This post serves as an introduction to the upcoming Season of Optimism Governance. The audience for this post is all governance participants (delegates and Citizens).
If you’re a builder, check out how to Get a Grant.
Don’t want to read? Watch the Season 7 Overview here.
Guide to Season 7
Season 7 begins on January 16th and runs through June 11th.
You can find all other dates on the public governance calendar.
Celebrating Season 6 Accomplishments
- Thank you to all governance participants that contributed in Season 6. You are a critical part of the Collective. As usual, delegates and Citizens are rewarded retroactively for their participation in governance. You can find retro rewards for Season 6 here. Rewards are made in accordance with the Collective Rewards Framework.
- In Season 6, we made important steps towards continued decentralization
- Three out of the past six protocol upgrades were proposed by core development teams other than OP Labs.
- Multiple OP Chains are now governed by Optimism governance
- Base is now running our permissionless fault proofs
- Security Council members are now elected
- Moved the governance fund onchain via Governor Update #3
- Ratified the Standard Blockspace Charter, taking a major step towards shared Superchain upgrades
- Onboarded first OP Chains to governance via the Chain Delegation Program
- Piloted the Collective Feedback Commission, the first step on the path to open metagovernance
- Experimented with Citizenship selection methods via guest voter experiments
- Published working models for decentralization
How did we get here? Seasons 1 - 6
- 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
Season 7 Theme: Shared success
In Season 7, all contributors to the Collective will be focused on a core pillar of our Superchain Product Vision: Interoperability.
While the Season 7 Intents focus the Collective on making progress towards the Superchain Product Vision, our commitment to decentralization has not changed. The goal is not to have the Foundation and OP Labs accomplish these Intents by ourselves but rather to build a governance system capable of accomplishing these goals without us in the future.
The evolution of Seasons 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 goals. Please see the Season 7 Intents post for full details
Season 6:
The Foundation proposed Intents which were ratified by the Token House. While the Token House was working towards the Intents, the Citizens’ House was unaware of them and the Foundation set its own OKRs.
Season 7:
The Foundation proposes Intents, which are ratified by the Token House and the Citizens House. These Intents have also informed the roadmaps of both OP Labs and the Foundation, which have been made public. The entire Collective is now working towards the same Intents.
A set of interoperable Stage 1 chains doing $250m per month in cross-chain asset transfers
Missions
Collective contributors work towards the Intents by executing Missions. Missions are specific initiatives aimed at making measurable progress towards the Intent. They are clearly scoped, and can be executed by Collective contributors start-to-finish in less than 12 months.
Season 6:
There were two types of Missions - those authored and fulfilled by the Foundation and those authored and fulfilled by the Grants Council. All Missions were meant to contribute towards the Intents, but a lack of standardized metrics made this challenging to measure.
Season 7:
Everything is a Mission. All Missions are working towards the same Intent! The Impact of these Missions will be measured across the Collective at the same time, on recurring measurement dates. There are three types of Missions:
- Foundation Missions: Now applicants are selected by the Developer Advisory Board and impact will be measured by Open Source Observer and/or OP Labs. OP Chains have also given input into these Missions.
- Retro Funding Missions: You can think of these as ongoing metrics-driven “Rounds.” More information here.
- Governance Fund Missions: The Token House will have the ability to make grants that make progress towards pre-specified metrics. These grants may be funded using the Mission framework, or any other grants framework. More information here.
Token Allocation
The eligibility criteria for OP Chains will be shared in January; you can expect roughly 10 chains to be eligible.
| Project | Budget | Fund | Who selects projects? (Module I) | Who evaluates impact? (Module H) | When is impact evaluated? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundation Missions | 6M OP | Foundation Unallocated | Developer Advisory Board | Open Source Observer and/or OP Labs | At the end of the Season |
| Onchain Builders | 8M OP | Retro Fund | All eligible projects can participate | OSO proposes evaluation method, badgeholders selec | Regularly throughout Season |
| Developer Tooling | 8M OP | Retro Fund | All eligible projects can participate | OSO proposes evaluation method, badgeholders selec | Regularly throughout Season |
| Governance Fund: Grants Council | 10M OP | Governance Fund | Grants Council | Milestones and Metrics Council and/or Open Source Observer | At the end of the Season |
| Governance Fund: Decision Market | 500k OP | Governance Fund | Decision market outcomes | Milestones and Metrics Council and/or Open Source Observer | At the end of the Season |
Councils, Commissions, and Boards
- The Grants Council, Developer Advisory Board, Security Council, and Code of Conduct Councils are all persistent Councils expected to continue in Season 7 unless a Dissolution proposal is put forward and approved. Councils and Boards will be responsible for evolving their own mandates in Season 7, with guidance from the Foundation (to be shared on November 26th.) Details about the Council and Board renewal process can be found in the Reflection Period Guide.
- The Anticapture Commission has completed the term initially proposed by the Foundation but any member may propose an amendment to continue the Commission into the future, using the process outlined here (to be shared on November 26th.)
- The Season 7 Collective Feedback Commission is already in full swing!
Governance Processes Supporting Interoperability
- Governance will vote on Protocol Upgrades that enable interoperability between a set of Stage 1 chains
- Token House will be asked to ratify an Interoperability Blockspace Charter
How is the Collective moving towards decentralization in Season 7?
Modules reference portions of the Decision Diagram.
- The entire Collective is now working towards a shared set of Intents and success metrics (Module A)
- The Citizens’ House will now ratify the Intents, alongside the Token House, and approve Retro Missions (Module F)
- The Governance Fund budget supporting the Metrics Mission will be transferred onchain to a multisig [link to policy coming soon] managed by the Season 7 Milestones and Metrics Council (Module G)
- The Milestones and Metrics Council will operate their own grants claiming process, with a claiming tool supported by Governance Fund grants (Module J)
- Councils, Commissions, Boards will draft their own mandates, with the collaboration of the Foundation. This will allow the Grants Council to have more autonomy in defining their own grants process and its scope (still subject to the Grants Policies). (Module I)
- Cohort B of the Security Council will be elected, making the Council fully elected by the Token House (Module M-O)
- The Foundation will work towards passively managing sequencer ETH (Module D)
- Season 7 will make progress towards the Decentralization Milestones, and dependencies, highlighted in yellow. Watch this video for a walkthrough explaining how Season 7 progresses our Working Models for Decentralization.
See the Season 7 Reflection Period Guide for detailed outline of what delegates and Citizens need to do during the Reflection Period.
We understand delegates have other commitments and may need to step away. Please see the Delegate Resignation Process.
Citizens that do not wish to participate in Season 7 may opt-out or go on hiatus by emailing citizenship@optimism.io from the email address linked to your Optimist profile.
This way, more pathways will be available for those who want to contribute to the Collective.