Olympia
Governance Architecture
Three systems that work together. Core contributors decide binding protocol questions on-chain. Open prediction markets give the public a financially incentivized stake in network direction, and pay participants for being right. Miners, exchanges, wallets and infrastructure providers govern through the client software they choose to run.
Below: where the money comes from, what the Treasury holds, the five things it pays for, and how a proposal turns into a payment that lands.
View Governance AppTreasury Funding
How It Works
Funding that does not come out of anyone’s pocket. Here is the path a fee takes, from the transaction that pays it to the work it funds.
Base Fee Revenue
Every transaction pays a base fee, set by the network, plus an optional tip to the miner. Ethereum destroys the base fee. Olympia sends it to the Treasury instead and changes nothing else: tips and block rewards are untouched, so miners earn exactly what they earn today.
Funded by base-fee revenue, not inflation
Treasury
Base-fee revenue lands in the Olympia Sovereignty Vault, a permanent contract that keeps nothing and forwards everything to the Olympia Treasury. The Treasury is where the money sits, owned by no company, foundation or individual, with one withdrawal path and no admin key. It does not invest, allocate, or choose recipients. Every credit and every payment is on-chain and public.
One withdrawal path, with on-chain transparency
Governance
Community proposals allocate treasury funds through on-chain voting with timelock security. Sanctions screening binds on the path that matters most: the Governor checks every externally-directed target before the Treasury pays, and no other account can release those funds.
Olympia DAO core contributors + futarchy prediction markets
The Sovereignty Vault
What the DAO has to work with
Ethereum Classic funds its own core work out of what the network earns from being used. No company owns that money, no foundation administers it, and nobody had to donate it. Base fee revenue is the only funding source the protocol itself defines, and anyone may add to it voluntarily and permissionlessly.
What the design settles is where that revenue goes and who is able to spend it, and both answers are readable from chain state rather than taken on trust. Every credit into the Vault, every forwarding call and every payment the Treasury makes is an ordinary on-chain event that anyone can reconstruct independently.
Exactly one contract is permanent
That single boundary is the architecture. Consensus has to name something in place of the burn, and whatever it names cannot be changed again without a hard fork, so the design puts as little as it can get away with on the permanent side of that line and leaves everything else on the other.
The Olympia Sovereignty Vault
Around thirty lines of code with no owner, no role, no setter and no parameter to tune. It holds one address, fixed when it is built, and it forwards everything it receives there. This is the address consensus credits, so changing it is a hard fork.
Everything below it
The Olympia Treasury that holds the money, the Governor that spends it, the voting model, the sanctions oracle. Each of them is changed by an ordinary proposal, and none of it needs a fork or the agreement of anyone running a node.
The Treasury is replaceable, with one qualification worth stating
What the fork makes unchangeable is where new revenue lands, not who is allowed to spend it. The Vault’s destination is fixed at construction, so the Treasury standing at that address keeps receiving whatever arrives next. Governance can still deploy a successor and move the whole balance across by ordinary proposal, because the Treasury forwards arbitrary calls, and everything that accrues afterward can be moved the same way, indefinitely.
What never ends is the forwarding. So replacing the Treasury is a governance program with a step that repeats, rather than one vote that finishes the job, and no part of it needs a hard fork.
What the DAO funds
Five things the Treasury pays for
None of these are new needs. Every one of them is work the network has always depended on and has never had a reliable way to pay for. What changes is where the money for it comes from, and who gets to decide how it is spent.
- 1
Core Development
The software the network runs on
Ethereum Classic is whatever its client software says it is. Somebody has to write that software, review it, ship releases, and patch it when a vulnerability turns up. That work has never stopped being necessary and has never had a funding source the network itself controls.
- Fukuii
- The primary client, and the first written for Ethereum Classic rather than adapted from an Ethereum one. One binary runs mainnet, the testnets and private networks.
- Core-Geth
- In maintenance. A go-ethereum derivative, carried through the upgrade for the operators already running it. Its security record is published in full rather than described in the abstract.
