TL;DR
Optimism closes out Season 8: Cycle 46 finalizes Growth Apps with 24 grants approved out of 91 and, for the first time, 100% of the 6.29M OP budget deployed; AI-assisted intake reduced reviewer load but surfaced clear limits, reinforcing the need for human oversight as tooling matures.
On Arbitrum, governance ops tighten heading into 2026: OpCo publishes formal RAD Terms and Conditions, appoints SEED as a scoped RAD Program Manager, and continues routine Security Council maintenance with a non-emergency key rotation for Gauntlet. In parallel, Nerite announces a “Winning Together” campaign allocating 3M NERI tokens to the Arbitrum DAO treasury as a long-term alignment move.
On ZKsync, a secondary governance interface goes live at alt.vote.zknation.io, adding redundancy and UX improvements while Tally remains the primary interface; community activation experiments continue with early signals of strong engagement but shallow interaction depth.
On Polygon, Labs publishes a post-incident report on a PoS RPC disruption caused by stalled Bor nodes, confirming no downtime or safety impact, alongside year-end validator data highlighting stake concentration, delegator growth, and performance leaders across 2025.
Elsewhere, governance activity remains relatively quiet across Scroll, Uniswap, Starknet, Everclear, Hop, and Wormhole, marking a low-key but operationally focused start to the first governance cycle of 2026.
Optimism
Cycle 45 Results – Season 8 Audit Grants
M4rio.eth shared the Cycle 45 outcomes for Optimism’s Season 8 Audit Grants: 4 approvals totaling 227,078 OP (Metrom, 40acres, VII Finance, Arcadia Finance) out of 18 submissions, with 14 rejected. Demand remained high, but approvals were constrained by a tight remaining budget, leaving just 8,798.40 OP available after the cycle.
The council noted that AI-assisted triage helped with early screening (scope sizing, cost efficiency, repo completeness), while final selections prioritized open-source, Superchain-aligned projects with clear ecosystem impact, co-funding, and realistic OP-to-scope ratios.
Arbitrum
Non-emergency action to facilitate key rotation of Security Council - December 2025
Arbitrum Foundation shared an update on a non-emergency Security Council action to facilitate a key rotation for Gauntlet, which joined the September 2025 cohort. The rotation replaces Ryan Wegner with John Morrow as Gauntlet’s representative. The Council initiated the non-emergency process on December 29, 2025, which is expected to take approximately 18 days to complete. No action is required from Arbitrum One or Nova users, and the post includes the signed messages authorizing the change.
DIP v1.7 Final Report
In its final report, SEEDGov reviews DIP v1.6 and v1.7 for May–October 2025, with a focus on the transition to DIP v1.7 in August. According to the report, the program reduced monthly spending by 41.6% while increasing incentivized voting power by 16.7%, translating into a 100%+ improvement in VP per dollar. It also reports an average of ~26 delegates per month, the onboarding of 5 new high-VP delegates (21.8M ARB), and ~99% participation among high-VP delegates during v1.7.
The report also attributes improvements to v1.7 in areas like quorum contribution for on-chain votes, Security Council election participation (fewer disqualifications), and the program’s role as a pipeline for identifying vertical contributors. Overall, the document positions v1.7 as a more objective and cost-efficient iteration, and frames its learnings as inputs for narrower successor designs such as RAD.
DRIP December 2025 Update
Entropy published the December update for Arbitrum’s DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program (DRIP), covering epochs 8–9, which marked the start of Season One’s tapering phase. Incentives decreased from ~2M ARB per epoch to 1.43M ARB (epoch 8) and 1.385M ARB (epoch 9), with allocations mainly focused on Aave, Morpho, Fluid, Euler, Dolomite, and Silo. The update also notes a rebucketing of Aave incentives back into the core base budget after sufficient performance data became available.
The post highlights strong growth in stablecoin lending, particularly on Morpho, and announces a new distribution partnership with Bitget and Steakhouse to onboard off-chain users into Arbitrum lending markets. Finally, the DRIP committee confirmed a two-epoch extension of Season One, pushing its end to February 18, 2026, to better deploy remaining budget and sustain momentum while Season Two discussions continue.
Upcoming Events
D.A.O. Grant Program - Quarterly Call - on 7.1 at 18:00 UTC.
OpCo Monthly Update - on 9.1 at 15:00 UTC.
Scroll
Active Votes
Governance Framework Update (Scroll DAO 2.0) - ends on January 15 at 05:57 UTC.
Governance Framework Update (Scroll DAO 2.0)
Juansito created a proposal (with the Scroll Foundation, Governance Council, and delegates), Scroll DAO outlines a Governance Framework Update (DAO 2.0) to improve delegation quality, execution capacity, and measurable impact. The proposal introduces staked SCR as the foundation of delegation, a strengthened Verified Delegate role, an execution-oriented committee structure, and a formal budget and treasury framework, with phased implementation aligned to SCR staking readiness.
