Security Council Vote #2 – Initial Member Ratification

🏛 Token House Governance Elections
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For full context on the implementation of the Security Council, please read Intro to Optimism’s Security Council

The Foundation is proposing to appoint the following members to the Security Council, as per the Collective Council Framework.

Security Council members will serve an initial term of 12 months (Cohort A) or 18 months (Cohort B), after which point membership will be determined via staggered elections. More detail is available in the Security Council Charter.

This initial cohort of Security Council members must pass a series of screens by the Foundation and complete required rehearsals to confirm their membership. The Council may consist of a subset of the parties below if any fail to complete screens or rehearsals.

Cohort A

  • Kris Kaczor (Phoenix Labs)
  • Layne Haber (Connext)
  • Jon Charbonneau (DBA)
  • Alejandro Santander (Independent, former Synthetix)
  • Mariano Conti (Independent, former MakerDAO)
  • Martin Tellechea (The Graph Foundation)
  • Yoseph Ayele (Borderless Africa)

Cohort B:

  • OP Labs PBC
  • Yoav Weiss (Ethereum Foundation)
  • Test in Prod
  • Coinbase Technologies, Inc. (Base)
  • Elena Nadolinkski (Ironfish)
  • L2Beat

Additional Notes

Security Council Phase 0

As described in the Intro to Security Council post, Phase 0 of rollout will add the Security Council as one signer on a 2/2 multisig that controls protocol upgrades for OP Mainnet (with the other signer being the current Foundation multisig). In Phase 0, the Council will require 4 signatures to approve an upgrade.

Phase 0 only impacts the upgradability of the OP Mainnet, as other chains still need to proceed through the Sequencer/Superchain governance process that will come online in Season 5. This initial, interim step paves the way for the full Superchain Security Council initiation in Phase 1, where the Council is singularly responsible for all OP Chain upgrades.

Addresses and “Upgrade” transaction

Members of the Security Council are still provisioning their hardware. Addresses, the final signing ceremony playbook, and the “upgrade” transaction that adds the Security Council to the upgrade multisig will be added to this post when available.

Security Council Lead

The Foundation has appointed Alisha.eth as the first Security Council Lead. The Lead is accountable for the responsibilities outlined in the Security Council charter.

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I’d like to see a clear roadmap with details on how governance will reelect the Security Council, as well as hold emergency votes for removal of Council members.

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The original post has been updated to introduce Alisha.eth as the initial Security Council Lead.

Welcome, Alisha!

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Bullish on having Mariano on the council! :raised_hands:

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Can you clarify which people are serving in a personal capacity, but happen to hold a position in another organization, and which seats are held by an organization rather than a person? It’s not 100% clear what the mix is.

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This is one of the crucial step towards making the goverance decentralised and putting the collective in lead role, at the same time I think this proposal is rushed, @polynya and @GFXlabs comments are still unanswered.

Would it possible to share the rational behind selecting those specific candiates. Also, and i understand its not that simple to put this in words, what would trigger Security Council, what consititute emergency and who will decide it. Circling back to Polynya comment, what would be their removal process.

If removal/election framework is still in process, my request would be include both house in voting.

In current state, I am afriad, my vote is not in favor of this proposal.

edit- someone just pointed it to me that i have made a mistake and sadly its on-chain and cant be changed anymore. For what its worth, unless we have feedback on all open question, I am not in favor of this proposal.

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It is great to see this first iteration of the Security Council.

I want to echo the comments made by @polynya, @GFXLabs and @OPUser. I want to add:

  • OP Labs PBC, Test in Prod, Coinbase Technologies, Inc., and L2Beat are listed as organizations; how do we should expect their participation here? Do they reserve the right to dispose of one (or several) of their team members? Can representation be rotated (a member leaves the company or for another reason)? How do we should expect this choice to be communicated?

  • So, in real terms, according to the Security Council Charter, the 75% threshold is not met (yes for 2/2 but not for identified individuals: Foundation multisig (5/7) + Security Council (4/14); Will we reach this threshold once we transition to phase 1, right?

Last, it is imperative to establish selection processes and emergency voting mechanisms and again, more details of the Safe modules expected for this and future implementations.

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I will be voting Against this proposal, for now. I left a conversation-starter reply here 7 days ago, but since there’s been a complete lack of response, let me elaborate.

I think it was a significant missed opportunity to not have the security council be decentralized from Day 1, something I’ve mentioned before - we have been operating as a DAO for well over a year now and are perfectly capable of electing a security council from scratch, at least partially. Instead, we have a unilaterally selected security council body that from the looks of it will stay so for at least 12 months, effectively an expansion of the Foundation’s multi-sig - welcome, but not good enough. I’m willing to accept the centralized selection as a pragmatic measure, however, I need some reassurances before I vote For:

  1. Security council member removal / replacement proposal type explicitly added to Operating Manual (just adding vague references in security council charter not enough)
  2. Reelection process clearly defined
  3. The initial term shortened to 1 season (maybe 2) for at least one Cohort, triggering reelection for the next season

Echo concerns by fellow delegates above too.

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Bumping this since this is an active vote and there’s a finite amount of time to answer questions.

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Apologies for the delay in response, due to the recent US holiday, we will address your questions very shortly

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Apologies for the delay in response @polynya

Details on how (re)elections will occur

Several months before the end of a cohort, elections will be held to either re-elect members of the current cohort or elect new nominees. The 12 month initial term for Cohort A is designed to span two Seasons, which are roughly 6 months each, including Reflection Periods.

Nominations will occur as they do for other Councils, although nominees will be subject to the eligibility criteria outlined in the Council Charter. The Foundation may implement additional criteria over time, if deemed necessary.