- Client plugins
- Adding Ethereum Classic support to Besu, Erigon, Ethrex, Go-Ethereum, Nethermind and Reth. This is future work, and nothing here ships today.
- 2
Critical Software
Developer tooling
A team deciding where to deploy compares what is in front of them on the day they look. If the testnet is awkward, the faucet is dry, or the explorer cannot show them their own transaction, they go elsewhere, and no argument about the chain's principles reaches them.
The goal is unremarkable and that is the point: building on Ethereum Classic should feel like building on any other EVM chain, using the libraries a developer already knows.
- Public testnets
- Somewhere to exercise a contract before it holds anything. Mordor is where the Olympia upgrade is tested first.
- Faucets
- Testnet value handed out on request, without an application to fill in.
- Block explorers
- Blockscout indexes both Mordor and mainnet, and it is where the live figures on this site come from.
- Endpoints and SDKs
- Standard Ethereum tooling working unchanged. Rivet serves the public mainnet endpoint at etc.rivet.link.
- 3
Network Operations
Keeping the network reachable
Some infrastructure has no owner and everybody depends on it. It is invisible while it works, which is why it is chronically underfunded, and it is the first thing anyone notices when it stops.
- Public RPC endpoints
- The address a wallet or an application actually talks to.
- Boot nodes
- How a node that has just started finds the rest of the network. Without them a new node has nowhere to begin.
- Monitoring
- Dashboards and alerting, so an outage is seen by somebody whose job it is to see it.
None of this is a project that finishes. These are around-the-clock obligations, which is the kind of commitment a donation cycle funds badly and a standing treasury funds well.
- 4
Network Security
Paying for security once the block reward runs down
Miner revenue on a proof-of-work chain has two parts: the block reward and transaction fees. Ethereum Classic's block reward is not a policy anyone revisits. Under ECIP-1017 it falls by a fifth every five million blocks, on a published schedule that continues until it approaches nothing.
Fee income is what grows into the gap as the reward shrinks, and it only does so on a chain that has a fee market and demand to price. Ethereum Classic's schedule shrinks whether or not either exists.
Ethereum Classic today
Reference figures- of block space is used
0.12%
of block space is used
Blockscout's own figure, averaged over the last 50 blocks
- per block, and falling
1.6384 ETC
per block, and falling
Drops by a fifth at block 30,000,001 under ECIP-1017
- collected in base fees
None
collected in base fees
EIP-1559 is not active here, so the revenue does not exist rather than being zero
Measured from Blockscout on 11 August 2026 and shown until the live read arrives. Check it yourself
So the fee market is what a falling reward has to be met with, and building it is core development work. That is why this counts as security spending rather than as a nice-to-have: a network that cannot pay the people securing it does not stay secure. Treasury revenue and miner fee income grow from the same thing, which is transactions people actually want to make.
What this does not do to mining revenue
Nothing in Olympia changes what a miner is paid today. ECIP-1017 block rewards are untouched and priority tips are untouched. The base fee is a separate component Ethereum Classic does not have at all, and ECIP-1111 introduces it and credits it to the Olympia Sovereignty Vault rather than destroying it as Ethereum does, which leaves every existing component of miner revenue untouched.
Later stages return part of that new stream to miners. That is the opposite of a block-reward split: value moves toward miners, out of a stream that does not exist before this upgrade and that no miner has ever received. How large a part, and over what window, are both left deliberately unset, and they stay unset until a real deployment has shown what those answers should be.
- 5
Development Community
Funding the work instead of employing the worker
Core development funding on Ethereum Classic has historically moved through private payrolls. An organization raises money, hires a team, and the network receives whatever that arrangement produces. Two consequences follow from the shape of the arrangement rather than from anyone's conduct: the work lasts exactly as long as the employer's balance sheet does, and the incentives that govern it are the employer's, which need not match growing the network.
The alternative is to fund the work. Contribute, build on Ethereum Classic, then apply for funding for what you delivered. That opens the same process to any of the thousands of developers already working in the EVM ecosystem, without any of them having to be hired first.