The framework shifts governance toward clearer ownership and accountability, with Operations and Accountability Committees handling execution and oversight, bi-annual budget approvals, and structured DAO-operated programs. While starting with a more centralized setup (initial committee and delegate selection by the Foundation), the proposal emphasizes this as a practical step toward effective decentralization over time, with elections and further decentralization planned as the system matures.
L2BEAT’s take
Overall, this is a serious attempt to make Scroll governance execute, not just vote. Clearer delegate expectations, a defined committee structure, and a formal budget framework address the operational gaps that can slow DAOs as they scale.
That said, the initial phase depends heavily on the roles designated by the Foundation and discretionary authority. It may be a practical measure to get the project off the ground. Still, it needs a clear roadmap with explicit milestones and high transparency into committee decisions and budget usage. If Scroll treats it as a working demo with a clear handover plan, it could serve as a solid foundation for real decentralization later.
Upcoming Events
Weekly DAO & Governance Call - on 5.1 at 15:00 UTC.
ZKSync
Mid-Term Report: ZK Stack Content Experiment (Community Activation RFP #2)
ZKsync published a mid-term update on the ZK Stack Content Experiment, an 8-week community activation initiative run by ZKnomist under Community Activation RFP #2. After the first four weeks, the program recorded 176 content submissions generating over 276k views, with strong participation from regional and community accounts across multiple languages. Based on this early traction, the report supports releasing the second funding tranche and moving into Part 2, which will focus on a smaller group of top contributors producing more in-depth, developer-oriented content and educational materials.
Discuss with L2BEAT
You can find us to discuss everything related to ZkSync’s governance, from current initiatives to high-level conversations, during our L2BEAT Governance Office Hours every Friday at 3 pm UTC.
Polygon
Polygon Staking Report. Year 2025 (By Validator.Info)
Validator.Info published a Polygon staking recap for 2025, highlighting the largest validators by stake and how delegation shifted over the year. By year-end stake, the top operators were Upbit Staking (373M POL), Coinbase (301M POL), and Binance Node (255M POL), while Everstake led by delegator count with 4,118 delegators. The report also flags the biggest stake growth in 2025, led by Upbit Staking (+237M POL), and notes near-perfect checkpoint performance among several validators, with multiple operators reporting 99.9% reliability.
Starknet
Feedback and Counterproposal on L2Beat’s Stage 1 Requirements Proposed Update
Eitanm-starkware posted feedback and a counterproposal on L2BEAT’s proposed update to Stage 1 requirements, arguing that the “Security Council permanently inactive” assumption raises the bar too far for Stage 1 and fits better as a Stage 2 autonomy requirement. Instead, they suggest keeping Stage 1 stable, defining Stage 2 around practical censorship-resistance mechanisms like forced transactions with a bounded delay and sequencing decentralization (multi-operator block proposal with a path toward permissionless participation), and pushing the “fully code-controlled end-state” expectations into a new Stage 3 to preserve a clear progression across stages.
Discuss with L2BEAT
You can find us to discuss everything related to Starknet’s governance, from current initiatives to high-level conversations, during our L2BEAT Governance Office Hours every Friday at 3 pm UTC.
Uniswap
Active Votes
Uniswap’s governance hasn’t seen any new developments over the last week. If you believe we might have missed something, please let us know.
Discuss with L2BEAT
You can find us to discuss everything related to Uniswap’s governance, from current initiatives to high-level conversations, during our L2BEAT Governance Office Hours every Friday at 3 pm UTC.
Wormhole
Wormhole’s governance hasn’t seen any new developments over the last week. If you believe we might have missed something, please let us know.
Discuss with L2BEAT
You can find us to discuss everything related to Wormhole’s governance, from current initiatives to high-level conversations, during our L2BEAT Governance Office Hours every Friday at 3 pm UTC.
Everclear
Everclear’s governance hasn’t seen any new developments over the last week. If you believe we might have missed something, please let us know.
Discuss with L2BEAT
You can find us to discuss everything related to Everclear’s governance, from current initiatives to high-level conversations, during our L2BEAT Governance Office Hours every Friday at 3 pm UTC.
Hop
Hop’s governance hasn’t seen any new developments over the last week. If you believe we might have missed something, please let us know.
Discuss with L2BEAT
You can find us to discuss everything related to Lisk’s governance, from current initiatives to high-level conversations, during our L2BEAT Governance Office Hours every Friday at 3 pm UTC.
Upcoming Events
Hop Community Call - on 7.1 at 18:00.
Lisk
Lisk’s governance hasn’t seen any new developments over the last week. If you believe we might have missed something, please let us know.
Discuss with L2BEAT
You can find us to discuss everything related to Lisk’s governance, from current initiatives to high-level conversations, during our L2BEAT Governance Office Hours every Friday at 3 pm UTC.