The Ethereum co-founder has regularly pushed for projects under DeFi and DeGov to step away from currency voting to let smaller owners contribute to governance.
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has indicated support for Optimism’s new governance structure, highlighting that suggestions like using the OP token for gas costs demonstrate a “clear representation of non-token-holder interests.”
On Wednesday, as part of its new governance initiative, the “Optimism Collective,” the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, released the first wave of its long-awaited OP token airdrop.
The “Token House” and the “Citizens’ House” are the two groups that makeup Optimism’s new governing structure. The former comprises holders of OP governance tokens, while the other is formed of owners of “soul-bound” non-transferrable citizenship nonfungible token (NFT).
While it’s uncertain whether Buterin supports a proposal from Thursday to employ the OP governance token for gas taxes, he did say on Twitter on Friday that he’s pleased such a discussion is going place:
“This is an excellent example of why I’m so proud of @optimismPBC for adding non-token governance (the Citizen House).
Optimism explicitly has goals *other* than just “make OP go up,” and the only way to do that long-term is with explicit representation of non-token-holder interests.”
The Token House is responsible for project incentives, protocol improvements, and treasury cash, while the Citizens’ House is in charge of retroactive public goods funding.
Buterin looks to welcome the idea that the two share governance options on network parameters and issuing new citizenships to the Citizens’ House.
According to Optimism, the Citizens’ House will increase in size over time, and the Foundation will decide the “process for dispersing Citizenships with feedback from the Token House.”
Buterin has said on numerous occasions that the crypto industry has to “get beyond the coin voting” in distributed finance (DeFi) or decentralized governance (DeGov) to minimize the risk of whale governance token holders seizing control of the voting process. Buterin says that this can lead to the whales’ short-term concentration on supporting proposals that seek to raise the price of specific assets.
Smallholders and platform users may lose their voice in the DeGov process due to this approach, which Buterin refers to as a lack of non-token-hodler interests.
The community’s response to the OP gas fee plan, posted in the Optimism governance forum for ideas and views yesterday, seems mixed.
While many voters agree in a few simple words, stating that it would make OP more practical, many others took the time to explain why they opposed the notion.
“I don’t think this is a wise decision,” one member, Kethic, said. “It seems counterproductive to waste voting power on a governance framework,” remarked user Vrede.
“Optimism is EVM equivalent. Accepting OP tokens as gas means giving up on EVM equivalence. Moreover, Optimism has to pay fees to Ethereum Mainnet in ETH. How will the OPETH conversion be handled?”
“This is a premature modification to a system that hasn’t started to operate the way Optimism planned,” stated user Massedai, indicating that the project is searching to generate token value through “ecosystem profitability rather than fast actions to try and push a token.”