Citizenship

The Citizens’ House relies on the concept of identity-based governance. Citizens are meant to represent individual human stakeholders of the Collective: builders, users, and community members who are aligned with the project’s values and are interested in the long-term benefit of the Collective. This is distinct from the more common pattern of token-voting governance (as used in Optimism’s Token House).

In the initial stage of bootstrapping the Citizens' House, participants receive temporary badges to vote in Retro Funding rounds. In future stages, the Token House and Citizens’ House together will collaborate on ongoing criteria for participation in the Citizens’ House. This means the criteria for Citizenship will evolve over time. Holding a voting badge does not guarantee voting rights in future rounds of Retro Funding, as eventually membership will be determined by governance and may change.

How will Citizenship Selection work?

• Optimism has a neutral, permissionless attestation contract called the AttestationStation
• Optimism Governance (Token + Citizens’ House) has authority over a function that takes the AttestationStation as an argument and uses any data included to determine the set of Citizens.

Optimism governance can use any reputation data written to the AttestationStation contract to determine Citizenship in future iterations of the Citizens’ House. This system is designed to be flexible and future-proof; rather than prescribe citizenship criteria at the outset, the Collective is keeping true to its principle of iterative governance.

For more information on Optimism's identity layer, visit the AttestationStation documentation.

Becoming a Citizen

In the current phase of Citizens' House governance the number of voting badges is growing with each round of Retro Funding: Retro Funding round 1 had 24 badgeholders participate, round 2 saw 71 badgeholders participate, and in round 3 voting badges will be offered to 208 community members.
Eventually, Citizenship is intended to be widely distributed to a large group of humans across the Optimism ecosystem with expertise in many different subcultures and industries. Optimism governance will have the power to set criteria for Citizenship.

This means voting eligibility may someday be subject to rules and restrictions unknown today. Voting in Retro Funding 3 does not guarantee permanent participation in the Citizens’ House and future iterations of Retro Funding.