Retrospective funding is the preferred form. The work is complete and independently verifiable when the proposal is submitted, so voters are looking at merged changes, a published audit, or a service with a usage record, rather than at a plan. Prospective funding stays available where the work genuinely cannot be delivered first, and a proposal asking for it has to say why.
Two things about that preference are easy to get backwards in opposite directions, so both are worth stating. Completed work creates no claim on the Treasury, and a retrospective proposal can be declined like any other. And the preference is a governance norm rather than a rule in the contracts, because nothing on-chain tells the two forms apart. Anyone who wants to see this work funded can contribute to the Treasury directly, without standing up an organization to spend it, and what they add stays publicly accounted for and available to the whole development community.
Governance Architecture
Three systems that work together. Core contributors decide binding protocol questions on-chain. Open prediction markets give the public a financially incentivized stake in network direction, and pay participants for being right. Miners, exchanges, wallets and infrastructure providers govern through the client software they choose to run.
Core Development Governance
Binding On-Chain Protocol Governance
Binding governance over core client software, critical infrastructure, network security, treasury allocation and emergency protocol responses. Base fee revenue funds the treasury continuously, alongside voluntary on-chain donations. Anyone preferring a traditional giving model can contribute through the ETC Cooperative, a US 501(c)(3) non-profit that accepts tax-deductible donations.
Any stakeholder, whether exchanges, custodians, miners, investment product issuers, or institutions holding ETC on behalf of fund shareholders, can contribute directly on-chain with no overhead and no intermediaries. Settlement is immediate and verifiable. No coordination calls, no invoices, no preferred relationships.
Core development is no longer gated behind employment. Open proposals let any of the thousands of EVM developers worldwide bid for development funds, infrastructure contracts, and critical service agreements covering block explorers, RPC endpoints, oracles, bridges, and ecosystem integrations. Open proposals, open bids, open funding, all executed on-chain by the DAO itself. A Wyoming DAO LLC stands behind it as the legal interface for whatever a passed proposal needs off-chain, and holds no authority over the Treasury and no ability to initiate, route or reinterpret a payment.
Propose
Submitting is permissionless, bounded only by the proposal threshold the DAO sets for itself
Vote
Core contributors cast on-chain votes
Queue
Approved proposals enter a configurable security timelock
Execute
After timelock, proposals execute on-chain without manual intervention
Disclose
All outcomes are publicly recorded and verifiable on-chain
Futarchy Markets
The Olympia Futarchy Grants DAO
An Affiliated DAO working alongside Olympia DAO, funding public ecosystem growth. Anyone holding ETC or Classic USD can take a position, with no membership and no CoreNFT, and participants are paid for being right. Olympia DAO votes on whether, how much and within what scope to seed a season; once seeded, the market settles who is funded out of it. Trading also brings new users onto Ethereum Classic and generates base fee revenue for the treasury.
Open
Anyone opens a prediction market on a proposed protocol outcome
Speculate
Public participants take positions, rewarded for being right
Resolve
Markets settle on a time-weighted average price comparison between the two branches, with no reporter and no vote
Signal
Market prices feed back as on-chain signal into future governance decisions
Network Participant Layer
Software Adoption as Governance Signal
Every node operator, mining pool, exchange, and wallet provider participates in governance through the client software they choose to run. When the DAO approves a protocol upgrade and independent client teams publish compatible releases, network adoption is the final step. An upgrade becomes real when the infrastructure that secures, settles, and routes ETC transactions upgrades to support it. No contributor NFT required, no market position to open, running the software is the governance act.
