Governance Review #98

TL;DR

In Optimism, governance discussions focused on protocol infrastructure and crosschain governance. OP Labs proposed Upgrade 19 (“Karst”), a major OP Stack upgrade that introduces Ethereum Fusaka improvements, new upgrade tooling, and a transition to the Rust-based kona-client as the primary fault-proof implementation. Meanwhile, Uniswap proposed updating its crosschain governance infrastructure across Avalanche, MegaETH, Soneium, and X Layer, including a migration away from LayerZero v1.

In Arbitrum, treasury management and ecosystem operations remained in focus. Entropy reported new treasury deployments across stablecoin and ETH strategies, progress on governance tooling, and ongoing work around DRIP Season 2. The DAO is also considering a proposal to extend DRIP’s mandate through July 2027, giving the committee additional time to deploy the program’s remaining incentive budget.

In ZKsync, governance activity centered on ecosystem growth and institutional adoption. The ZK Stack Content Program concluded after surpassing its engagement targets with more than 1.2 million views across 650 pieces of content, while community discussions continued around infrastructure, tooling, and ecosystem expansion initiatives.

Elsewhere, Scroll announced a security-focused OpenVM upgrade scheduled for June 25, while enterprise adoption stories continued to emerge across the broader Ethereum ecosystem, including LG Electronics’ pilot of an on-chain advertising network built on Arbitrum.

Active Votes

Arbitrum

Continued Funding for the Arbitrum Foundation - ends on June 25 at 18:02 UTC.
AIP: Transition Arbitrum One ordering policy to Priority Gas Auctions (PGA) - ends on June 25 at 16:22 UTC.
Extending DRIP’s Mandate - ends on June 25 at 16:40 UTC.

Starknet

Starknet v0.14.3 (Updated) - ends on June 26 at 14:15 UTC.

Optimism

Community Member Proposes Six-Month Superchain Education Campaign

Undergroungcrypto opened an RFC proposing a six-month educational campaign focused on Optimism, the OP Stack, and the broader Superchain ecosystem. The proposal requests $12,000 in funding, distributed across six monthly milestones, to support recurring educational content aimed at retail crypto users.

The campaign would include livestreams, short-form videos, social media content, community engagement, and monthly performance reports covering topics such as Ethereum scaling, the OP Stack, Superchain architecture, governance, and public goods funding. The author is seeking community feedback on whether the initiative should proceed as a full campaign, a smaller pilot program, or through an alternative funding mechanism.

Optimism Proposes Upgrade 19 “Karst” Hardfork and OP Stack Infrastructure Improvements

OP Labs submitted Upgrade 19 (Karst), a protocol upgrade that bundles several execution-layer, fault-proof, and upgradeability improvements for OP Mainnet and other Superchain networks.

The proposal introduces seven Ethereum Fusaka EIPs to maintain EVM equivalence, deploys a new deterministic L2 contract upgrade framework (L2 Contract Manager), upgrades the OP Contracts Manager, and promotes the Rust-based kona-client as the primary fault-proof implementation. The upgrade also prepares the protocol for future interoperability features and marks the end of support for op-geth and op-program, requiring operators to migrate to op-reth and kona-client ahead of activation. If approved, Karst is expected to activate on mainnet on July 8, 2026.

Arbitrum

Entropy Advisors Monthly Update: May 2026

Entropy Advisors published its May 2026 update, highlighting new capital inflows, treasury deployments, and ongoing governance initiatives across the Arbitrum ecosystem.

During the month, the Treasury Management portfolio received additional ETH and stablecoins from multiple DAO-controlled sources, including the recently approved transfer of 6,000 ETH from the treasury. The newly consolidated funds were deployed across several yield-generating positions, while preparations also began for a proposed allocation of 12,750 ETH into ether.fi’s eETH as part of an ecosystem growth initiative. Beyond treasury management, Entropy reported continued progress on governance tooling through ArbData, updates on the Watchdog program, and ongoing discussions around a potential second season of the DRIP incentives program.

Arbitrum Audit Program: Transparency Report #3

The Arbitrum Foundation published the third transparency report for the Arbitrum Audit Program (AAP), covering the period from February through April 2026.