All candidates that are elected must pass a Foundation screen that includes completing KYC, undergoing a background check, and completing technical rehearsals. If a candidate fails the screen after being elected, the runner up may take their place.

Removal of Council members

A new proposal type (Council and Board Member Removal) will be added to the Operating Manual before the start of Season 5. A valid Council or Board Member Removal proposal must posted to the forum and must receive the required delegate approvals (which may be higher than the default for this proposal type) to initiate a Token House vote in the next nearest voting cycle (a delay of 3 weeks maximum). It was determined that it is not necessary to implement an emergency voting procedure in this initial phase given the number of Council members and the signing threshold required.

The Security Council or Foundation can also act unilaterally to remove a participant who fails to satisfy the requirements of the Charter if such failure falls within the defined scope of emergency powers.

In either of the above removal scenarios, an election for a removed member’s replacement should occur in the same, or next nearest, voting cycle as the removal. The Foundation will maintain a shortlist of strong candidates that are interested in joining the Council and could be nominated quickly, subject to the eligibility requirements, if need be.

Answers to the questions subsequently raised will be provided shortly

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Thanks for the response. That sounds good to me. While I’d have preferred to see the proposal type added before this proposal, and a shorter 1 season first term for Cohort A, I’ll consider voting For this proposal. Awaiting responses to the other questions raised.

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To address questions from @Joxes @GFXlabs and @OPUser:

Individual versus Entity Membership

  • Only the listed entities (with no individual’s name next to them) would serve on the Council as entities. That entity will decide - and are not required to publicly disclose - the individuals within their organization that hold key material. These individuals, however, will be disclosed to the other Council participants, and subject to the same background and capacity checks as the other individual signers.
  • The listed individuals (with entity names in parentheses following their personal names) are holding keys in their personal capacities - meaning either directly as individuals, or through single member entities that they exclusively control. The entity name in the forum post is provided for reference, to indicate the individuals’ most prominent external affiliation (e.g. primary employer). As they are serving in their personal capacity, these individuals cannot transfer their key material to any other party.
  • This mix of accountable individuals and entities, as described above, is intended to increase the robustness of the Council’s security model.

Threshold

So, in real terms, according to the Security Council Charter, the 75% threshold is not met (yes for 2/2 but not for identified individuals: Foundation multisig (5/7) + Security Council (4/14); Will we reach this threshold once we transition to phase 1, right?

Yes, 75% is the threshold for Phase 1

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I will be voting for this proposal as I think it’s a solid group of cohorts.

I wanted to disclose potential conflicts in that I’m an investor in Connext, OP Labs, and Ironfish. I was a former Coinbase employee and hold Coinbase stock. However, given these are members within larger cohorts, I don’t feel this potential conflict prevents me from voting.

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Wildfire DAO has voted in favour of this proposal. We believe that the proposed members are capable of carrying out their duties with a high level of diligence, and that the cohorts are effectively distributed in order to maintain efficiency and protect against potential failures.

We appreciate the diligent feedback and concerns shared above around:

  • Initial and ongoing selection of cohorts
  • Replacement and removal of members
  • Clarification of membership types

We believe they have been discussed and sufficiently addressed by the Foundation to move forward at this stage. It will however be important to keep these concerns in mind moving forward and to bring them back to light as necessary.

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We, as ITU Blockchain, appreciate the decentralization efforts of Optimism. We also believe that it is appropriate to gradually increase authorities over time. We wish success to the candidates selected for the Security Council.

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The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking and ideation of the two.

We’re happy to see the implementation of a security council as a meaningful step towards even more decentralisation of the Optimism Collective.

Since the vote is about ratifying the members of the security council for both cohorts and L2BEAT will be a member in the second cohort, we’ll have to abstain from voting.

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I will be voting in favor of this proposal as the people involved in these cohorts seem to be top notch and a Security council is defnitely needed.

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We voted FOR this proposal.

I want to clarify in this thread that we are pleased to see that the security council is finally taking place. However, as we have done before, we emphasize that the current technical implementation should be communicated promptly and adequately to the governance.

During the retroPGF3 vote, we only became aware of the existence of a team of testers. Therefore, we expect a more formal report before any implementation.

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The Security Council has successfully completed rehearsals. This post marks the official launch of the Security Council, including the start of each member’s term.

Signing addresses on the Security Council multisig, are listed below.

0x07dC0893cAfbF810e3E72505041f2865726Fd073
0x0a122d8aA40758FBAFf0360BFB391EdFfD9758b8
0x1822b35B09f5ce1C78ecbC06AC0A4e17885b925e
0x4a7322258c9e690e4cb8cea6e5251443e956e61e
0x51aCb8e1205De850D1b512584FeE9C29C3813dDa
0x5C0F529d5B025540c54f71d2BcbB4c78F368C47e
0x6323ef2b80030f3fBc508bFc321Fc71fDB95c865
0x74FAE9a9fbe31d1F69b95f59CaF12736a8b6B310
0x7ed8d9Af9eaA194D1A75C67c1475579E42289E39
0x8Afe777B5A4D1e156435ab44Ad4b73A318cE0EA4
0x9Eb11A55132c851b9991F148b3Af791ca498fD7A
0xbfA046B0bc5cEa1596be62B8b3f79f9f41f1E0d9
0xE895076cD050F1f042d1040E47b5929bE989E514

You’ll note there are 13 signers, rather than the previously ratified 14. One signer has withdrawn from the Council due to conflicting time constraints. The original proposal has been updated to reflect this.

The approval threshold for Phase 0 is, therefore, 4/13.

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