Thanks for preparing this thorough overview! To address a few of the points and share the Foundation’s perspective:
and there hasn’t yet been a concrete plan detailing how the ACC might identify and respond to potential risks
While the process could be more robust, we want to highlight that there is a defined process for alerting the Citizens’ House outlined here. Casting the ACC’s +10M delegated OP is also a strong response mechanism.
On the other hand, the ACC itself is not immune to self-capture within its consensus procedures.
An internally set voting threshold of 10/26 is not consistent with the Collective Multisig Policy, and therefore this threshold would need to be substantially increased if the ACC continues in Season 8 (when all Collective multisigs must be in compliance with the policy.)
Is the existence of the Anti-Capture Commission still justified given the current structure and maturity of Optimism governance?
We appreciate all the current and previous members that have participated in this experiment and that have shaped the ACC in its current form. The ACC was originally introduced by the Foundation as an experiment to last for Seasons 5 and 6, when we officially introduced the Citizens’ House and welcomed large OP Chain partners to the Collective. At the time, an experiment to introduce an MVP means to bridge communication between two Houses in a newly bi-cameral system and to empower individual delegates as we welcomed OP Chain delegates for the first time seemed reasonable. In practice, we’ve learned that OP Chains are slow to onboard (although many have onboarded via the Chain Delegation Program!) and the highest impact activity of the ACC has been advocacy, which doesn’t require delegation.
The decision of whether or not to renew the ACC has lied with the community since Season 7, and it will be up to the current ACC to decide whether or not to put forward a renewal proposal in the upcoming Reflection Period, subject to Token House approval. However, the Foundation’s recommendation is that the ACC, as an official structure that receives delegation, not be renewed for future Seasons.