The Future of the Anticapture Commission

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This document began as a discussion draft among ACC members and is now being shared to gather perspectives from the Collective. Special thanks to ACC members for their contributions, feedback, and review.

Abstract

This discussion document presents an independent assessment of the Anti-Capture Commission (ACC), a meta-governance body created in Season 5 to prevent governance capture and elevate critical issues, particularly those facing a Citizens’ House veto phase.

Through a detailed review of the ACC’s origins, current state, voting patterns, and interactions with other governance bodies, and other relevant characterizations. We explore the underlying risks of governance capture in the context of Optimism’s evolving bicameral system, and trace key milestones that have shaped the Commission’s role to date.

Finally, we outline several open questions to provoke further reflection on whether the ACC continues to fulfill a meaningful role. If so, we discuss potential avenues for the Commission’s evolution within an increasingly decentralized governance environment.

Background

In Season 5, the introduction of the Anti-Capture Commission established a meta-governance structure composed of high-impact delegates. To achieve this, the commission holds a delegation of 10 million OP from the Governance Fund, which must be used in alignment with the commission’s guidelines and goals.

The group is “officially” designated to establish a communication channel with the Citizen House, which holds veto powers—such as in the case of proposals related to protocol upgrades. In any case and ultimately, the Foundation oversees this identity, as it is the entity that manages and grants voting power and KYC controls.

After 3 seasons, we present this independent report introspecting their role and impact in the ecosystem and how to move forward into an ideal design that continues pursuing the goals of capture resistance.

Essence of Governance Capture

Governance capture occurs when one party or a coordinated group gains enough voting power to steer a governed system in a way that benefits a narrow interest at the expense of the broader public good — often resulting in outcomes that harm the ecosystem as a whole. In the context of a full-governance execution power without intermediates or entities with privileged power (e.g. on what is expected to occur in Stage 2 Layer 2’s) there are two main risks:

  • Technical Risk: A beneficial proposal is likely to be blocked when it should pass, or a malicious proposal is likely to be approved when it shouldn’t. Motivations may vary, from explicit attempts to impact user’s rights (e.g. steal the funds of the bridge) as well as imposing or blocking technical changes which harm users anyway or goes outside of social consensus.

  • Financial Risk: The same dynamic applies, but in relation to treasury usage or OP emissions. This includes explicit attempts to drain financial resources of the governance, or very much of the cases which the community is accustomed to name “DAO extractable value”.

In Optimism, the Operating Manual establishes a list of proposal types, each of which aligns more or less with one of the described risks. Some proposals do not necessarily pose a high immediate impact, even if executed. For example, elections and changes to guidelines or core procedures often carry a high degree of subjectivity, and their impact may only become evident over time—potentially manifesting in either of the two main risks described above.

Under the bicameral system, both the Token House and the Citizen House are assigned responsibilities for different proposal types based on their decision-making nature and inherent goals. In some cases, the design allows them to self-regulate one another (e.g., protocol upgrades) while Foundation still provides direction and special execution rights in all the governance structures.

In most cases, the Token House is the first group to be publicly accountable and actively engaged, often absorbing the full context and scrutiny surrounding a proposal upon its introduction.

Token House Capture

Given the nature of token-based voting and current state of the governance architecture, the Token House is inherently susceptible to different forms of capture. These include:

  • Single-entity dominance: A single delegate or entity possesses enough voting power to unilaterally determine outcomes (e.g. Delegate A voting power ≥ total votes cast - Delegate A).
  • Multi-entity collusion: A coordinated group of delegates or entities collectively wields enough influence to dictate results. (e.g. Delegates A, B, C,… n voting power ≥ total votes cast - Delegate A, B, C,… n). This form of capture is often subjective and difficult to prove, as coordination may occur informally or without public signals.
  • Abuse of privileged rights: Entities with on-chain permissions execute actions that contradict governance frameworks (e.g. the Operating Manual or Law of Chains) or deviate from their expected responsibilities (e.g. undermining the Optimism vision). Currently those roles are held by the Optimism Foundation and the Security Council.

With this framing in mind, we now shift focus to the Anticapture Commission itself. Its structure, operation, and evolution across seasons.

Mandate & Operations

The Anti-Capture Commission legitimizes its actions by operating through a diverse structure composed of high-context delegates who act beyond self-interest. This framework ensures that even those individuals who might otherwise be marginalized maintain a voice in the governance process, protecting the integrity of the Token House from concentrated power.

