‘Optimism’, a scaling solution for the Ethereum network, announced a new governance system today, issuing its new governance token which soon will be distributed via a series of airdrops.
The new governance system called “Optimism Collective” will act as decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), or community-owned ecosystem designed to reward public goods and build a sustainable future for Ethereum.
A Different Voting Model
The new governance system will be overseen by the newly formed ‘Optimism Foundation’, and governed by two co-equal parties, ‘Token House’ and ‘Citizen’s House’, which will be responsible for balancing the DAO’s short-term and long-term goals, as well as the organization’s overall vision.
Optimism Collective will employ the quadratic voting model as the means of running the project. The concept, once introduced by Ethereum’s Founder Vitalik Buterin, seeks to address the issue of majority rule. To do so, it makes each additional vote more expensive than the previous one, thereby reducing the influence of large token holders.
The majority of currently existing DAOs rely on a “one vote per token held” principle, where the weight of a vote depends on the number of tokens that the owner has at their disposal.
According to the team, this new governance model represents a “large-scale experiment, built to drive rapid and sustainable growth of a decentralized ecosystem.”
In the meantime, Vitalik Buterin named Optimism Collective as possibly the biggest DAO to be non-token holder-centric.
Possibly the biggest attempt at non-token-holder-centric DAO governance so far. Excited to see where this goes. https://t.co/9vreC7QsXa— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2022
OP Token Launched
In accordance with the new governance system, the Optimism Foundation issued the system’s new Layer-2 native governance token under the ticker ‘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,” read the official blog post.
The organization plans to distribute OP tokens to more than 250,000 Ethereum users via a series of airdrops, and has billed it to begin on May 3rd.
The initial supply of OP is 4.29 billion. Approximately 5% of the initial supply, or nearly 214.7 million OP tokens, will be distributed during the first stage of airdrops.