Olympia
Governance Architecture
Three complementary systems designed to work together. Membership-based on-chain governance handles binding protocol decisions. Open prediction markets give the broader public a financially incentivized stake in network direction. Network participants — miners, exchanges, wallets, and infrastructure providers — govern through the client software they run.
View Governance AppTreasury Funding
How It Works
Sustainable protocol funding without impacting miners. Transaction basefee revenue flows through three stages.
Basefee Revenue
Every transaction pays a basefee via EIP-1559. The basefee is directed to the Treasury. Block rewards and tips remain completely untouched — miners are unaffected.
Funded by basefee revenue, not inflation
Treasury
Protocol-managed vault accumulates basefee revenue, voluntary donations, and mining rewards directed to the treasury address. Real-time monitoring via public dashboard.
Immutable vault with on-chain transparency
Governance
Community proposals allocate treasury funds through on-chain voting with timelock security and sanctions compliance at every layer.
Olympia DAO membership NFTs + futarchy prediction markets
Governance Architecture
Three complementary systems designed to work together. Membership-based on-chain governance handles binding protocol decisions. Open prediction markets give the broader public a financially incentivized stake in network direction. Network participants — miners, exchanges, wallets, and infrastructure providers — govern through the client software they run.
Core Development Governance
Binding On-Chain Protocol Governance
Binding governance scoped to core client software, critical infrastructure, network security, treasury allocation, and emergency protocol responses. The treasury is funded continuously by basefee revenue, on-chain donations, and miners directing hashpower to the treasury address. Stakeholders who prefer a traditional giving model can also 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 by the Wyoming DAO LLC on behalf of what the Olympia DAO approves on-chain.
Propose
Any ETC account can submit a funding proposal on-chain
Vote
Membership NFT holders cast weighted 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
Open Prediction Markets and Public Signal
Open prediction markets where anyone can speculate on protocol outcomes without membership. Participants are financially rewarded for accurate predictions, bringing new users onto ETC and generating transaction volume that flows as basefee revenue into the protocol treasury. Better signal produces more development funding and better protocol outcomes, creating a self-reinforcing loop between public participation and core development capacity.
Open
Anyone opens a prediction market on a proposed protocol outcome
Speculate
Public participants stake on outcomes with no membership required
Resolve
Markets settle when the underlying governance event executes on-chain
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 membership 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 when the broader network has adopted the new software — distributed participation made real
Frequently Asked Questions
The Olympia Treasury is funded by EIP-1559 basefee revenue, voluntary on-chain donations, and mining rewards directed to the treasury address. 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 membership NFT holders — non-transferable ERC-721 tokens with automatic delegation and snapshot-based voting power. Prediction market participation is open to anyone without membership. Network participants (miners, exchanges, wallets, infrastructure providers) govern through the client software they run, with no membership required.
Proposals pass through five on-chain stages: Submit, Vote, Queue, Execute, Disclose. The voting period uses snapshot-based voting power from OlympiaMemberNFT holdings at proposal creation. 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 before 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.