The Olympia Upgrade
A staged governance and funding system for Ethereum Classic. Redirects the EIP-1559 basefee into an on-chain Treasury, then builds governance layers to allocate funds transparently.
The Problem
Ethereum Classic faces four structural challenges that Olympia addresses from the bottom up.
Block Reward Decline
Era 4: 2.048 ETC/block. Each era is a 20% reduction. By Era 6, rewards drop to 1.31 ETC.
No Protocol Funding
ETC relies entirely on external donations for development, infrastructure, and tooling. Voluntary and fragile.
Negligible Fee Revenue
At ~5 txs/block, tips represent 0.01% of miner income. The basefee is effectively zero.
No Governance
Even if funds accumulate, there's no on-chain process to allocate them transparently.
ECIP Suite
11 Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposals across 5 stages.
| ECIP | Title | Stage | Type | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1111 | EIP-1559 + EIP-3198 Dynamic basefee pricing. Basefee redirected to Treasury instead of burned. | 1 | Consensus | Implemented |
| 1112 | Treasury Contract Immutable vault with AccessControlDefaultAdminRules for staged governance. | 1 | Consensus | Deployed |
| 1121 | EVM Compatibility Sprint 15 EIPs: MCOPY, transient storage, BLS12-381, secp256r1, EOA delegation. | 1 | Consensus | Implemented |
| 1113 | CoreDAO Governance Governor → Timelock → Executor pipeline with modular voting modules. | 2 | Contract | In Progress |
| 1114 | ECFP Funding Proposals Permissionless hash-bound proposal registry for transparent allocation. | 2 | Contract | Pending |
| 1119 | Sanctions Constraint Three-layer defense: propose check, mid-lifecycle cancel, execution gate. | 2 | Contract | Pending |
| 1117 | Futarchy DAO Prediction market governance with LMSR AMM and conditional markets. | 3 | Contract | Prototype |
| 1118 | Streaming Disbursements Milestone-gated fund releases with governance-authorized clawback. | 3 | Contract | Planned |
| 1115 | L-Curve Smoothing Governance-controlled miner incentive reshaping via smooth allocation curves. | 4 | Contract | Phase 4 |
| 1116 | Basefee Split Embed 5%/95% Treasury/miner split at consensus layer. | 5 | Consensus | Deferred |
| 1122 | Miner Distribution Protocol-native miner distribution curve. Supersedes ECIP-1120. | 5 | Consensus | Deferred |
Five Stages
Each stage addresses a specific concern and unlocks the next. Nothing is optional — each layer builds on the operational reality of the previous one.
Olympia Hard Fork
EIP-1559 basefee redirect to Treasury + 15 EVM compatibility EIPs. Three independent client implementations.
ECIPs: 1111, 1112, 1121 · Consensus
ImplementedCoreDAO Governance
Traditional DAO pipeline: OlympiaGovernor → Timelock → Executor → Treasury. NFT-based voting. Sanctions constraint.
ECIPs: 1113, 1114, 1119 · Contract
In ProgressFutarchy DAO
Prediction market governance with LMSR AMM. Streaming disbursements with milestone-gated releases and clawback.
ECIPs: 1117, 1118 · Contract
PlannedMiner Distribution
L-curve smoothing experiments. Test curves, amounts, and strategies before hardcoding at protocol level.
ECIPs: 1115 · Contract
PlannedProtocol Hardcode
Embed validated basefee split (5%/95%) and miner distribution at consensus. Second hard fork.
ECIPs: 1116, 1122 · Consensus
DeferredHow It Works
Olympia builds from the bottom up: first accumulate, then govern, then experiment, then harden.
Basefee Collected
Every transaction pays a basefee via EIP-1559. On Ethereum, this is burned. On ETC, 100% is redirected to the Treasury.
~1 gwei/tx at current volumes
Treasury Accumulates
An immutable vault contract receives basefee via consensus state credit. Also accepts voluntary donations. No withdrawals during Stage 1.
OpenZeppelin AccessControlDefaultAdminRules
Governance Allocates
Stage 2 activates the CoreDAO pipeline. Proposals go through Governor → Timelock → Executor → Treasury with sanctions checks at every layer.
3-layer sanctions defense
Three Independent Clients
Cross-client verification completed March 2026. All consensus-critical bugs found and fixed. All 3 clients produce identical Treasury balances.
Activation Timeline
Block 15,800,850
~March 28, 2026
All 3 clients will activate Olympia simultaneously on the Mordor testnet for validation before mainnet.
Block ~24,751,337
~Mid-June 2026
Production activation after successful Mordor validation. Treasury begins accumulating basefee revenue.
Design Principles
Olympia is designed to be cautious, staged, and empirical.
Accumulate First, Govern Later
The Treasury starts as a receive-only vault. Governance matures separately. No withdrawals until the governance pipeline is battle-tested.
Contract Before Consensus
Experiment with parameters at the contract layer (adjustable via OIP) before embedding them at the consensus layer (requires a hard fork).
Layered Defense
Sanctions checking at three points — propose, cancel, execute — ensures no single failure mode bypasses screening.
Miner-First Economics
Block rewards and priority fees are untouched. The basefee redirect adds ~1 gwei/tx — negligible relative to the 2.048 ETC block reward.