Student research on Optimism governance: questions on the constitution, rule changes and token value

✨ General
1

Hi everyone,

Hi everyone, my name is Dorin, and I’m a student from Bucharest, Romania. For a university course project, I’m exploring whether a blockchain could be used to record the chain of custody of criminal evidence, so that no one could quietly alter a record after the fact. While working on it, I realized that the cryptography is the easy part; the harder question is who decides the rules. That led me to Optimism, which I chose as my case study because it has one of the most openly documented governance histories in the space. I’ve spent the past few weeks going through the Operating Manual’s version history, Agora votes and forum threads, and there are a few points I’d really appreciate help understanding. (Disclosure: I used AI tools to help with parts of the research.)

  1. Working Constitution. Section 1 limits the Working Constitution to no more than four years from its adoption, which by my reading ended around April 2026. In April, the Foundation said it would postpone any major update. Is the Working Constitution still considered in force today, and if so, on what basis (for example, an amendment under Section 3)? Is there a timeline or a process for the Bedrock Constitution?

  2. How rule changes take effect. The Operating Manual says its procedures take effect when releases are published on GitHub, and that only the removal of a proposal type requires a governance vote. Version 2.0.0 was published on June 25, 2026, and the related proposal was executed on July 19. Are there plans to require a vote, or onchain execution, for other changes too, such as quorum definitions or the structure of the Houses?

  3. Citizens’ House. Governance Update #12 describes the pause as indefinite. Are there defined conditions under which the Citizens’ House could be reactivated, and will existing Citizen attestations remain valid?

  4. OP Enterprise and the OP token. How is revenue from OP Enterprise expected to connect to the OP token, if at all? Is extending the buyback program to Enterprise revenue being considered?

  5. Buyback reporting. The Buyback Communication Thread reports 9,451,924 OP bought with revenue from January to March 2026. Will purchases for the following months be reported there?

Thank you for any answers, or for pointers to existing discussions I may have missed. I’d be glad to share a summary of my findings here once the project is complete.