Security Council Operating Budget Seasons 8 & 9

[Alisha]

OPSC Operating Budget — Seasons 8 & 9

Proposed Lead: alisha.eth
Proposed Operating Budget: 1,514,440 OP 1,510,250 OP
Contact Info: DM @Alisha on the forum

Council Charter

Link to existing Security Council Charter on GitHub
No major changes proposed to the Security Council Charter this cycle.

Breakdown of Council Operating Budget

Timing: This budget funds the Security Council for 12 months, from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, covering both Season 8 and Season 9. A retroactive funding component for Season 7 (January 2025 – June 2025) is also included.

OPSC Member Stipends [unlocked, superfluid stream]

• Number of Members: 14 (13 Signers + 1 Lead)
• Monthly Compensation per Member: 8,955 OP
• Total Season 8 Budget: 752,220 OP (14 × 8,955 × 6)
• Total Season 9 Budget: 752,220 OP (14 × 8,955 × 6)

Signer Responsibilities — Each OPSC Signer is responsible for secure key management, executing protocol upgrades across 5+ OP Chains, participating in monthly calls, onboarding rehearsals, responding to emergencies, and maintaining liveness via the Liveness Module.

Lead Responsibitliies — The OPSC Lead coordinates upgrade ceremonies, onboarding rehearsals, monthly calls, emergency response coordination, and communication across OP Labs, Foundation, and governance participants.

Optional Budgets

• Operating Budget (locked for one year): Not requested
• Multisig Management (unlocked): 10,000 OP 5,810 OP
  Reimbursement for hardware devices and signer tooling costs.

How Should Governance Participants Assess Impact?

Performance KPIs

• Total number of ceremonies signed (>12 per season)
• Signing completion per upgrade (within 48-hour signing window)
• Member uptime tracked via Liveness Module (action required every 98 days)
• Emergency rehearsals conducted annually

Budget Summary

Budget Line Item	OP Requested	Notes
Season 8 — OPSC Members (14)	752,220 OP	14 members × 8,955 OP/month × 6 months
Season 9 — OPSC Members (14)	752,220 OP	14 members × 8,955 OP/month × 6 months
Multisig Management	10,000 5,810 OP	Hardware device reimbursement and signer tools
Total OP Requested	1,514,440 OP 1,510,250 OP

[GFXlabs]

@Alisha

Total OP Requested 1,861,360 OP

This would represent ~42% of the annual budget cap that was just approved.

We would support amending this budget to include a portion of the expenses to be paid for with ETH from the ~20k ETH accumulated by governance.

[Gonna.eth]

@Alisha

Season 7 Retroactive Budget (unlocked)

To reflect the increased workload during Season 7, the Security Council is requesting 346,920 OP in retroactive compensation. This amount will be divided equally across all signers (13) and the Lead (1), with each recipient receiving 24,780 OP for Season 7.

Since the Season 7 budget was approved in December 2024, the Security Council’s operational scope and responsibilities have expanded substantially:

• The OPSC is now signing for 5 OP Stack chains, in addition to Optimism Mainnet.
• The frequency of signing ceremonies has materially increased:
  • In Season 7, the OPSC completed 19 upgrade ceremonies over a six-month period.
  • In comparison, only 6 ceremonies were required across the entirety of 2024.

While I understand that the market conditions forces this Retroactive and every council dealt with the same issue, this portion of the budget should not be considered as part of the 4.4M proposed by the Budget Board for S8 and S9 given that the expense is for S7.

The S7 GC “returned” 160,116 OP from their grants budget and 50.000 OP from it’s operational budget so at least 210.116 OP could be reproposed from S7.

[brichis]

Also, I think that if you consider Season 7, we’ll exceed the cap that the Budget Board has established, so I assume this isn’t possible but Idk If the leads have already discuss this scenario:

DAB 974k OP
M&M 989.4k OP
GC 980k OP
SC 1.861m OP
= 4.804m OP

[Gonna.eth]

We had and removing this from the budget 4.4M consideration will put us 20k OP above 4.4m that is very manageable.

I fully understand Alisha’s position, establishing a conservative budget in Dec 24 for a workload and getting double the amount of work stipulated with no access to more budget request during the entire season is unmanageable, but this is still a Season 7 compensation to be included on S7 expenses.

I believe the result of Alisha’s limitations during the season 7 and every council member experience of S7 stipends it’s why every leads are trying to preserve talent with their budget.

