Upgrade Proposal: Stake-Based Priority Ordering Experiment
Proposal Type: Protocol Upgrade
Voting Cycle: Cycle #52
Executive Summary
This proposal requests approval for a time-boxed transaction-ordering experiment on OP Mainnet consisting of two phases of stake-based priority ordering.
Under the experiment, participants who stake OP tokens into a dedicated smart contract may receive priority transaction treatment for a designated transaction-sending address. The purpose of the experiment is to test whether stake-based priority access changes the behavior of heavy blockspace consumers, including market makers and arbitrage bots, and whether it can reduce spammy or redundant transaction behavior while creating new utility for OP tokens. At the end of the experiment, OP Mainnet will revert to standard PGA ordering.
Impacted stakeholders include market makers, searchers, blockspace-intensive transactors, integrators, and all other OP Mainnet users. The expected outcome is operational and economic learning, rather than short-term revenue maximization.
Motivation
This proposal is being submitted to allow the Collective to approve a bounded, reversible experiment that changes transaction ordering policy on OP Mainnet.
The goal is to test whether a stake-to-prioritize model can:
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create new utility for OP tokens beyond governance,
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influence the behavior of sophisticated blockspace consumers,
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reduce failed, redundant, or spammy transaction submission patterns,
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generate data on market maker and arbitrage bot behavior under stake-based ordering, and
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help inform future blockspace tooling across the Superchain.
To the best of the proposer’s knowledge, this proposal does not modify any existing Blockspace Charter precommitments relating to transaction ordering.
Specifications
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Blockspace Charter
- No Blockspace Charter changes are proposed.
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**Technical Details
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The technical details of the experiment are described in more detail in the documentation attached as Attachment 1. At a high level:
This proposal approves a two-phase, time-boxed experiment in stake-based transaction ordering on OP Mainnet.
A dedicated staking contract will allow a participant to stake OP from a capital address and optionally link that stake to a separate transaction-sending address. A staker may link to one beneficiary address at a time. If stake is linked to a beneficiary address, the staker’s own address does not also receive the benefit of that same stake.
Eligible transactions will receive priority treatment under the experiment’s ordering rules.
Phase 1 tests FIFO ordering among eligible participants.
Phase 2 tests stake-weighted ordering among eligible participants. The current design intent is a bounded, diminishing-returns model that preserves market pricing signals while giving some additional weight based on effective stake and stake age. Current numerical values described in associated design materials are illustrative starting parameters only and are not fixed by this proposal.
The proposal delegates exact operational parameters to the Optimism Foundation, including threshold values, weighting-function parameters, rollout timing, monitoring thresholds, and checkpoint decisions, so long as the experiment remains within the scope approved by governance.
Relevant implementation materials:
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Staking contract deployment address: The contract is deployed on OP Sepolia at 0xeFcb172De9aA254910A2E93E596F7F5721c17677 with owner address 0xA895C24907D872bC05B58933205dD98090C07446 and a mock ERC20 at 0x3d2536BC0Bc0BAdE9e836C0934419c25b2e0B58C. The Optimism Foundation will post the Mainnet staking address on the Optimism docs in the upcoming weeks.
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Staked OP are intended to remain outside the control of the Optimism Foundation, and participants are intended to be able to unstake at any time.
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**Impact summary
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This proposal authorizes a temporary change to transaction ordering on OP Mainnet for experimental purposes. The experiment is intended to be reversible, bounded in duration, and subject to standard Optimism Foundation incident-response and operational protocols.Anticipated impacts include:
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changes in bidding, spam, and arbitrage behavior by sophisticated blockspace consumers,
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possible new demand for OP staking tied to transaction priority,
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operational learning around sequencer tooling and ordering policy, and
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data on whether stake-based priority access changes transaction inclusion patterns without degrading sequencer health or ordinary user experience.
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Illustrative success metrics from the underlying design work include participation, total OP staked, sequencer health, normal-user impact, fee effects, revert rate, and spam rate. Exact thresholds and response procedures are delegated to the Optimism Foundation under its standard operating protocols.
The experiment will automatically conclude after the OP Mainnet test window and OP OP Mainnet will revert to standard PGA ordering.
- Precommitment impact review
- All known precommitments are unaffected.
- No precommitments are proposed to be modified.
- No precommitments are proposed to be removed.
Action Plan
Sepolia testing will run for 2–4 weeks prior to commencing the experiment on OP Mainnet. If Sepolia testing is successful and stable, the OP Mainnet experiment may be launched.
The OP Mainnet experiment may run for up to 4 weeks total:
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Phase 1: up to 1 week
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Phase 2: up to 3 weeks
At the end of the OP Mainnet experiment, OP Mainnet will revert to standard PGA ordering.
Following the experiment, the Optimism Foundation expects to publish learnings and results.
Disclosures & Disclaimers
Important disclosures and disclaimers are attached to this proposal as Attachment 2.
Conclusion
This proposal requests approval for a bounded, two-phase experiment in stake-based priority ordering on OP Mainnet. The experiment is intended to generate operational and economic learning while remaining temporary, reversible, and subject to standard operational safeguards.
The proposer requests approval from the Optimism Collective to authorize the Optimism Foundation to implement and operate this experiment without requiring a second governance vote between phases, provided the experiment remains within the scope described in this proposal.