The Olympia Upgrade
A staged governance and funding system for Ethereum Classic. Redirects the EIP-1559 basefee into an on-chain Treasury, then builds governance layers to allocate funds transparently.
Ethereum Classic faces four structural challenges that Olympia addresses from the bottom up.
Block Reward Decline
Era 4: 2.048 ETC/block. Each era is a 20% reduction. By Era 6, rewards drop to 1.31 ETC.
No Protocol Funding
ETC relies entirely on external donations for development, infrastructure, and tooling. Voluntary and fragile.
Negligible Fee Revenue
At ~5 txs/block, tips represent 0.01% of miner income. The basefee is effectively zero.
No Governance
Even if funds accumulate, there's no on-chain process to allocate them transparently.
Olympia builds from the bottom up: first accumulate, then govern, then experiment, then harden.
Basefee Collected
Every transaction pays a basefee via EIP-1559. On Ethereum, this is burned. On ETC, 100% is redirected to the Treasury.
~1 gwei/tx at current volumes
Treasury Accumulates
An immutable vault contract receives basefee via consensus state credit. Also accepts voluntary donations. No withdrawals during Stage 1.
OpenZeppelin AccessControlDefaultAdminRules
Governance Allocates
Stage 2 activates the CoreDAO pipeline. Proposals go through Governor → Timelock → Executor → Treasury with sanctions checks at every layer.
3-layer sanctions defense
Each stage addresses a specific concern and unlocks the next. Later stages build on the operational reality of earlier ones — though some, like miner distribution, are explicitly optional.
Olympia Hard Fork
EIP-1559 basefee redirect to Treasury + 15 EVM compatibility EIPs. Three independent client implementations.
ECIPs: 1111, 1112, 1121 · Consensus
ImplementedCoreDAO Governance
Traditional DAO pipeline: OlympiaGovernor → Timelock → Executor → Treasury. NFT-based voting. Sanctions constraint.
ECIPs: 1113, 1114, 1119 · Contract
In ProgressFutarchy DAO
Prediction market governance with conditional outcome markets. Streaming disbursements with milestone-gated releases.
ECIPs: 1117, 1118 · Contract
PlannedMiner Distribution
L-curve smoothing experiments. Test curves, amounts, and strategies before hardcoding at protocol level.
ECIPs: 1115 · Contract
PlannedProtocol Hardcode
Embed validated basefee split and miner distribution at consensus. Second hard fork.
ECIPs: 1116, 1122 · Consensus
Deferred11 Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposals across 5 stages.
| ECIP | Title | Stage | Type | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1111 | EIP-1559 + EIP-3198 Dynamic basefee pricing. Basefee redirected to Treasury instead of burned. | 1 | Consensus | Implemented |
| 1112 | Treasury Contract Immutable vault with AccessControlDefaultAdminRules for staged governance. | 1 | Consensus | Deployed |
| 1121 | EVM Compatibility Sprint 15 EIPs: MCOPY, transient storage, BLS12-381, secp256r1, EOA delegation. | 1 | Consensus | Implemented |
| 1113 | CoreDAO Governance Governor → Timelock → Executor pipeline with modular voting modules. | 2 | Contract | In Progress |
| 1114 | ECFP Funding Proposals Permissionless hash-bound proposal registry for transparent allocation. | 2 | Contract | In Progress |
| 1119 | Sanctions Constraint Three-layer defense: propose check, mid-lifecycle cancel, execution gate. | 2 | Contract | In Progress |
| 1117 | Futarchy DAO Prediction market governance with conditional outcome markets. | 3 | Contract | Planned |
| 1118 | Streaming Disbursements Milestone-gated fund releases with governance-authorized clawback. | 3 | Contract | Planned |
| 1115 | L-Curve Smoothing Governance-controlled miner incentive reshaping via smooth allocation curves. | 4 | Contract | Planned |
| 1116 | Basefee Split Embed validated basefee split at consensus layer. | 5 | Consensus | Deferred |
| 1122 | Miner Distribution Protocol-native miner distribution curve. Supersedes ECIP-1120. | 5 | Consensus | Deferred |
Cross-client verification completed March 2026. All consensus-critical bugs found and fixed. All 3 clients produce identical Treasury balances.
Block 15,800,850
~March 28, 2026
All 3 clients will activate Olympia simultaneously on the Mordor testnet for validation before mainnet.
Block ~24,751,337
~Mid-June 2026
Production activation after successful Mordor validation. Treasury begins accumulating basefee revenue.
Olympia is designed to be cautious, staged, and empirical.
Accumulate First, Govern Later
The Treasury starts as a receive-only vault. Governance matures separately. No withdrawals until the governance pipeline is battle-tested.
Contract Before Consensus
Experiment with parameters at the contract layer (adjustable via OIP) before embedding them at the consensus layer (requires a hard fork).
Layered Defense
Sanctions checking at three points — propose, cancel, execute — ensures no single failure mode bypasses screening.
Miner-First Economics
Block rewards and priority fees are untouched. The basefee redirect adds ~1 gwei/tx — negligible relative to the 2.048 ETC block reward.