GFX Labs’ proposal urges Optimism to fully transfer governance control from OP Labs and the Optimism Foundation to OP tokenholders.
According to the proposal, the Optimism Foundation is the source of proposals and code execution for Optimism’s current governance structure. On the other hand, GFX Labs emphasizes that Arbitum, the primary rival of Optimism, has given ARB tokenholders “complete control” over both its Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova networks.
Therefore, the petition demands that all “system powers, resources, and access to governance” be fully transferred from OP Labs and the Optimism Foundation to holders of OP tokens.
The petition stated, “Optimism governance launched more than two years ago.” As of right now, neither Citizens’ House nor Token House are able to run code.
Although having complete system access rights for the Foundation and OP Labs had some early benefits, that period has passed because Optimism’s economic plan and the anticipated decentralization of power have not lived up to expectations.
The petition proposes a three-phase transition, with the OP token contract, governance contracts, and governance funds being among the “resources that are ostensibly owned by governance” that will be instantly into the hands of OP tokenholders.
The Optimism Governance Fund is responsible for 231,928,234 OP, which represents 5.4% of the token’s supply and $331.66 million. Additionally, the Optimism Collective is collecting 15,397 ETH, or $35.4 million, with a portion of ETH set aside for a buffer to support Optimism Labs’ operations in the future.
Transferring control of the bridging monies from Ethereum to OP holders would be the second phase. According to the suggestion, governance should determine if the aforementioned money should be used for yield generation. It points out that Blast, Mantle, and Gnosis are already using this tactic, and Polygon is anticipated to do the same.
In phase two, Optimism is also required to submit a plan by Q3 2025 for decentralizing the sequencing of the OP Mainnet.
The Token House, Citizen’s House, and any other organizations designated by the two houses would assume “complete technical control over the Optimism protocol” in the third phase, which would provide “full control” over Optimism to governance.
The decentralization of the OP Mainnet sequencer and complete disclosure of all past and present grants from the Optimism Foundation are also required in phase three.
GFX Labs recommends that all three phases be finished by Q3 2025. Thus far, OP holders have raised 2.3 million tokens in support of the petition.
Optimism said in June that the OP mainnet had reached Stage 1 Decentralization following the implementation of permissionless fault proofs, which enable anybody to share or dispute fault proofs that validate transactions to the Ethereum mainnet.
Optimism upholds a security council that, upon approval from the Optimism Foundation, has the authority to nullify error evidence in order to defend against hostile actors.
The principal scientist of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, used the term “stage 1 decentralization” to refer to Layer 2 networks that had “limited training wheels,” such as a security council.
On the other hand, Stage 2 decentralization occurs when no centralized entity is able to publish state roots, whereas Stage 0 rollups depend on a centralized proposer to submit a network’s state root to the mainnet.
As per L2beat, arbitrum one, OP Mainnet, ZKsync Lite, and dYdX v3 are at Stage 1, while only DeGate v1 and Fuel v1 have reached Stage 2 decentralization.
But in the middle of August, Optimism introduced a “permissioned fallback” in response to faults found in the fault proof scheme of OP Mainnet by community-led audits. In the meantime, in June, Arbitrum declared its intention to pursue Stage 2 decentralization.
With a total value locked of $5.64 billion, OP Mainnet is presently the third-largest Layer 2 network, trailing only Base ($6.12 billion) and Arbitrum One ($13.4 billion).
OP’s price has decreased by 0.6% over the last day, based on The Defiant’s cryptocurrency price feeds.
