Governance Architecture

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.

Any ETC account can submit a funding proposal on-chain. 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, Timelock and Executor pipeline, 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 taken when the proposal is created, and each core contributor holds exactly one vote. 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.