It’s time for a new chapter.

As crypto enters its next wave of adoption, the calls for scalability are deafening. This demand is often answered by centralized layer-1 competitors, who abandon Ethereum’s security and values under the guise of cheap fees and a quick buck.

We must not recreate Web2 incentives in our quest for Web3 scalability. Web3 offers the opportunity to rebuild the internet to align with the values of its users. Sacrificing this mission is sacrificing the purpose of crypto.

Scaling the technology alone is not enough. We have a duty to scale our values along with our networks.

In pursuit of this mission, we are excited to announce the Optimism Collective.

Introducing the Optimism Collective

The Optimism Collective is a large-scale experiment in digital democratic governance, built to drive rapid and sustainable growth of a decentralized ecosystem, and stewarded by the newly formed Optimism Foundation.

The Collective is a band of communities, companies, and citizens united by a mutually beneficial pact to adhere to the axiom of impact=profit. This is outlined in depth in the Optimistic Vision.

Tokens and Citizens

The Optimism Collective will be governed co-equally by two houses, the Citizens’ House and the Token House.

Token House

The Token House is established by Airdrop #1, bringing in the first thousands of people who have engaged in positive-sum, community-oriented behavior. Token holders will be able to vote on protocol upgrades, project incentives as a part of a Governance Fund, and more. The token is called OP.

More on this below.

Citizens’ House

The Citizens’ House will facilitate and govern a process to distribute retroactive public goods funding, generated from the revenue collected by the network. Citizenship will be conferred by “soulbound” non-transferrable NFTs, and the set of citizens will grow over time as the Optimism community grows. The Citizen House is the vehicle which enables the distribution of power away from any centralized organization, to a human-centric, non-plutocratic mechanism.

Together, these two houses will help direct the revenue generated from OP Mainnet to efforts that promote public goods and help grow the collective. You can read more about the structure in the Governance Overview.

The Citizens’ House will launch later in 2022--stay tuned.

Together, the two houses of the collective will drive a powerful flywheel, funding public goods that make Optimism blockspace more valuable, leading to more revenue for public goods, and so on. You can read more about the model of economics for the collective in the Economics Overview.

Check out my OF

The Collective’s bicameral governance system seeks to avoid governance pitfalls experienced by other models on Ethereum today. But, we also recognize there are still many lessons yet to learn, and the structure of governance today is far from final.

The newly created Optimism Foundation will serve as a steward of the Collective, running governance experiments on behalf of the Collective and bootstrapping the ecosystem before eventually dissolving. The organization formerly known as Optimism PBC has been renamed to OP Labs PBC, and will be focused on building and decentralizing the protocol as well as supporting the growth of projects in the ecosystem with product and business development.

The Optimism Foundation is a key first step in devolving power away from Optimism PBC, and towards the broader Optimistic ecosystem. As it matures, the Foundation will iteratively transition its governance roles to the Optimistic Ecosystem. For more information on these structures, you can check out the Working Constitution of the Optimism Collective.

The Optimism Foundation is a new organization focused on governance experimentation and ecosystem growth. The Optimism Foundation will be led by two of the founders of Optimism, Jing (formerly CEO) and Ben Jones (formerly Chief Scientist). Joining us are some new faces: Eva Beylin, Executive Director of The Graph Foundation, Abbey Titcomb, Council Member of the Radicle Foundation, and Brian Avello, former General Counsel to the Maker Foundation.

Liam Horne, formerly Head of Engineering at the PBC, is stepping into a new role as the CEO of OP Labs PBC, with continued support from Karl Floersch, Josh Stein, Julien Boedec, Bobby Dresser, and the PBC’s new General Counsel, Trevor Dodge.

Introducing OP

OP governs upgrades to the protocol and network parameters, and creates an ongoing system of incentives for projects and users in the Optimism ecosystem.

The Optimism Collective will take an iterative approach and seeks to achieve a highly dynamic governance system. We don’t feel that a static genesis allocation is conducive to these goals, so we’re doing things differently.

OP will not have an airdrop. It will have an entire season of airdrops.

OP Airdrop #1 goes live in Q2. If you’re an Ethereum user (not just an Optimism user), check here to see what’s waiting for you.

Over 250,000 addresses are eligible, but if you’re not one of them, airdrop season still awaits.

There’s so much more to share over the coming weeks, but here’s what you need to know about OP today.

Staying safe

OP is an L2-native token which resides on OP Mainnet at the easy-to-remember address 0x420000000000000000000042.

Please triple check that you are interacting with the right token. Note that Airdrop #1 has not yet occurred, and anything claiming you can get OP tokens today is a scam.

Token Distribution

The total initial supply of OP is 2^32 (4,294,967,296) tokens.

OP is broken down into the following categories:

Optimism is governed by a collaboration between the Optimism Foundation and the members of the Optimism Collective. The OF will initially steward the Ecosystem Fund and coordinate retroactive public goods and airdrop distributions.

As the Citizen and Token Houses mature via iterative governance experiments, these responsibilities will transition from the OF to the greater Optimistic ecosystem. Stay tuned for more details on OP Governance next week.

OP will unlock over the course of 4 years as follows:

For more details, you can check out the OP Allocations Overview in our governance documentation.

OP Airdrop #1

To check your eligibility for OP Airdrop #1, you can head here.

For Airdrop #1, we’re allocating 5% of the initial OP supply for the following actions:

In addition to these tiers, we’re excited to announce the OP Overlap Bonus--an added reward for users which have accomplished 4 or more of the above actions.

• 4 Tiers - 3,329.57 OP

• 5 Tiers - 10,313.82 OP

• 6 Tiers - 20,975.42 OP

If you’re interested in diving into the details of airdrop methodology and criteria, check out the docs here.

What’s Next

Starting today, Optimism begins its transformation into the Optimism Collective.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be releasing a series of posts regarding governance, incentives, and iteration, to provide the community with every detail.

In the meantime, bridge your ETH ahead of our next chapter and get ready. Even if you don’t qualify for Airdrop #1, with more airdrops and governance on the way, there’s never been a better time to use Optimism.

This is a historic milestone for both Optimism and the L2 ecosystem at large, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with the world.

And as always, Stay Optimistic!