commission Charter Amendment Proposal received a mix of support and criticism from the community, reflecting diverse perspectives on its implications for Optimism’s governance.

POSITIVE FEEDBACK:

1.Improved Decentralization and Governance Safeguards:

  • Proponents emphasized the ACC’s role in mitigating risks of power concentration within the Token House, which aligns with the broader goals of decentralization and equitable governance. This safeguard was seen as a necessary step to ensure that no single stakeholder group could dominate decision-making processes​ [Optimism Agora] [Optimism Collective]
  1. Enhanced Delegate Representation:
  • By prioritizing high-impact delegates with significant governance participation, the proposal strengthens the representativeness and effectiveness of the ACC. This was seen as a way to bring more accountability and expertise into the governance process​ [Optimism Collective]
  1. Alignment with Bicameral Structure:
  • Supporters noted that the ACC complements Optimism’s bicameral governance model by acting as a balance to the Citizens’ House. It serves to foster a more democratic, transparent environment​ [Optimism Agora] [Optimism Collective]

CRITICISM AND CONCERNS:

1.Undefined Scope and Mandate:

  • Critics, including entities like GFX Labs, raised concerns about the ACC’s lack of a clearly defined scope. They argued that ambiguity in its mandate could lead to inefficiency or overreach, potentially undermining the governance framework​ [Optimism Agora]
  1. Philosophical Tensions with DAO Principles:
  • Some dissenters questioned the necessity of a separate commission to address imbalances, suggesting it may conflict with the traditional DAO principle of prioritizing tokenholder interests. They argued that existing structures might already be sufficient to address governance concerns​ [Optimism Agora]
  1. Risk of Redundancy or Resource Drain:
  • Critics worried that the ACC might become a resource-heavy body with limited practical impact, consuming funds and attention that could be better directed toward other initiatives​
    [Optimism Agora]

TAKEHOME:

The proposal was ultimately approved, signaling community recognition of its potential benefits. However, the discussions highlighted the importance of refining the ACC’s role and ensuring transparency and accountability in its operations to address concerns about scope and efficiency.

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Hello @spengraph and thank you once again for your valuable feedback!

I have revised the Charter, and as per your suggestions,

  1. The goal of preventing capture is further declared as an explicit goal in Goal 1.
  2. KPIs have been outlined for Goals 3 and 5.
  3. The alternate language proposed for Goal 6 has been included in the Charter.
  4. Alignment of the ACC Charter with Season 7 Intent has been included in Goals 2 and 6.
  5. The dry run scenario is now referenced in Goal 2.

Budget:

I agree with the premise that the ACC should have a budget and also that the activities of the ACC in preventing capture will be hard for external observers to measure. In an earlier reply, I have outlined some potential funding models the ACC can explore.
With this Season’s charter, we are following the model from the previous Season and I have confirmed that the ACC members will be eligible for Governance Participation Rewards which will come from the Foundation.

A potential strategy to consider would be to direct a larger portion of the Governance Participation Rewards through the ACC. For example, if the primary reward pathway for Delegates in the Retro Governance Participation Rewards is through active participation in the ACC and not merely voting on proposals, it would automatically align incentives and high-context Delegates will more inclined to participate in the ACC.

Considering that this would be the third Season of the ACC, and other Councils like the Security Council are proposing a budget for the first time in Season 7 despite being a Representative Structure for few seasons longer than the ACC, the ACC can thoroughly discuss various aspects of funding over the course of Season 7, and potentially consider introducing its own budget in Season 8 of Governance. I have added this as a responsibility for the ACC Lead for Season 7 in the Charter.

Charter Amendment Process:

  1. The Github PR has been added and referenced to in the Charter.
  2. Changes have been updated in the PR.
  3. Relevant links have been added for reference.

Once again, I thank you for your feedback!

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One quick reaction here is that I think we want to avoid incentives/structures that lead to the ACC membership being too correlated with the overall OP voting power.

With that in mind, a few things to consider

  • capping ACC membership
  • rotating ACC membership
  • including non-delegates (eg citizens) in the ACC
  • balancing ACC member compensation with delegate compensation so that the former doesn’t become a requirement to stay in the delegate game
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We are an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and we believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and we believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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We are an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and we believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power. I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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