[danelund.eth]

The Budget Board met to discuss each proposal and will provide feedback on observations for each proposal. I was chosen to provide some of the thoughts and questions the Board has on this proposal. I will caveat that we are not planning to take a position on precise numbers, but rather to provide questions that we believe the community should ask and / or have answered in making a decision on how to vote on the proposal.

1. The Board observed that the rewards are flat between members of the Council. Could the Council benefit (and reduce the budget request) by tiering the roles to provide for one or two more intensive administrative roles and other pure operational roles?

2. Could the budget as articulated be tranched into a lower base amount with some retroactive holdback based on number of required upgrades and / or number of incidents that require responses?

3. The Budget Board did not find that the retroactive allocation for the past season would fit best with the prospective nature of the Governance Fund. An added difficulty with this part of the proposal is that there is no guarantee that the signers will be identical from S7 to S8. The proposal requires the community to block together very important, but separate considerations: should there be a retroactive reward for S7 and should the prospective budget serve sufficiently for S8? The Board is not aware of the mechanism for accomplishing the S7 retroactive rewards request and think this is a governance question. The Board is sympathetic to the request.

In general, the Board understands the Security Council to be a highly important function. The Board does not take a view on what rewards are necessary to ensure sufficiently high-quality stewards fill the position on a prospective basis; however, the Board does believe the community should satisfy itself that the current structure is efficient (and this is not to suggest that it is not).

[Alisha]

Hi Dane, thanks for your comment. I reached out to you in May 2025 to provide the Budget Board with context related to how the Optimism Security Council (OPSC) works, given our budget is expected to fall within the Operating Budget defined by the Budget Board. After cancelling our call in May, you stated:

“The security council will propose its own budget. We are providing a top-down budget as to the pool of rewards, but this is not in view of specific councils.I had originally thought we were proposing specific council budgets which is why I started reaching out to leads.”

For the benefit of Delegates, the Budget Board determined the DAO operating budget without a single conversation with me, as OPSC Lead, to establish the state of funding for Season 7 and any challenges or recommendations we might have.

@brichis

we’ll exceed the cap that the Budget Board has established

The Budget Board did nothing to coordinate between the Councils, so it is not surprising that the budget requests are higher than the cap.

@danelund.eth

The Board observed that the rewards are flat between members of the Council. Could the Council benefit (and reduce the budget request) by tiering the roles to provide for one or two more intensive administrative roles and other pure operational roles?

I have already reduced my compensation as Council Lead to match the compensation level of council members. If compensation was tiered, it would only make the Council Lead compensation higher relative to SC signers. Here is the Season 7 budget as a point of comparison, and a comment from a current OPSC member about the SC Lead compensation.

For clarity, there are only 2 tiers of members for the OPSC, signers and the lead. There are 13 signers which means that while the OPSC budget request looks larger when stacked against other councils, which is exactly what is happening here. There are significantly more members to fund AND the role of those members is mission-critical to the Superchain. For these reasons, it is my recommendation, which I communicated to the Foundation in December 2024, that the OPSC funding proposal should be separate from other councils.

@danelund.eth

Could the budget as articulated be tranched into a lower base amount with some retroactive holdback based on number of required upgrades and / or number of incidents that require responses?

The amounts requested for Seasons 8 & 9 reflect the industry standard rate for L2 Security Councils, even though the workload of the OPSC is significant in comparison to other L2 Security Councils — members of the OPSC are on other L2 SCs and have been able to verify the workload of different SCs. Given that the Optimism Security Council is mission critical, members should be compensated to a level that aligns with the scope and responsibilities of their role, which includes having their keys accessible 24/7, irrespective of travel and/or personal circumstances in case they are required to respond to an emergency scenario. I do not support holding back any amount that is requested for Seasons 8 & 9.

@danelund.eth

The Budget Board did not find that the retroactive allocation for the past season would fit best with the prospective nature of the Governance Fund.

I have spoken to the OP Foundation on numerous occasions since March 2025 about including a retroactive component in the next budget request. I have been assured that it is appropriate to include the retroactive allocation in this budget request.

@danelund.eth

should there be a retroactive reward for S7 and should the prospective budget serve sufficiently for S8? The Board is not aware of the mechanism for accomplishing the S7 retroactive rewards request and think this is a governance question.