DAO Approval
Olympia DAO votes to approve a protocol upgrade through the on-chain governance process
Client Releases
Independent client teams publish compatible implementations of the approved upgrade
Network Adoption
Miners, exchanges, wallets, and node operators upgrade their software across the network
Distributed Consensus
The upgrade activates once the broader network has adopted the new software
Frequently Asked Questions
The Olympia Treasury is funded by EIP-1559 basefee revenue, the only protocol-defined source, alongside voluntary on-chain donations. No ECIP directs mining revenue to the Treasury: block rewards and tips remain completely untouched and go entirely to miners. Futarchy prediction market activity generates additional transaction volume that flows back into the treasury as basefee revenue. Any stakeholder, whether exchanges, custodians, miners, investment product issuers, or institutions holding ETC on behalf of fund shareholders, can contribute directly on-chain with no overhead. Stakeholders who prefer a traditional giving model can contribute through the ETC Cooperative, a US 501(c)(3) non-profit that accepts tax-deductible donations.
Olympia is coordinated by the same developers, organizations, and community stewards who have delivered every Ethereum Classic network upgrade since 2016. The ETC Cooperative, a US 501(c)(3) non-profit, funds Ethereum Classic's client development teams and has managed the hard fork coordination process throughout that history. Stakeholder outreach, client release sequencing, and cross-client testing are all established practice. Olympia is a significant upgrade carried forward by a team with a clean delivery record across a decade of ETC network upgrades.
Submitting a funding proposal is permissionless: no application, no affiliation, and no gatekeeper who can decline to put it in front of the vote. The one bar is the Governor's proposal threshold, a minimum amount of voting power an author must hold, which the DAO sets for itself; at zero any ETC account can author a proposal, and above zero authorship narrows to core contributors. Voting is limited to Olympia DAO core contributors, who hold a soulbound CoreNFT carrying one non-delegable vote each. Prediction markets are open to anyone, with no contributor NFT and no identity check. Network participants such as miners, exchanges, wallets and infrastructure providers govern through the client software they run.
Both are available, and retrospective is the preferred form. In a retrospective Olympia Funding Proposal the work is already complete and independently verifiable when the proposal is submitted, so the DAO votes on delivered work carrying evidence, merged changes, a published audit, an operated service with a usage record, rather than on a plan. Prospective funding remains available where work cannot reasonably be delivered first, such as a third-party security audit, infrastructure that must be paid for before it can run, or sustained work no contributor can reasonably self-finance; a prospective proposal must state why. Two points are easy to get backwards in opposite directions. Completed work creates no claim on the Treasury: a retrospective proposal may be declined like any other, and performing work confers no entitlement to payment. And the preference is a governance norm, not a contract-level rule, nothing on-chain distinguishes the two forms, both reach the Treasury through the same Governor and Timelock path, and voters enforce the preference by how they vote. The closest precedents are Optimism Retro Funding and Base Builder Grants.
Proposals pass through five on-chain stages: Submit, Vote, Queue, Execute, Disclose. Voting power is fixed by a snapshot rather than read live, so admitting or revoking a contributor mid-vote cannot rewrite a tally already in flight, and each core contributor holds exactly one vote. A proposal that reaches quorum only near its deadline extends it, so a late surge cannot close the window before anyone can answer it. Approved proposals enter a configurable timelock before execution. All outcomes are publicly recorded and verifiable on-chain via the Olympia DAO governance app at app.olympiadao.org.
Olympia is targeted for mainnet activation in 2027. The testnet activation block on Mordor is announced first. The mainnet activation block follows after a successful Mordor run and a coordinated stakeholder readiness check with exchanges, mining pools, node operators, and infrastructure providers. All client implementations publish Olympia-compatible releases well before activation.
Olympia strengthens ETC's regulatory profile. As a Proof-of-Work blockchain with no pre-mine, no ICO, no foundation controlling the protocol, and now a community-governed on-chain treasury, ETC is positioned for classification as a digital commodity under the CLARITY Act. In the EU, ETC qualifies as a decentralized asset under MiCA, exempt from per-asset issuer requirements. Japan's FSA lists ETC among approved digital assets. The three-layer governance structure, protocol clients, Wyoming DAO LLC, and on-chain Olympia DAO, maintains clear decentralization while satisfying compliance requirements at the legal entity layer.