To ensure that the ACC’s shared voice structure effectively fulfills its purpose, the latest charter defines up to six primary objectives to clarify its governance role within the Optimism Collective. These can be interpreted as follows:

  1. Maintains active discussions about potential Token House capture if there is reason for concern.
  2. Has a formal communication channel to engage with the Citizens’ House if there is evidence or risk of capture.
  3. Provides on-chain signals by voting on proposals when needed.
  4. Offers input and oversight regarding governance operations, strategy, and the protocol’s path toward decentralization.

Through the seasons, the ACC has been established under the following:

  • Membership: Composed of individual delegates (not representing a protocol or corporation), with over 70% participation and ranked among the top 100 delegates.
  • Leadership: Elected by simple majority vote among ACC members.
  • Voting Power: The ACC safe receives voting power equivalent to 10 million OP, sourced from the Governance Fund, delegated from an address managed by the Optimism Foundation. The Commission may also accumulate additional voting power through external delegations.

With respect to the operations of the Anti-Capture Commission:

  • Delegate Workspace: Coordination takes place through Discord and Telegram channels, as well as regular meetings. There’s also a Notion space.
  • Voting: By default, the Commission votes on proposals where a Citizen House veto is possible. It may also vote on other proposal types when deemed necessary.
  • Decision-Making: Decisions are made by simple majority through Snapshot voting and are then confirmed via the designated ACC Safe.

Note that, up to day, implementations works for single-entity dominance and multiple-entity collusion, but does not address the cases where abuse of privileged rights is detected.

Timelines

Below we’ve compiled a chronological outline tracing the path of the ACC from its beginning to the present:

Season 4

  1. September 2023 — Reflection Period -– Anticapture Commission is proposed. Anticapture Commission
  2. October 2023 -– Special Voting Cycle #16a — Anticapture Commission is approved to run during Season 5 and 6.

Season 5: Brichis as Lead

  1. January 2024 -– Brichis is placed as Lead, as the unique nomination.
  2. January 2024 -– raises concern to Agora due to non-communicated changes made to the governor contract Request for Information - Recent Upgrades to Governor Contract. Agora agreed to improve its communication procedures.
  3. February 2024 -– ACC decides to vote only on upgrade proposals since they are the only ones that possess veto rights and special situations.
  4. March 2024 — Membership is recalculated.
  5. May 2024 -– SEEDGov raises concerns on the Protocol Upgrade #7 Fault Proof proposal following DAB Lead recommendations. ACC still votes in favor (the concerns are proven as true months after).
  6. June 2024 — Special Voting Cycle #23b — Anticapture Commission amendment is approved.

Season 6: Web3Magnetic as Lead

  1. August 2024 — Membership is recalculated. Web3Magnetic elected as Lead.

  2. October 2024 — Accelerated Decentralization Proposal For Optimism was discussed between GFXLabs (which was not part of the ACC at the time), the Optimism Foundation, and ACC members. The petition was not formally supported, but the need for a clear roadmap for decentralization was acknowledged. Foundation had already been planning for several months to publish a post outlining working models for decentralization. ACC statement on the proposal thread.
    Although the Foundation suggested that the ACC could help facilitate discussions with the Citizens’ House — and play a role in ensuring accountability for decentralization milestones in Season 7 — the ACC ultimately decided not to pursue a more active role in this process.

  3. December 2024 — Special Voting Cycle #31a — Web3Magnetic crafted the new charter and it is approved. After this point the ACC became a completely community-led initiative.

Season 7: Pumbi as Lead

  1. February 2025 — Pumbi from SEEDGov is elected as lead. ACC Communication Thread
    While the proposed changes were ultimately not implemented due to time constraints following the start of the season, SEEDGov’s initiatives contributed to valuable insights for future ACC iterations — particularly around increasing the Safe threshold and establishing a framework to assess governance risk.

  2. April 2025 — Internal questions arose about where the Commission is headed in the upcoming season. This prompted the creation and sharing of this discussion document.

Three defining decisions shaped the trajectory of the Anti-Capture Commission:

  • Raising concerns about undisclosed changes to the governor contract in the Agora proposal (point 4).
  • Engaging in nuanced deliberations yet ultimately supporting the Fault Proof Proposal despite raised risks (point 7)
  • Choosing not to take on a more active role in advancing the Accelerated Decentralization Proposal discussions with the Citizens’ House (point 10).