My understanding is that retroactive grants should be retroactive, that is assigned after the fact in order to account for reality. I would be interested to know whether Delegates support the OPSC retroactive request for Season 7, or whether the Token House prefers for Leads to guess what retroactive rewards should be at the start of the season so they can at least lock in that amount of additional funding for the current season’s budget.

Next Steps

Given the mission-critical nature of the OPSC, and the work it has carried out over Season 7, my request is that the Budget Board or the Foundation specify the exact steps that the OPSC can take to put forward a Retroactive Request for Season 7 that is funded with ETH accumulated by the Collective.

The request would be for 69 ETH at current prices, which is roughly equivalent to 346,920 OP. If this path forward is clarified before this budget goes to a vote, the Season 7 retroactive component will be removed.

What does it mean for a council to be “mission-critical”?

An example of the mission-critical nature of the OPSC is the fact that the OPSC is currently in the process of reviewing and signing Upgrade 16 for OP Mainnet, Ink, Unichain, and Soneium, along with two other playbooks related to multisig upgrades. If the OPSC does not complete signing, OP Mainnet, along with Unichain and Ink, will be downgraded by L2Beat from Stage 1 to Stage 0.

The funding for the 6 months from July 1st to December 31st is covered by the “Season 8” funding request, so as it stands, the OPSC is currently carrying out critical work in the hope that the Token House will approve funding for the OPSC in good faith.

[GFXlabs]

Cross-posting here because it is relevant to the discussion.

Grants Council Operating Budget for Season 8 and 9

Retroactive rewards are much weaker incentives than base compensation or performance-based pay if they become locked or vesting. They are an unearned windfall at best, and a disappointing de minimis at worst. We would not favor retroactive rewards for any council if they are denominated in OP. Work by governance has little effect on OP value, except to the extent that financing activities solely with OP reduces the value. Given the unwillingness or inability to support tangible value accrual …

[system]

The Foundation can confirm that if a Council wishes to propose a budget of any kind, it should be supported by the Governance Fund and go through the standard Council Operating Budget process, voted on by the Token House.

In this specific case, the Security Council wants to propose a “top up” to the rewards governance approved in Season 7 (proposed by the Council Lead.) There is no other process through which to support this request, so it should be included as part of this budget proposal. It was the Foundation’s understanding that the Lead and Budget Board had been in conversation about this portion of the budget proposal.

The request for Season 7 rewards may be separated out from the request for Season 8 & 9 rewards, so that the Token House votes on two separate proposals, but both would go through the same process and would be voted on during Special Voting Cycle #39c.

[Cyber]

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

[danelund.eth]

Seasons 8 and 9 Budget Board Communication Thread

The Budget Board has considered the budget proposals for councils for Season 8. In addition to providing proposal-level comments, the Budget Board has been made aware of the significant departures from the Collective Rewards Framework. While the Board will consider appropriate updates based on subsequent changes to the operating budget from the time that the framework was last considered, a simple check would be to compare the initial proposed operating budget of 2.3M to the final proposal of 4.…

Please see the included thread and consider commenting here for the Security Council (to the extent addressed above, you can condense to focus on this point as it is applicable to all Councils).

[polynya]

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

[olimpio]

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

[brichis]

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

Just to clarify, considering how important the Security Council is, I approve both proposals in case they need to be separate (Season 8/9 and Retroactive for Season 7).

[Alisha]

As requested by the Foundation, a separate request has been created for the Season 7 Retroactive funding.

Security Council Season 7 Retroactive Funding Request

OPSC Season 7 Retroactive Funding Abstract The Optimism Security Council (OPSC) is requesting 88 ETH from the revenue generated by the OP Collective for retroactive funding for Season 7. This request is being put forward to account for the significantly increased workload carried out by the OPSC during Season 7, compared to the responsibilities that were known to the OPSC at the time Season 7 funding was requested. The work of the OPSC has been, and continues to be, mission-critical to the Sup…

The original post in this thread for the Security Council Operating Budget for Season 8 & 9 will be amended to remove the Season 7 Retroactive Budget.

[Alisha]

The OPSC has been asked to reduce its Season 8 & 9 budget by 4,190 OP, to bring all four council budgets under the 4.4m DAO Operating Budget limit, set by the Budget Board.

The OPSC will remove the total amount from the Multisig Management budget, which was 10,000 OP. The new total will be 5,810 OP. This edit will be reflected in the budget request above.