Vitalik Buterin Supports Non-Token Governance for Optimism (OP), Here’s Why

Ethereum founder Vitalik  Buterin has supported the proposal of changing the use of OP tokens from being a governance token to the main network token used for gas payments. In open of his recent tweets, Buterin wrote:

“This is a great 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 Ethereum founder further shared links to his previous blog post that mentions that decentralized governance (DeGoV) is necessary as well as dangerous. He also explains the necessary steps one can take to minimize the risks in DeGov.

The Optimism (OP) Governance Token Launch

Ethereum’s Layer-2 scalability solution Optimism launched its governance tokens (OP) earlier this week. However, the OP token price collapsed more than 60% in the hotly anticipated debut.

Optimism has two hubs – Token House and Citizen House. The Token House hub supports OP governance tokens allowing holders to vote on different Optimism-centric projects. The Citizen House focuses on non-governance activities such as distributing retroactive public goods from the fees generated by the Optimism network.

Optimism airdropped a few OP tokens earlier this week on Tuesday. However, it failed to anticipate the overwhelming demand, which resulted in a high network load. Several users faced long delays in receiving the airdrop which ultimately led to the dumping of OP tokens.

Some Optimism users also expressed frustration that some parties were able to claim tokens before others. Some said that the website changed its status to being “ineligible” despite being eligible earlier.

Optimism has now managed to address the network loading issues. Further, it has cautioned users saying that there have been a lot of Optimism scam accounts popping up in wake of the recent incidents.