These decisions reflect moments where the ACC either acted decisively or opted for restraint — choices that merit reflection as we consider its future role.

Common Questionings

Since inception, the Anti-Capture Commission has been subject to questioning. As a meta-governance structure, it is a mandated group supported by Token House and facilitated by Optimism Foundation. What we mean with “mandated” is that the Anti-Capture Commission has the mandate to establish a communication line with Citizen House, while what we mean with “facilitated” only exists since it is approved to exist in terms of allocated voting power and financing.

On the other hand, the general perception is most of the members consider the commission isn’t productive enough: which is good since no real capture is visible under the commission eyes, and at the same time suboptimal from the point of view of time invested.

But the risks of capture could still be lurking in the shadows. As far as we know, an OP supply has been allocated to various parties over time, and it is significantly larger than the current active delegate voting power. This means that, depending on how the OP is allocated (e.g., under what terms) and to whom (e.g., chains, contributors, investors), the potential voting power could drastically shift the balance from its current state.

Moreover, not all voting power is equal: some of it comes from intra-delegation management — for instance, through allocations from the Chain Delegation Program or even the ACC itself — which plays a role in balancing (or unbalancing) the voting power over time. These dynamics require clear mechanisms to ensure that voting power serves its intended purpose and does not become a vector for Token House capture — a situation where governance ends up shooting itself in the foot.

But, is the risk in the room with us?

Risks are dependent on how power is exercised and who wields it. In this perception, it is worth remembering that there are four groups that hold some of this power, whether direct or assigned legitimacy.

  • Token House: Concentration of power has been distributed around dozens of parties from different stakeholders, which includes but not limited to core developers, OP Chains, Chain Delegation Program, the ACC, independent delegates and protocol representatives.
  • Citizen House: made up by individual persons, legitimated and managed by Foundation is the one who today can dictate veto proposals from Token House.
  • Security Council: elected by Token House as dedicated parties who, together with the Foundation, secures the protocol. Ultimately could stop proposals from being applied or make deliberate upgrades.
  • Optimism Foundation: The entity that retains most of the hard powers over both the protocol and its associated governance infrastructure. In a scenario where other groups “abandon” the protocol, the Foundation would be capable of maintaining control and executing changes independently, without relying on external support or dependencies.

At the moment, there are no formalised procedures in place to prevent capture, and there hasn’t yet been a concrete plan detailing how the ACC might identify and respond to potential risks, though perhaps such a framework hasn’t been necessary yet.

By today, the ACC doesn’t have a formalised framework for capture prevention, rather than informal detection through demands, for example, that might arise during a voting cycle and are nearly purely situational.

However, since the likelihood of capture is dependent on the OP distribution, the last becomes an important subject.

While the actual OP distribution analysis is outside of the scope, there is a simple case to demonstrate the importance of distribution, even assuming initial ideal conditions: OP unlocks.

Currently, there is a significant gap between the total supply of the OP token and the effectively votable supply. As of May 2025, the total supply stands at approximately 1,657,120,774 OP according to https://static.optimism.io/tokenomics/circulatingSupply.txt, while the votable supply amounts to 115,606,309 OP, which corresponds to just 14.33% of the total in circulation. From the perspective of the Anti-Capture Commission (ACC) and its individual members, this represents approximately 2.13%.

Clearly, the risk increases with the upcoming token unlocks scheduled for future dates. According to estimates published in [PUBLIC] OP Token Unlock (Estimated), at least 1 billion OP tokens are expected to be unlocked within the next two years. These tokens will be allocated to various stakeholders who are not necessarily accountable entities.

In a future scenario where a portion of the unlocked supply becomes votable supply, the quorum required for voting would increase, thereby reducing the relative voting power of current delegates. In other words, as large amounts of OP tokens are added to the hands of new stakeholders (which may include, but are not limited to, institutions, core developers, OP Chains, etc.), the voting power of figures like the ACC tends to lose influence. This is not necessarily positive or negative, but it does highlight how quickly the distribution of power in governance can shift—something that deserves proper estimation and monitoring.