The program received a record 108 applications during the quarter, its highest intake since launch, while maintaining a selective approval process that ultimately onboarded seven projects. Across 14 completed audits, security firms identified 297 vulnerabilities, including eight classified as critical, after reviewing more than 21,000 lines of code. The report also highlights continued expansion of the program’s auditor roster, growing interest from DeFi and infrastructure teams, and ongoing efforts to balance ecosystem alignment requirements with broader project participation.

ArbitrumDAO Factsheet: LG Electronics Pilots Onchain Advertising on Arbitrum

The Arbitrum Foundation highlighted a new pilot by LG Electronics’ Blockchain Research Lab, which is testing an on-chain advertising network built on Arbitrum in partnership with Japanese advertising firm Hakuhodo.

The initiative aims to address longstanding challenges in digital advertising, including ad fraud, measurement transparency, and privacy-preserving data handling. By recording advertising activity on-chain, the system seeks to create verifiable delivery and engagement records while reducing reliance on centralized intermediaries. According to the announcement, the pilot represents another example of enterprise adoption beyond finance, as LG evaluates whether blockchain-based infrastructure can improve the operational efficiency and trustworthiness of large-scale advertising networks.

Extending DRIP’s Mandate

Entropy Advisors introduced a proposal to extend the mandate of the DAO’s DRIP incentive program by one year, moving its expiration date from July 2026 to July 2027.

The proposal does not request additional funding and would leave the program’s existing 80M ARB budget unchanged. According to Entropy, the extension is intended to give the Season Selection Committee more time to deploy the remaining allocation, following a longer-than-expected first season and ongoing discussions around the design of a potential Season 2. If approved, the proposal would preserve the program’s current structure while allowing future incentive campaigns to be launched over an extended timeframe.

Uniswap

Uniswap Proposes Crosschain Governance Upgrades Across Four Networks

Eek637 created a proposal that seeks to modernize the protocol’s crosschain governance infrastructure on Avalanche, MegaETH, Soneium, and X Layer by updating how governance decisions are relayed and executed across networks.

The proposal would migrate governance messaging on Avalanche and MegaETH from the soon-to-be-deprecated LayerZero v1 infrastructure to Wormhole, while replacing legacy governance ownership configurations on Soneium and X Layer with dedicated CrossChainAccount contracts. According to the proposal, these changes are intended to align Uniswap’s governance system with current best practices, improve long-term maintainability, and ensure protocol upgrades and governance actions can continue to be executed securely across supported chains.

Scroll

Announcement: OpenVM v1.6.0 Upgrade on Scroll

Scroll announced a maintenance upgrade that will migrate its zkVM proving system from OpenVM v1.4.1 to v1.6.0, incorporating a series of security improvements and critical soundness fixes introduced in recent OpenVM releases.

The upgrade is scheduled to activate on Scroll Mainnet on June 25, following a successful deployment on Sepolia. While the change requires deploying a new verifier contract due to modifications in the proving system, Scroll emphasized that there will be no changes to the EVM, fee model, RPC interfaces, or user-facing functionality. During the upgrade window, batch finalization is expected to be temporarily delayed for roughly one hour, though transactions and normal network activity will continue uninterrupted. The update primarily aims to strengthen the security guarantees of Scroll’s validity proof system by adopting the latest upstream fixes from OpenVM.

ZKsync

Final Report: ZK Stack Content Program (Community Activation RFP 2 – Extension)

The team behind the ZK Stack Content Program published its final report, marking the completion of the 13-week extension of ZKsync’s Community Activation RFP #2.

According to the report, participating creators produced 650 pieces of content that generated more than 1.27 million views, alongside nearly 20,000 likes and 3,200 comments, surpassing the program’s engagement targets. Content focused primarily on ZKsync’s institutional strategy, Prividium, token utility, governance, and technical differentiation. The report concludes that the curated creator model successfully maintained narrative alignment while expanding ecosystem awareness, and recommends continuing similar programs with a greater emphasis on short-form video and real-time ecosystem developments.

Quiet Corner

Some ecosystems saw no meaningful governance developments this week.

Everclear
Hop
Starknet
Lisk
Polygon
Wormhole

As always, if we missed something important, feel free to reach out. We’re happy to dig deeper.

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