A concrete example of this change is the agreement with Base, which includes the allocation of up to 118 million unlocked OP tokens over six years. In an adversarial governance scenario, assuming the same total votable supply, an actor with an allocation like Base’s could singlehandedly reach quorum for a vote.

As well as this case, there are others such as:

  • Effects on past distributions and holders behavior
  • Acquiring OP in the market

ACC-specific scenarios

Currently, the total voting power held by the entities behind the ACC is relatively large compared to the total votable supply. To illustrate this case, let’s break it down using data from May 5, 2025:

  • Total ACC members: 26 delegates
  • Total voting power held by each delegate individually: 24,301,878 OP
  • Total voting power held by the ACC as a group: 11,055,370 OP
  • Combined total: 35,357,248 OP

This number exceeds the current quorum required to pass a proposal, which at the time of the snapshot was approximately 34,810,871 OP. This is due to the fact that quorum is solely dependent on the total voting power. Therefore, for a total votable supply of 115,606,309 OP (as per the same snapshot), this represents 30.58%, which surpasses the 30% mark.

This means that, in a scenario where all these actors vote in alignment, they could reach quorum without needing any external delegate.

If we take the average participation during Season 7 starting in January, which was 52,545,126 OP, this implies that the ACC, collectively and individually, holds 67.29% of the voting power. For protocol upgrades, where the ACC regularly participates, a threshold of 76% is required, but other types of proposals may require less.

On the other hand, the ACC itself is not immune to self-capture within its consensus procedures. The most representative scenario would be:

  • Total ACC members: 26 delegates
  • Multisig voting requirement: 10 out of 26
  • Voting power held by the 10 delegates with the least voting power: 1,569,690 OP

This represents 14.20% of the total voting power held by the ACC as a group. This means that 1,569,690 OP could unilaterally decide on behalf of 11,055,370 OP. In a practical scenario, this implies these members could receive a 604.1% boost to their voting power in their favor, which—importantly—cannot be reversed once executed onchain.

Disclaimer: The figures referenced here were collected during the first week of May (May 5th 2025). Since these are dynamic numbers, they may have changed slightly by the time of reading. However, they are used for illustrative purposes, as the variation is not expected to be significant.

Possible venues for the Anti-Capture Commission

  • Revamp operation procedures: maintain the Anti-Capture Commission as it is. But work into a restructuring which is most likely would lead to a reduction of its operations in the short term up to the point of being dissolved or be efficient enough to demonstrate impact when the group is needed.
  • Onchain rights: Anti-Capture Commission may have a place in a future decentralized governance holding a special role to cancel proposals directly or in aggregation with other types of stakeholders, e.g. Security Council or Citizen House. One example of this might be The AntiCapture Commission requesting a proposal dropping and the Security Council approving it afterwards.
  • Moves towards a Research group: As the governance decentralizes even more, we don’t know clearly how near the governance is from being captured. For awareness of the Security Council, Foundation and other governance participants, Anti-Capture Commission might be suitable to collaborate in this group. Said group would be made up but not limited by delegates, Council members and Foundation. Charter and clear goals should be set accountable for Token House and Citizen House.

Note that not all the possible venues come into conflict with each other. Just a small clarification: this could be done in different ways — by parallelizing everything, modifying procedures, or even changing the membership itself. These aren’t necessarily sequential steps; they can be thought of as concurrent bodies, potentially delegating responsibilities to other groups or incorporating new ones.

Open Questions

In no particular order..

  • Is it really needed to vote on every proposal?

  • Is it necessary for the internal consensus process to require voting on Snapshot first? How can we minimize the workload or streamline the workflow?

  • Is the existence of the Anti-Capture Commission still justified given the current structure and maturity of Optimism governance?

  • How can we ensure the ACC remains active only when * necessary, without creating unnecessary overhead in low-risk periods?

  • Should the ACC evolve into a more research-oriented or reactive body rather than a standing commission?

  • How should the ACC interact with other power-holding entities (Foundation, Security Council, Citizens’ House) in a more decentralized future?

  • What does a successful Anti-Capture Commission look like, and how would we know if we’ve reached it?

  • Would capture risks be better mitigated through other means (e.g. changes in voting supply distribution, on-chain checks, improved transparency standards)?

  • Is it possible—or even desirable—to grant the ACC direct on-chain powers in the future? Under what conditions?.

This is an open document, so any contributions or ideas you’d like to share are welcome—feel free to comment right here in this post.

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